I entertain it yet.

Do you want to stop?

Sorry. No. I’m all right.

You lived in Europe but you never visited Romania.

I didnt want to visit. I wanted to go there.

Maybe we should stop.

A deal’s a deal. A little hysteria shouldnt be cause for a breach of contract.

We could talk about something else.

Shoes and ships and sealing wax.

Do you ever plan these discussions beforehand?

I’m sure I wasnt the first kid to wonder why anyone would want to wax their ceiling. No. I just wing it. Same as you.

I give it some thought. Jot down a few notes.

What are your plans for the tapes?

To do a paper, if everything goes well. I think that was the agreement.

Just as long as I dont have to read it.

Were you this pessimistic about the world from an early age?

Like it was all sunshine and light prior to pubescence?

I dont know.

I dont think people are wrong to be concerned about the world’s intentions toward them. There’s a lot of bad news out there and some of it is coming to your house.

Drowning yourself in Lake Tahoe. Was that a serious consideration?

Pretty serious. I guess that’s in there.

It’s mentioned. But you decided against it.

Yes.

What changed your mind?

Girls dont like to be cold.

Seriously.

I sat down and thought about it.

No surprise there.

I went through the physiology of it. It wasnt very reassuring.

Do you want to talk about that?

Sure. What the hell.

We have some time.

Well. The first thing you come to understand is that the panic attendant to suffocation is atavistic. It’s as old as the brain and there’s nothing you can do about it. You might think that you can screw your courage up to deal with it but you cant. It overrides all reason. It’s a thing we share with rats. You could say that fear of falling is also primitive, but climbers who have fallen to what they believed to be their deaths universally report calm and acceptance. Why is that?

I dont know.

I think it’s because there’s no decision to be made.

Decision.

Yes. If you’re drowning then at some point you’re going to have to make the decision to breathe in the water and die. You may think that the decision will be made for you, but even if you cant hold your breath for another second you can hold it another millisecond. And of course it’s not a choice but a decision. You have to make the decision to kill yourself. There’s nothing like that in falling to your death. The movies dont get that right either. There’s no kicking and screaming. You’re absolved of all responsibility. You’re quits. Are you sure about these morbid conversations?

It’s up to you.

Okay. My thought was to rent a boat. I was sitting in the pine woods above the lake and I thought about the incredible clarity of the water and I could see that was a plus. You really dont want to drown yourself in muddy water. It’s something people ought to think about. I saw myself sitting in the boat with the oars shipped. At some point I would take a last look around. I would have a heavy leather belt and a goodsized padlock from the hardware store and I would have fastened myself to the chain of the anchor through the belt where it doubles after passing through the buckle. Click the padlock shut and drop the key over the side. Maybe row off a few strokes. You dont want to be down there on the bottom scrambling around looking for a key. You take one last look and lift the anchor into your lap and swing your feet over the side and push off into eternity. The work of an instant. The work of a lifetime.