My friend had been doing yoga for many years—she’d even once had a part-time job as a yoga instructor. There were two yoga studios in town offering two different kinds of yoga classes, but she had no interest in either of them. Like many other people, she’d been doing yoga mainly to help her stay physically fit. Nothing to do with enlightenment. Whatever people might claim, she said, she herself had never witnessed any spiritual growth, any improvement in the moral character of any person she’d known who did yoga—and the number of people she’d known who did yoga was vast—she had never seen anyone who could be said to have become a better person by doing yoga, she said, unless being a better person meant feeling better about yourself; if anything, she said, she had seen people become increasingly self-centered, something she’d seen also in some people who were in psychotherapy. In any case, she didn’t have to care about being fit anymore. Since her diagnosis the only exercise she enjoyed was walking. Depending on how well she felt, we took walks around town or through the nature preserve, though there were days when she had to go very slowly and days when she had to stop and sit and rest along the way. Usually we went out together, though sometimes when I got up in the morning she was already out, on her own. She was often up very early, before the light; I had the impression sometimes she’d been up all night, though she insisted that she was in fact sleeping quite well. No fear of losing consciousness, no fear of the dark, so common among people facing death. It was because she wasn’t afraid, she thought; it was because she was ready to go. She had discovered that, unlike the pleasure of music, the pleasure of birdsong had not diminished. It was one of the things that drew her out to the nature preserve in the early hours. There’ll be birdsong in heaven, she said, if heaven exists.

I wasn’t interested in yoga either, but I sought out the nearest gym, a sports club located in the same shopping mall as the bookstore, where I was told I could pay to work out without buying a membership as long as I did so with one of their personal trainers. If I came around the same hour each time, I could work with the same trainer. I would have much preferred to be on my own. I don’t like having someone standing by watching and counting so that I can’t quietly think my own thoughts while exercising, and the personal trainers I see working at my regular gym often look so bored.

The trainer, though all tattooed tight muscle, had the face of a choirboy and a choirboy’s pure treble.