Let me tell you about Eva. She is, without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened in your life. The day you found out Sandra was pregnant, you almost collapsed. In fact, you didn’t ask Sandra immediately to marry you because you spent two days on the couch barely able to function. You were going to be a dad, and that scared the hell out of you. You used to think children didn’t come with manuals, but the fact is they do. There are a million books out there, and Sandra would buy them then hardly read them. The bookcase would be stacked full of parenting books that didn’t even have the spine cracked because you didn’t read them either, you didn’t need to, because everything just happened naturally. Everything you’ve done in your life, nothing comes close to those days when you would spend hours putting together a brand-new toy for Eva. That look on her face when she would see it, that smile, Jesus, that smile and those big blue eyes of her mother’s . . . that sense of wonder at something new . . . if the Big A left you with one memory, pray that it’s one of those. You kept thinking the magic would disappear as she got older, but no, it only got better. The day she broke her arm . . . she was seven years old. She used to love watching reruns of the shows you grew up with, and she ran up to the car and tried to slide across the hood like they do in The Dukes of Hazzard, and slid right off the other side into the driveway and twisted her arm beneath her. You were calm and collected and got her to the hospital, but that night neither you nor Sandra could sleep, and you knew, each of you knew, if anything bad ever happened, if you ever lost Eva, the world would end. You still feel that way. But this . . . this is telling you more about you, not about her. How to sum up Eva? She’s warm. She’s empathetic. She’s intelligent. At school she was a straight-A student, she excelled in volleyball, on the track, in the pool. By the time she was nine she could sing along to any Rolling Stones song you had playing on the stereo. When she was ten she dressed up for Halloween as a police officer from the TV show CHiPs because she knew you used to watch it when you were a kid. When she was eleven she would visit your mother and read to her during those final few months. She used to chase after the neighbor’s cat every time she saw it catch a bird, free the bird, and bring it home to try and nurse it back to health. Sometimes it’d work, sometimes it wouldn’t, and when it wouldn’t she’d make you dig a hole and stand with her as she held a small funeral. She begged you to buy her a guitar for her thirteenth birthday, then taught herself to play. She lived at home when she started university. She studied art, and politics, and law. But it was travel . . . there was something about travel that pulled her away from her studies. At nineteen she went to Europe by herself for a year. She learned French. She lived in Paris for a while. One year turned into two. She learned Spanish. She backpacked her way across a dozen countries. She was gone almost three years, but you’d see her when you were in Europe promoting the books. Travel made her want to show the world to people. When she came home she became a travel consultant. She met Rick. She’s in love, Future Jerry. She’s happy. That’s Eva. Your daughter. And if the Big A is the balance for this amazing life, then so be it. It might take away your memories, but it cannot take away the fact that you have an amazing daughter. A daughter, who at this moment, has no idea her father is sick.

Rick, by the way, does something involving software. He writes code or designs websites or plays computer games all day long—something like that. You and Sandra are going to tell them next weekend, after the appointment with the counselor who is going to, in a friendly way, prepare you for what is to come. If she mentions the words adult diaper then you’re going to pry up that floorboard.

Good news—you are still sane. You are still you in every way. You lost your watch this morning and it’s not on the A Place for Everything shelf. But more good news—soon you’re not going to need a watch. Bad news—you fought with Sandra, and you hate that. You’ll make it up to her. You’ll buy her some flowers when you find your credit card. Oh yeah, that’s the other bad news. Your Visa is floating around the house somewhere, God knows where. Good news—at least it’ll be a low bill this month.

It’s the thought of a buffet breakfast that gets Jerry’s stomach grumbling. He sits on the edge of his bed and he rubs his eyes and stretches his legs and stretches his back and hears something click into place. There’s a copy of Vault on the bed. It’s a novel about a bank robbery that goes horribly wrong, the twist at the end is that it all actually went horribly right. It’s one of his earlier books, though he can’t remember reading from it last night, and he’s not sure what it’s even doing here. He usually travels light.

He heads into the shower, and when he comes out he switches on the TV. He leaves it on the first channel that comes on, which is the news, and he guesses the last person who stayed here must have been English because it’s on an English channel, or perhaps it’s just the default setting of the hotel. His stomach kicks into overdrive. One of the best things about traveling for writers festivals and book signings are the nice hotels and big breakfasts. Suddenly he’s very keen to see what this hotel has available. He can’t remember the details of his schedule, but it normally involves a train in the morning as they travel from one part of the country to the other. And Jerry loves being in Germany, even if he does only know a couple of phrases—Mein name ist Henry, because Henry is who they think he is. Henry Cutter. He looks around the hotel room for his watch but can’t find it. No matter. He’s a morning person and has never slept past ten o’clock in his life. It can’t be much later than ten o’clock now. If it were, his German editor, who he’s traveling with, would have pounded on his door already. But not knowing where his watch is is somewhat of a worry. He had his wallet stolen once while in Germany, so these days he tends to lock his wallet and passport in the safe—which is probably where his watch is too. Though, for the life of him, he can’t remember the pin code for the safe and, come to think of it, where is the safe? A quick look around the room doesn’t reveal one, which must mean he’s left everything down in reception.

The hotel is a little drab, he thinks, as he steps into the corridor. He rounds the corner where two old people are standing outside a door, each of them wearing robes, and as he passes one of them nods and calls him by name. Probably somebody he met in the bar last night, or somebody he signed a book for. The man just says Jerry, which means it must be somebody he liked enough to have given his real name to, but with just the one word he can’t tell how good the man’s English is. He can’t find the elevator, but he does find the dining room, which probably means he’s on the ground floor anyway. In the dining room is a mishmash of people, most of them elderly, some of them staring into the distance, some wearing pajamas, some with food all over their mouths, making him wonder exactly what kind of hotel this is. In fact one person is being spoon-fed by another. His editor isn’t here—he’s either still asleep or out having a cigarette. He finds a table and waits for one of the waitresses to come over—they normally do with coffee, and to check your room number—but nobody shows up, which is okay, because he can’t actually think what his room number is, and, come to think of it, he must have locked his key card in the room. He starts checking out the buffet selection, which is, he thinks, not what he was hoping for. He grabs some soft-boiled eggs, toast, and a bowl of cereal, and makes his way back to his table.