She read that document line by line over four days and came back with two changes, both of which were about restricting my ability to influence it.

She did not take one dollar for herself.

She has still not taken one dollar for herself.

And in the March, when her lease came up and the rent went to fifteen hundred, I asked whether I could help and she said no, and she moved to a slightly smaller two-bedroom eleven minutes further out, and I helped her carry a couch, which is the correct amount of help and which took me about four months to learn.

Part Thirteen: Eight Years Late

I booked the appointment in the February and I did not tell anybody I had booked it.

A urologist named Ruth Calloway, in a medical building off Mopac, who I picked off an insurance list because I did not want a referral from anybody who knew me.

The whole thing took eleven days from phone call to result and cost me two hundred and forty dollars, which is the number I want in the middle of this account, in its own line, because it is the entire moral of it.

Two hundred and forty dollars and eleven days.

In 2013 it would have been about a hundred and eighty.