"Oh—oh!"
I looked at him cross-eyed. "What an evil mind you have! I keep my accounts and the tax people are not particularly interested in me. No brunette has letters of mine and is asking for a thousand bucks. Nobody is suing me for plagiarism. I just noticed a little nuisance in the back of my throat the other day and went over to see Tom and had a biopsy—and I want my affairs in order."
I shouldn't have done it that way. He turned sheet-white.
"There isn't any report on the biopsy yet," I said. "Won't be till Monday. Makes quite a long weekend. But I have a hunch—"
"You God-damned dour Scotchmen! Maybe it's nothing."
"Tom thinks it's something."
He looked out the window for a long time—with his shoulders folded forward and the sun beating on his face, reflecting into it from the cement top of the parapet and bouncing at it from the tile terrace between. That ugly, fond mug.
"I suppose," he finally said, "when they have taken everything else and everybody else they come around for you in person."
"I never really expected to get even this old. When I was a kid, I was sure I'd never see thirty. As I recall, I didn't want to. Seemed a stale age."