“No, but thank you, dear one,” she said, her eyes closed to the pain. “It is too late for water, too late for everything. I am dying. Which is why I need you.”

“Do you have an estate you want to settle? Do you want me to write you up a will?”

“No, please. I have nothing but a few bangles and this house, which is for Thalassa. Poor little girl. She wasted her life caring for me.”

“Who is Thalassa?”

“She who brought you to my room.”

Ah, I thought, the poor little girl of seventy.

“Are you married, Victor?”

“No, ma’am.”

One of her closed eyes opened and focused on my face. “Thalassa, she available, and she comes with house. You like house?”

“It’s a very nice house.”

“Maybe you are interested? Maybe we can arrange things?”

“No, really, Mrs. Kalakos. I’m fine.”

“Yes of course. A man with such a good Greek face, you find someone with bigger house. So we are back to problem. I am dying.”

“So you said.”

“In my village, when death it walked into your house on tiptoes and tapped you on shoulder, they rang church bell so everyone would know. Your neighbors, your friends, family, they all came to gather around. It was tradition. A final time to laugh and cry, to hug, to settle scores, to wipe off curses” – she rubbed her lips with two fingers and spat through them – “a final time to say good-bye before the blessed journey. For my grandparents it was like that, and for my mother, too. I went over on boat to say good-bye when it was her time. It wasn’t choice, it was necessity. You understand?”

“I think so, ma’am.”

“So now the bell it is chiming for me. All I have left in my life is to say good-bye. But time, it is running fast, like wind.”

“I’m sure you have more time than you-”

Another wrenching, full-body cough silenced me like a shout. Her hands rose and shook in pain as her body contracted in on itself.