I arrived at his cottage early. He made it seem early. We spent the day, this day he had insisted we share, mostly separated. I couldn’t write within view of him — that’s how special our relationship was — so I ended up reading a mangled copy of The Gulag Archipelago while he divided his time between excavating the storage space underneath the cottage and tending to small repairs inside. As for lunch, I expected he would have the barbecue going, but when I poked around the kitchen he called out for me to help myself to a sandwich. As in, make one if you want one. It was at this point that I began to suspect the worst. I had no clue what that might be, and as the day drew its curtains I kept waiting for him to say something, to explain why exactly I had been asked to come out there. Whateve
