“I couldn’t believe it,” I said. “If you’d been late we’d never have seen each other. You should have contacted me.”

“I have a terrible problem,” he said. “I have CMV.”

“What’s CMV?”

“It’s an eye disease.”

“It’s the one that makes you go blind if it’s not caught in time, is it?”

“Yes, that’s it. I have it. It was diagnosed yesterday by an eye specialist. I have to make a decision about it. I have to decide whether to have treatment here, which will involve me going into the hospital for two weeks, or whether I go to San Francisco and try to get into a hospital there, which might be difficult since I have no health insurance.”

“What’s the problem about here?”

“My family. I don’t want them to find out. They’ll have to hear the news sometime, but I don’t want it to be now. But the main problem is time. The treatment has to begin in the next day or two.”

“You could tell your parents that you are going to San Francisco.”

“Yes, I think that is what I am going to have to do.” He stopped then and turned and looked at me.

“I have just been talking about me,” he said. “Maybe there’s something worse wrong with you.”

“I need to know how long you’ve known,” I said. “We can talk about me later.”

“I did the test when I went to San Francisco when Mart was dying. I got the result the day he died. But I guessed that there was something wrong for a while.”

“Who did you tell?”

“I told a few people the day of the funeral. And then I just came back here and pretended that nothing had happened.”

“That’s typical of you,” I said. We both laughed.

“I want you to come home with me,” I said. “We can talk there.”

We got a taxi to the apartment and walked up the stairs as though we had never done anything else in our lives.

“I have to phone the doctor and let him know,” he said.

“Phone him and tell him that you’ll do the treatments here.”

He went to the phone and I lay on the bed waiting for him. I could hear him clearly in the hall making arrangements for the next day. Then he came back and took off his shoes and lay beside me on the bed.

“Maybe I should have told you what the problem was when you rang me that day. I just couldn’t face it,” he said.

“We’ve got to stick by each other now,” I said.

We lay cupped against each other as I told him what had happened to me. He held my hand. And then neither of us spoke. There was not a sound in the room.

“I’m going to have to get a line in my chest like Mart had,” he said, “and I’m going to have to store drugs in the fridge and inject them every day.”