It occurred to me, she says, that maybe I should look for someone who’s not so close to me right now, someone I trust but who I’m not used to seeing all the time and who’s not used to seeing me. There was another old friend who came to mind who happens also to be a doctor and who in many ways would’ve been ideal. But she can’t just leave her practice. That’s been another consideration, my friend says: people have jobs.

Including me. But, as my friend is quick to mention, it’s summertime. School is out.

I say, for something to say, that I wish we weren’t in a public place.

Ah, but that was deliberate, she says. I thought it would keep us from getting—overemotional. But also, I couldn’t resist when I thought of that time you and I sat right here in this bar and discussed this very subject.

I have no idea what she’s talking about.

Introduction to Ethics. You don’t remember? The professor divided the class into pairs, and each pair had to debate a given ethical question. Ours was on the right to die. Sanctity of life versus quality of life. We worked on it together over a couple of pitchers of beer. Remember? You argued that a person had a right to take their own life under any circumstances, not just in terminal cases. It was the individual’s business and nobody else’s, least of all the state’s. I remember that this made me nervous, she says, because back then you were depressed a lot and you could also be very impulsive, and hearing you argue so passionately for suicide freaked me out.

I am so stunned that I almost jump to my feet. Not that I haven’t seen it before: a person tells a story from the past that they vividly recall when in fact the story is completely invented. And not that I think my friend is lying; on the contrary, I know that she has just spoken in all innocence. I know that what’s happened is this: her imagination has supplied her with a memory to help make a particular way of thinking about a traumatic situation more coherent. It’s perfectly likely that she and I once discussed the question of a person’s right to die. It’s more than likely that I’d taken the position that she said I had. Maybe I really was the chronically depressed and impulsive young woman that she recalled. But she and I had never worked together in this bar or anywhere else on any such course assignment. I have never taken Introduction to Ethics.

All of which, however, I leave unsaid. Indeed, I don’t say anything about anything. I am not feeling well. Two drinks guzzled in a row. But it’s not just the alcohol that’s making the room spin.