I found her that Tuesday because I’d run out of toilet paper. Her bathroom door was closed. I knocked. I heard the sound of small splashes, then silence.

“Could you bring me a towel?” she called.

I heard it in her voice. I said, “You okay?”

“Just drop it outside the door.”

“What’s going on?”

There was a pause.

“Tilly?”

Then her voice again, slow and cautious, trying to hide its slurring. “Don’t worry about it.”

I opened the door. She was lying in the bathtub, her body white as plaster under the water. Her arms were draped over the edges, fists clenched, and her face was dirty, red around her lips like an infection. There was a paper bag on the floor, and I could smell the afterstench of hamburger meat gone grease-cold and charred. There was a bottle perched on the faucet, balanced between the knobs. She wrapped her arms around her chest, under the water, to cover her body. Her long hair floated in a webbed collar around her neck. “Just go away?” she said. “Please?”

“You have to let me help,” I said. I walked closer. “You can’t—”

She tried to stand but slipped. Her knee cracked against the porcelain. Her low-slung breasts showed the impact, shuddering. Her thighs buckled.

“God, Tilly . . .” I offered my hand.

“Get the fuck away from me!” she said. She nearly screamed it.

“Okay,” I said. I stepped back. “Okay, I will.”

I called Abe at work and told him we should get out of town for a few nights. I was sick of her, sick of wanting to help, sick of never helping enough. Get the fuck away from me. So I would. I hadn’t ever listened properly. I hadn’t even listened to Tom, especially Tom, asking what was I thinking? Where would I keep my crucifix?

They were true, the doctor’s words. She’d die if she kept living like this.

I didn’t tell Abe anything about her. I knew he’d be willing to do anything I asked. And he was. He left the office like a teenager ditching homeroom. I didn’t tell him how I’d found her. I told him I wanted to drive to Vegas. He’d told me once that I needed to see that town to believe it. I was ready. We drove over the Bay Bridge around noon and followed the ribbon of the highway past bleached hills and windmills, cow lots that stank of shit. Mile signs flashed by and gave a sense of our velocity. I thought of Tilly’s whales. Her television programs numbed her life, sure, but they brought her up against the wonder of the world: huge shadows moving through the deep on the speed of their songs.