It is just that I had been carrying a cartoon, and the cartoon was doing a job for me, and on a cold street in Chattanooga it stopped working, and I have not been able to get it back.

I drove home. I told Ronald in March, because he needed to know for the filing. I told Phoebe in April, when she asked me directly whether I had ever gone, because she is twelve and she asks the exact question.

“Did you talk to him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would have been for me,” I said. “And I’d have made it a scene, and then it would have been the story instead of yours.”