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Donna and Kyle love him and want to be with him and are happy they found him, and I think that should be given at least as much consideration as anything else. And even though I’m unhappythat my friends are gone, I like Victor too much to blame him. Donna and I were already good friends when he came along, and he tried hard to be my friend, too, which isn’t always easy. He even asked me to serve as a witness when he married Donna at the courthouse, which was nice of him to do.
    All this thinking about my friends moving away inspires another thought. If Donna and Victor are willing to send Kyle here for a few days, I’ll have time to spend with him before I have to fly to Texas. We can watch football games, go for walks, build things in my basement workroom. I will ask him about his troubles at school. I will tell him about the shitburger year I’ve been having. We’ll go outside and get a new measurement of his height on the garage, something that we badly need. It could be a good thing for both of us, and I remember that Dr. Buckley once said that “mutually agreeable” outcomes are the best kind. She’s a very logical woman.
    I mop the floor, and I’m happy about this idea I have. When I’m done, I’ll call Donna back and tell her what I’m thinking, and then I’ll hope that she and Victor are amenable (I love the word “amenable”) to this course of action.
    Happily, I dip the mop, like I’m Fred Astaire and it’s Ginger Rogers.
    I’m pretty funny sometimes.

    I’ve finished in the kitchen, taken the wheelbarrow back into the garage (Scott Shamwell left it outside, just like he said he would), had a shower, put on my good clothes, and had my breakfast of oatmeal—along with my fluoxetine and new diabetes drugs—when the phone rings.
    “Hello?”
    A voice I know instantly comes back at me.
    “Edward, it’s Nathan Withers.”
    This is incredible. The mailman hasn’t even picked up my letter and already it’s gotten results.
    “Hello.”
    I hear him clearing his throat.
    “Edward, my boy, I’ve always shot straight with you, haven’t I?”
    I’ve never seen Mr. Withers use a gun, but I recognize this idiom.
    “Yes.”
    “I intend to keep doing so,” he says. “I heard you were here last night, trying to fix those steps on the south side of the building.”
    “Yes.”
    “You can’t do that. I don’t want to hear about you being here again. Am I clear?”
    I want to cry. “Yes.”
    “Now, listen,” he says, more softly than when he told me never to visit the
Herald-Gleaner
again. “I know it’s hard. My boy, I would have never let you go if I’d had any other choice. Now, I’m not supposed to tell you that, but again, I’m shooting straight with you. Working here is something you’re going to have to let go. It’s hard, and you did good work, and you don’t deserve what happened to you. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it’?”
    “Yes. Clint Eastwood said that in
Unforgiven
.”
    “That’s right. You’re a talented man and a good worker, and somebody will appreciate that and give you a job, if you want one. But it won’t be here. If you need a recommendation, I willwrite you one. If you want to have lunch sometime, I’ll buy it. But you’re not getting your job back. Do you hear me?”
    “Yes.”
    “OK. Edward, have a good Christmas. Life is so much more than where you work. Find something you want to do, something that belongs to you and nobody can take away, and do that happily for the rest of your life. I know you can.”
    “I will try.”
    “That’s good. Take care.”
    Mr. Withers hangs up.
    I want to go back to bed.
    Unfortunately, I have to pee first.

    It’s 1:57 p.m. when I wake up for good. I woke up thirty-three minutes earlier and an hour and twelve minutes earlier to pee. While I have no statistical data to back this up, I can say with near-certainty that I’ve never peed this much in my life.
    The reason I woke