I just wanted to close my eyes for a minute, she said. Teeth chattering.

I climbed onto the bed, tucking my wet feet under me. Two persons adrift.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, she said. All I wanted was peace. I wanted to die in peace, and now it’s turned into this nightmare. This farce. This hideous, humiliating farce.

Then she was crying so convulsively that she could no longer get the words out. I heard them anyway: She had wanted to be strong. She had wanted control. She had wanted to die on her own terms and with as little trouble to the world as possible. She had wanted peace. She had wanted order.

Peace and order around her was all she had asked for.

A calm, clean, graceful, even—why not?—beautiful death.

Was what she’d had in mind.

A beautiful death in a nice house in a scenic town on a fine summer night.

Was the end my friend had written for herself.

It’s not your fault, I said. And of course it wasn’t my fault, either. So why could I not shake the feeling that, on the contrary, I, and nobody else, was very much to blame?

As I sat trying to comfort her, I was also trying to think about what must be done. How would we ever explain this to our hosts? But hateful as that duty was, it could not be put off. They would need to contact their home insurer immediately.

A couple sits in their living room watching TV when suddenly the ceiling cracks open, releasing a cascade of water from an overflowing bathtub upstairs. As they jump to their feet, clutching their heads in dismay, the house door opens and in marches a crew of smiling, uniformed, attractive young people. Now the homeowners are bewitched into statue-stillness and the team sets to work, cleaning up the mess and fixing everything, good as new. As the door closes behind them, the couple are released from their spell, unaware that anything was ever amiss. Like it never even happened is the company’s promise. I’d seen their TV commercial many times, and I’d seen their trucks with FIRE AND WATER CLEANUP AND RESTORATION painted on the side, and now, a little dementedly, I kept seeing the commercial in my head, drawing hope from its magic, its fairy-tale ending.

Meanwhile, my friend was rambling. It had been a mistake to come here, it was a stupid idea. It was a fantasy. She should have known it would go all wrong. It was unfair, it was so fucking unfair.

After a pause she shook me out of my thoughts by shouting, I’ve never been so unhappy in my life! I hate myself!

To die in despair. The phrase came to me, and all the water in the room turned to ice.

It must not happen. It must not be allowed to happen.