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that are precious to me—He breaks off, andpinches his lips together with his hand. But he composes himself.
    I have always loved to talk with you, he says. I don’t want to say anything to you I do not mean.
    She nods.
    I won’t ask you to help me, he says. But I’ll want you to be there. If you can’t I’ll understand, but . . . but Elise, if I have to die—he shakes his head—let me die with your arms around me. If you love me you can do this.
    She manages, barely, to turn the heat off beneath the soup. She goes to her husband, and, for the ten thousandth time—the hundred thousandth?—she pledges to him, as fervently as she can, clutching at his shoulders and his arms (they’re thinner now; she can feel it) her love.
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    T HEY HOLD the dinner party that weekend. Elise cooks a roast and red potatoes: Albert’s favorite. Their children come (but not the grandchildren), and two of Albert’s old friends, fellow engineers, and their wives. The engineers have brought cigars and a preposterously expensive bottle of scotch, and seem to have agreed amongst themselves to be cheerful. The children sit, tight-mouthed and pale, shocked at their father’s happy mood. He and Elise have agreed that they must not know what he has planned. But his friends don’t have to be told; they are old men as well, and believe, as Albert does, in dignity, and even if they can’t guess exactly what he aims to do, they will have guessed that this party will be the last time they’ll ever see him. Albert stands with them out on the back deck after dinner, all of them holding tumblers of the good scotch, and the lit cigars, and after a lull in their talk, Alberttells them, Gentlemen, it has been my pleasure. I hope you know how I think of you.
    The two men, misty-eyed, dutch at his shoulders.
    Please look in on Elise, Albert says. I know your wives will—but you, too. Make sure nothing needs fixing; she’s no good with tools. But you must—please don’t let her be alone. She hates to be alone. This will be more difficult for her than she’s letting on.
    How could it be easy? one of his friends says, husky-voiced.
    That woman’s been a fool for you for fifty years, the other says. Since the very first.
    Albert sighs and takes a drink. This will hurt his stomach, but not unbearably; he has loved his friends too much not to drink their scotch now.
    The first friend starts to chuckle, and behind it is the same nervous shake with which they’ve all been speaking.
    What is it? Albert asks.
    I was about to tell you how lucky you are, the man says.
    They laugh, and it is as Albert had hoped. Laughter! He’s a dead man, but on this night, with these men, he drinks in eagerly one of the last laughs he’ll ever have, savors it as the rare and fine thing it is, and above it the rareness and fineness of them all.
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    L ATER THAT NIGHT , he and Elise lie together in their wide, soft bed. He aches; the ache is everywhere now, not just in his belly, and he can start to feel pain in the bones of his hips and thighs. Even the simple act of sitting has become difficult. Soon, if he lets it happen, he will be unable to sit still, and hewill have to call the hospital for stronger meds. It’s not bad now, but in a day, or two, he will surely have to pick up the phone.
    Sometimes he tries to convince himself that the hospital and the doctors have made a horrible mistake, that he will, in the end, be well. He was tempted into thinking it again tonight, out on the deck with his friends. But in a moment of quiet and repose, like this one, he can feel the cancer inside of him with a still certainty, can almost trace its outlines under the soft loose skin of his belly. On other nights he has felt fear, but tonight, Elise warm and soft next to him, lovemaking done—they could not finish, but he managed, heart racing, to fit himself inside her, for a while, and