The woman is singing. She uses a microphone, a thing she did not have to do in her younger days. Her voice is still fairly good, but nothing like what it was when she drew standing ovations at the Met. She is wearing a blue dress with long sleeves, to cover a certain upper-arm flabbiness. There is a small table beside her, bearing a pitcher of water and a glass. As she completes her number a wave of applause follows. She smiles, says "Thank you" twice, coughs, gropes (not obtrusively), locates the pitcher and glass, carefully pours herself a drink.

Let's call her Mary. I don't know that much about her yet, and the name has just occurred to me. I'm Roger Z, and I'm doing all of this on the spot, rather than in the standard smooth and clean fashion. This is because I want to watch it happen and find things out along the way.

So Mary is a character and this is a story, and I know that she is over the hill and fairly sick. I try to look through her eyes now and discover that I cannot. It occurs to me that she is probably blind and that the great hall in which she is singing is empty.

Why? And what is the matter with her eyes?

I believe that her eye condition is retrobulbar neuritis, from which she could probably recover in a few weeks, or even a few days. Except that she will likely be dead before then. This much seems certain to me here. I see now that it is only a side symptom of a more complex sclerotic condition which has worked her over pretty well during the past couple of years. Actually, she is lucky to be able still to sing as well as she can. I notice that she is leaning upon the table - as unobtrusively as possible - while she drinks.

All of this came quickly, along with the matter of the hall. Does she realize that she is singing to an empty house, that all of the audience noises are recorded? It is a put-on job and she is being conned by someone who loved her