“No,” Robert, a scratched stick, said. “But I’ll watch.” That we were playing, like the Titanic orchestra, playing right up to the end, it showed, I felt, we’d learned a thing or three. That made me momentarily happier.

I was about to head South for Christmas. She now arranged the flowers she’d just brought Robert, most of a lilac bush that smelled almost too good and must’ve cost a fortune on the East Side. She would spend the night and, though mostly glad, I felt somehow uneasy.

When he remembered to, Robert could still dispense the usual 100-proof charm. His quips that once pealed forth so effortlessly, now rode stray ungoverned barks, voice breaking like a boy pubescent’s. His former languor revealed what work had forever underwritten its nouveau curls, the swoops most cavalier. His drawl sounded less indolent, more brave. It was not an effect he had ever let us see, and you could tell that it embarrassed him.

Bama suggested we should change his scene. Given Robert’s weakness, it took two of us twenty minutes to get him toward, then into the wheelchair.

Co-op Care left friends in charge of loved ones. You stayed with them, only summoned nurses for a code blue. The ward proved ideal for folks with lots of pals who’d sit round the clock. I soon found: scheduling others’ half-reliable visits was often harder than just camping here myself.

Bama came across a long white nurse’s coat hanging behind the bathroom door; she now modeled it for us, joking, “But, you know? I worry about the length.” She showed off her gams; with gym work, they were now nearly as good as mine. “Oh well,” she said, trying to entertain a listless Robert, “hems up one year, down the next. As Cocteau says, ‘We must forgive Fashion everything, it dies so young …’”

Then silence. None of us would touch it for one whole second.

“Good thing you finally got a decent gallery, kid,” he was merciful. “You never would have made it as a Savannah club lady.”

“Thank you doubly, Robins. I always did put my foot in it. Trying to get better at that but, you know me, I’m hopeless basically.” And she met his look.

We joshed throughout, while shifting him from bed to chair. But finally the three of us just shut up; we simply did the chore with whatever grunts its facts and physics demanded. We were all now old enough, ripened enough with wear and love, not to need to lighten every little bit of pain. You could do either Charm or Efficiency. We had all grown wise enough to alternate.

Given Robbie’s leaflike frailty, we settled for eating downstairs in the cafeteria. At this end of life, a change of scene could be mean a change of floor. Miss Byrnes now handed our patient a bundle from Bloomingdale’s. He tried to break through stubborn tissue paper, then, frustrated, struck at it.

“Here, let me,” she said. “I love ripping things up.”