He would say sit down, and I would say in a minute, and he would let it go, every time, for twenty-one days.

And on the last Tuesday he asked me again.

Part Ten: The Last Tuesday

The thirty-first of December.

I had two days of holiday left and I did not take either of them.

I brought him a coffee from the cart on Hennepin, which I had started doing, carrying it on the light rail and then on a bus and then in a taxi for the last part, so that it arrived about forty minutes old and lukewarm.

He drank it anyway.