Of course I could be wrong, she says, and this could all turn out to be some kind of fantasy. But I’ve thought a lot about it, and it feels right to me. Am I making any sense?

I think so, I say. And you need my help finding a place, or helping you get settled in?

No, she says. I can do that myself. I’ve already started looking.

She lays one palm flat on the table and presses her other hand on top of it to quell—or hide—the tremor.

What I need is someone to be there with me, she says. I’ll want some solitude, of course, it’s what I’m used to, after all, what I’ve always craved—dying hasn’t changed that. But I can’t be completely alone. I mean, this is a new adventure—who can say what it will really be like. What if something goes wrong? What if everything goes wrong? I need to know there’s someone in the next room.

Epic struggle to keep my composure, to choose my words.

I agree, I say. You shouldn’t be alone.

But, I ask her after a pause, wouldn’t it be more comforting to have someone there who was closer to her? Someone from her family? Back in the days when we’d haunted this bar we might have been joined at the hip, but although we’d always stayed in touch she and I had gone our very separate ways over these many long years, and what she appears to be asking is baffling to me. Plus I’m still trying to absorb the shock of her revelation about the drug.

Someone from my family, she repeats flatly. Well, that would be my daughter—I don’t have any other close family members—and I couldn’t possibly ask her, it wouldn’t be right. It’s not just that she and I are anything but comfortable with each other. But precisely because of that—because our relationship has always been so troubled—to be blunt, it would be too much of a mindfuck. She might agree, out of a sense of duty. But given the hostility she’s always had toward me, I don’t know how she’d ever cope with her feelings. No, I don’t see how I can justify putting her in such a position. And there’s the added complication of her being the main beneficiary of my will.