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that?
    —Last winter. She was here the whole day while you went around.
    —I remember.
    —She came to me, and I was chiseling away, in the midst of it, you know, and she had a scrap of paper. It said Mercer on it, and underneath, to be said on mornings, and under that the thing.
    —I asked you what it was and you wouldn’t say, and I asked her, and she wouldn’t either.
    Mercer grinned.
    —It’s a thing like that. Not to be bandied about.
    He set to coughing again. Finally he settled.
    —On the way here this morning, I saw a woman killed.
    One of the gnarled hands was gripping the other.
    William waited.
    —I was under the walking bridge on Seventh. There was a shout and then she came down, hit not twenty feet in front of me. Then right there where she fell from, a face looking down.
    —Did she look like a cop?
    —What does a cop look like, these days?
    —So, the body was there, and you walked past it.
    —Looked to see if she was dead, and she was. Twice over. People don’t fall like cats, you know. Even cats don’t always fall like cats. Have you ever seen it? When a cat does something it knows a cat shouldn’t have done? There’s nothing like the embarrassment of cats.
    He laughed.
    There was a little stove, and William made a pot of tea. The two men sat there while the water boiled, and then Mercer made the tea.
    —I do prefer good tea leaves, he said. In a fine tin.
    —If I saw any, I’d bring it. These days it can’t be bought.
    There was a book there, of old tombstone designs. William leafed through it.
    There were many there he liked, and he showed them to Mercer. These were also ones that Mercer liked. They sat there, then, together, liking them.
    The mason picked up his chisel. It was a splendid tool, an old tool, extremely heavy. William was very fond of Mercer and of all the things that Mercer owned. There are a few people one meets whom one can approve of entirely, and such was he.
    —You keep that chisel sharp.
    —I like to think I could cut the heart out of a sheep without it knowing. Just the tap of a hammer, and a slight twist.
    —But you’ve always been fond of sheep.
    —And am, and am. I’m speaking of the chisel, you understand.
    There was the humming of an airplane overhead, but neither man looked up or made as if to notice.
    —Tomorrow’s list is by the door, said Mercer finally.
    He handed William the notebook. William tore the pages out of it and set them down. White marble for the last, he said. And leave room, she says.
    —We’re all planning our own death these days.
    —Tomorrow, then.

At six o’clock, he picked up Molly and they had a glass of lemonade by the lake.
    *Can we rent a boat and go out to the island?
    *No.
    *But what about tomorrow? Can we tomorrow?
    *No.
    Molly played in the enormous gnarled oaks that had stood in the park for more than a century. Their limbs were long and bowed and many. Nearly every one could be climbed easily, and Molly had climbed nearly every one.
    There was a man selling newspapers. William bought a newspaper, but did not read it. It looked bad to avoid the newspaper; one bought it, but one didn’t actually have to read it.
    He had not performed violin in over four years. There were no musical performances anymore. There were no performances of any kind. There was a new ideal, and one could sit in an audience and listen to people talk about the new ideal, but that was the extent of it.
    Much of his life in the past years was a matter of making it so that things could not get worse. He tried to, through a series of habits, insulate and barricade the life that he and Molly lived, so that it could not be invaded or altered.
    He had done this in a series of ways. First, he bought an apartment in an area of town that was known to be very quiet. He established a policy of having no friends, none at all. He ceased to speak to the friends he had had before. He got a job as a mason’s assistant. He and Molly lived cheaply, and wore old