It struck me from the bitterness in Jack’s voice that he was sick too, but I saw no signs of illness.

“That is my sermon for today, dear children, now you can all go,” he said in a drawl. He sipped his beer from the bottle.

Pablo took Mart to the doctor. Jack and I promised to make dinner. We sat on the patio drinking beer.

“How long has Mart left to live?” I asked him.

“You can never say. It could be a few days, it could be a year, even two years, but that would be stretching it, I think. Even if a cure came, I don’t think it would make any difference, his immune system has been destroyed.”

“That’s terrible, it’s unbelievable,” I said.

“It’s happening to thousands and thousands of people. All we can hope for is that things are easy, that he doesn’t go blind in his good eye and that he manages to keep his memory and his mind.”

“He must be devastated,” I said.

“He was at first, but now he’s used to it, most of the time he can handle it fine. He’s got a lot of strength inside him. I never knew that before all this happened.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Twelve years. We’ve lost our business, paying for doctors and drugs. We still run the shop, but we don’t own it any more. We’ve lost everything, I suppose, but sometimes it feels okay. When he comes back, if there’s no real problem, we’ll have a nice evening.”

We opened fresh bottles of beer and sat there quietly as hints of night came down. I felt like a child listening to an adult talk. I was surprised at how calm and resigned Jack seemed, as though what was happening to Mart, and perhaps to him as well, were an essential part of life, something all adults understood. There were other things I wanted to ask him—when did he know that he was gay? when did he tell his parents? when did he meet Pablo?—but I felt that these questions were too basic and personal. I went into the kitchen to make dinner. He began to set the table on the patio. I watched him as he laid out everything perfectly. I made a salad and a salad dressing and put the steaks on the barbecue.

“Dementia is happening a bit less than it used to,” Jack said as we stretched out on the patio again, “but that’s always the worst fear if you’ve been with someone for a long time, you end up taking care of a man who doesn’t know you, who can’t remember what he said to you just now. Pablo went through it with Frank. Frank had this terrible anger, I don’t know where it came from, he had been such a calm, placid guy. Now he was shouting all the time, he was incontinent and almost blind and covered in KS and yet he wouldn’t die. He went on and on, and Pablo would let no one else look after him. Pablo was amazing.”