“I’m sure you think it’s a miracle that I can walk,” he said. “Well, I believe we make our own miracles.” He leaned his cane gently against the edge of the sofa. “I also believe we make our own disasters. If your friend is disappearing, as you say, then he’s doing it to himself.”

A pack of Afghans frolicked past, knocking down the cane. I picked it up and gave it to him again. “He’s trying not to. He’s trying to be visible.”

“Then he’s not trying the right way. The universe has no sympathy, and we’re never rewarded for doing things the improper way.” Prudence came over for attention, and Crawley began to scratch her behind the neck. “If your friend continues on his path of self-destructive anonymity, you should minimize your own losses. Cut him loose. Forget about him.”

“He’s my friend.”

“Spare me your sentimentality,” said Crawley. “Friends can be replaced.”

“No, they can’t!”

Instead of answering me right away, he looked down at the dog, which was so utterly content to have a fraction of his attention. “Four years ago,” he said, “Prudence was hit by a car and killed.”

He said it so bluntly, the news actually made me gasp.

“So,” he continued, “I fired my dog walker, and I contacted a breeder. Prudence was replaced within three weeks, and life went on. As I said, friends can be replaced.”

I was so horrified by this, I couldn’t say a thing.

“All of my dogs are second generation,” he told me. “Some even third. All sins, all virtues. It’s the way I like it.”

“That’s wrong,” I said. It was twisted in some basic way—like those people who have their pets stuffed and stick them in front of the fireplace like a piece of furniture. They don’t even have real eyes anymore. How could you stand looking at a stuffed pet with marbles for eyes? And how could you treat pets and people like objects to be replaced? “More than wrong—it’s kind of sick.”

“Think what you want, but it’s the way the world works.”

“What do you know about the world? You’re not a part of it—you live outside of it, in your own weird little universe.”

He grabbed his cane, reached across the table, and poked me in the chest. “You’re nervy,” he said. “I used to like that about you, but now it’s rubbing me the wrong way.”

I stood up. Suddenly I didn’t feel like being in the same room with him. I didn’t feel like being on the same continent. “Now I know why you’re so afraid of dying,” I told him just before I left. “Because you know when the time comes, you won’t be rewarded for living your life ‘the improper way.’”