But, she reported, what soon sounded even worse was the quickly spreading silence. One by one, from a darkness out of Dante, so very fast in water this freezing, all the screaming singly ceased.

It was, this old woman (never married) recounted, the stillness afterward that scared her most.

“Out there, floating, in the black, it became so quiet, you could not believe a single noise was being made anywhere else on earth.”

That is where I live this morning.

The phone is idled. I now take messages for no one else. True, my grandmother’s mantel clock ticks on. (Not even silence quite stifles that.) I tell myself I mustn’t burn my only bagel.

These days, people newly sick with it expect to live much longer. Great. But not my crowd. Always pirate pioneers, we were, alas, among its first. The long-promised boat, tiny but already there at the horizon, seems finally to be coming in.

It is a boat my darlings missed.

Now everything is slowed and eased and lazied. Medications?: one daily vitamin. I have just myself to care for. I am, increasingly, a cinch. Keep it fed, keep it warm, keep things quiet. The complex loss, it simplifies you. Last night, showering, I shocked myself. I almost hummed—four bars from an old Lerner musical.

I begin to guess what has just happened—what delicate, expensive ship so recently slid under. Look, I’ll squeeze those twelve nice oranges. They’ve only just begun to “turn.” Too much juice for one bachelor, but it’ll probably get drunk. A few sure things now get me through.

Today, no waiting for doctors’ grand rounds, no faux cheer around my sick. Which reminds me of a tacky joke.

It was told at the start of the plague. It was told about a stunning Miss America, disqualified. The committee found that, precrown, this ambitious, hard-working girl had made some lesbian porn. A girl has to eat.

“Q: What is the difference between that Miss America and the Titanic?”

“A: At least you know how many people went down on the Titanic!”

My dead friends, see, just urged me to offer you this sleazy riddle. Departed, they can bear most anything but solemnity, especially solemnity about them. My circle misses noise, brass, vamping, and action for the sake of action’s being pretty. Our patron saint was Saint Adrenaline.

Now I can bear everything but loudness. I live in a small village. I love its evening train whistles, its morning mockingbirds. I dread New York’s career of frenzy. Now I sit here in a foursquare kitchen five hundred miles due south of Manhattan. I’m saved from the wild silver city I still adore.

Here, I feel determined to stay basic.