They’re having lunch in a restaurant, she comes back from the restroom and he says “I have something to tell you. It’s very serious and I’m willing to take the consequences, which I know will be awful, but I can’t hold it in any longer. You probably already know what I’m about to say,” and she says “I think so, yes.” “I didn’t want it to come out. I knew nothing good could come from my saying it. But there you are. I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry too,” she says, “but you’re right. You know yourself that something like that could never work out. For one thing, and it’s the main thing — you’re really very sweet and smart and generous and I like you, but there’s the age difference. For instance, say something did develop between us: when you’d be eighty-two, five years from now, I’d still be a relatively young woman. And in ten years, you’d be eighty-seven and I’d only be entering, or would have entered it a couple of years before, early middle age, but I wouldn’t be considered old.” “Like me now,” he says. “Funny; doesn’t feel like it. Maybe you think I’m bullshitting you for argumentative reasons, but I feel young — thirty years younger than I am, and maybe just entering middle age, not that I’m sure when middle age begins, ends, and how many years it is. Anyway, we shouldn’t see each other anymore. I know I couldn’t. No more lunches and no movies and dinners we talked about going to — Gertrude’s for fried oysters; Petit Louis for whatever they got, and so on — terminatively postponed. And don’t phone me. No emails either. No communication between us. I want to try to get you out of my head as fast as I can. I’m done with my lunch, by the way. I can’t eat anything now.” “I can’t either,” she says. He pays up and they hug outside the restaurant and go to their cars. She emails him about eight months later. Nothing between them since the last time at the restaurant when she ended their friendship or he did. He did. In it she writes that both her daughters are fine and a delight to her. She’s officially divorced now and she’s okay by it. She thought she’d take it harder. Her writing’s going only so-so, and she’ll explain why momentarily, though she still managed to publish two stories since the last time she saw him, and if he’s interested she’ll tell him where he can find them. But more important and why she’s writing him: she’s been diagnosed with the same disease his wife had. “I’m scared. You told me how horrid it got for her, especially her last five years. They tell me it’s a very bad case and that I’m pretty well along with it. Unbelievable as this seems to me, I’ve even begun using a walker. There I am, shuffling, shuffling. Not the one with wheels, but I guess that comes next. I’ve had to cut my teaching load in half for next semester, which cuts my billfold in half too, I’ll tell you, but what can I do? — I only have so much energy. I’ve tried to keep my illness a secret from everyone but my mother and chairman and dearest friend, but now it’s so obvious — shuffling, shuffling — I can’t hide it anymore. I hate hitting you with this bad news. But we got close as friends, so I thought it wrong not to let you know or for you to hear it from somebody else. I also in the future might come to you for advice, since you lived with it with your wife for twenty years, right to the end, you said. So. Maybe we’ll talk. Love and hugs. Ruth.” He calls her that night. They talk about her illness, what medications she’s on and doctors she’s seeing and experimental treatment she’s participating in, and then he says “Listen. This is all very gloomy and dispiriting, I know, but there could be a positive side to this also. At least for me, and I hope for you too. I thought this over since I got your email, so here it is. I still feel warmly to you. I think I once told you that you’re my favorite person on earth, other than for my daughters.” “I don’t recall that,” she says. “Maybe it was in one of my over-the-top emails to you, when I was still stupidly fantasizing a, shall we say, romantic relationship with you, or I just thought of saying or writing you it. But what I’m saying is I can take care of you if you ever need me to and help you out with money too. I have enough, and I have more than enough time to help you.” “I wouldn’t want your money,” she says. “Thank you, and I mean that, but I’ll make do.” “But how about what I said about taking care of you, if it had to come to that, which it could? And this is not a one-shot offer. I’d do it till I’m too sick and weak to, which I don’t see myself becoming.” “This is very interesting, what you’re saying,” she says, “because my greatest fear is that eventually nobody will take care of me except people I pay to, and I’ll have little income and savings for that. My mother’s too far away and she’s getting old and I wouldn’t want to burden her. Same with my kids, though too young, and my sister’s even farther away than my mother and has her own growing family to attend to. Friends have said they’d help. But other than driving me to places and bringing me food when I’m no longer able to prepare it and things like that, I can’t expect much more from them — certainly not the dirty work. Claude, God bless him, has said he’ll take on more of the parental duties. But nobody but you has offered to help me the way you said you would, or has the experience to, when things get really bad for me. So, yes, unless I come up with a better solution, and I doubt there’s one, I’ll take you up on your offer.” “See how things work out? You can even, in time, stop renting your house, which’d save you a bundle of money, and move into mine with your daughters. I’ve plenty of room and will make even more room if I have to. But up till then, and again, only if it comes to that, I’ll be here for you any time you want and for as long as you want or need me to. I’ll marry you, even. Not ‘even.’ I’d want to. It’s in fact what I’d love to do. And we can share the same bed if you’d let me share it with you, although that doesn’t have to be part of the arrangement if you don’t want it to. All up to you. But all right. Or have I once again blown it with you by saying too much too early? And forget the bed and marriage part. I don’t want to chase you away.” “We’ll see about all of that,” she says. “Tell you the truth, I’m kind of drawn to the idea of that sort of companionship too. So, my dear, while I can still cook, would you like to come for dinner tomorrow night? I’m going to make something Moroccan — my specialty. I think you’ll like it.” “What do you drink with Moroccan other than tea?” and she says “I like ice-cold beer. But if you prefer wine, a chilled semi-sweet sauterne would be good.” “Then I’m there with a couple of bottles and dessert. Is six okay?” “Six is fine.” “I also want to say,” he says, “that starting tomorrow I’ll do everything I can to get you completely well again so you won’t have to need me or anybody else.” “That’d be appreciated,” she says, “and it’s nice of you to say it. But you know as well as anyone it’s not the kind of disease where that can happen.”