When Naton Leslie told me he had cancer he reclined and went elsewhere, carried away in a lurch of memory, departing, forgivably, from the coffee-spotted manuscript we were discussing that evening. It was mine, the manuscript, and I knew we would never return to it. I was disappointed, as in those days I knew of no greater affirmation than to hear Nate’s stiff-lipped voice speaking of the things I had written, and so even as his eyes moistened my thoughts lingered, under a growing weight of shame, on the attempt at literature between us.