“Yes.”
“Do you cheat?”
“Only when necessary.”
He studied me briefly.
“We may get along.”
We did.
I brought soup, washed dishes, and made tea.
Before long, Carl seemed to remember every small thing I liked.
At first, I assumed he was simply observant.
Later, I understood that he was not learning those details.
He was remembering them.
Carl had stage-four cancer.
He never pretended the treatments were curing him. He simply refused to let illness become the largest presence in the room.
Whenever pain interrupted a conversation, he waited for it to pass, then resumed exactly where he had stopped.
Except once.
We were playing Scrabble when he tried to tell me about a teacher he once admired. His mouth opened, but the words would not come.
The illness had begun affecting his speech. The harder he struggled, the more trapped the sentence became.
Carl gripped the edge of the table.
