It was July. I had gone swimming. I was in distress on the lake. The situation being what it was, I allowed myself to admit I had at times appreciated the summer days. I had enjoyed watching the flock of ducklings diminish one by one, picked off at the shoreline by foxes. I had listened to the muskrat snarling in the woodpile, to the mice choking on poison behind the walls. I had loved this world, awfully. All the same and in truth I behaved badly. I had appetites. I stalked through the house at night, seeking high and low the petrol can, seeking high and low the last act, thinking all the while, Would no one tumble over the banisters, saying to themselves in a last flash: All this is no suffering. For what were we to our loved ones if not obstacles in a lifelong struggle to pretend we were otherwise. I had always known what I wanted. I wanted catastrophe. I cannot have been the only one.