They hardly conversed in the car. The few sentences they exchanged concerned where to eat (Karen picked Liaison) and a place to park. As further evidence of divine caretaking they found a meterless space one short block from the bistro. Karen couldn’t walk far but she was able manage that distance.

They were seated immediately. Annie winced when she saw the table; they’d eaten at the bistro many times in the old days when they walked together, and this was the table they were often given. The sight of it reinforced some unpleasant memories. Karen had always been a trial in public. It seemed she was either arguing with Annie about a business practice, in which case she’d let her volume increase and salt her phrases with fuck and shit and other words that made neighboring diners cringe and parents cover their toddlers’ ears, or she was laughing in apparent pleasure at the conversation, which meant she loosed a loud witchy cackle across the room.

Karen took the banquette. Annie draped her purse strap over the back of the chair and sat facing the window to the street.

The waitress stopped by their table. She rolled the aperitif stamp onto the paper, but the women had already selected their food. Karen ordered iced tea and quiche. Annie disapproved but said nothing. It was better than the old days, when Karen would have gone for the eggs Benedict and finished all the potatoes too, but it wasn’t good enough. Annie asked for a glass of Sancerre with her salad Nicoise.

Karen had been on a collision course with disease for as long as Annie had known her. From the beginning she’d had the emptiest refrigerator Annie had ever encountered. The woman stocked nothing but bottled water in there, and her cupboards didn’t hold much more than jelly beans and some chocolate. She breakfasted at Starbucks, on drinks that had a bare acquaintance with coffee and pastries that contained more sugar and butter than grain, tended to go most of the day on handfuls of sweet snacks, dined late and without regard to nourishment, and kept crazy solitary hours. Annie wasn’t perfect on personal health herself, but she was light years beyond her companion. She exercised every day. She didn’t eat meat or poultry. She drank in moderation and got lots of water. She didn’t color her short silvery hair and she managed to look a decade younger than she was. But she still took drags on other people’s cigarettes, and she smoked almost as much pot as she used to do tobacco. She was addicted to the sensation of inhaling burning material, her peak flow was down around the level of untreated asthma, and still she didn’t quit. She knew she shouldn’t criticize others. But that didn’t stop her.

Karen had been so stubborn about her unhealthy habits that Annie had been certain there would be consequences. Not wanting to witness them is the main reason she’d backed away from the relationship. She was surprised that her old friend still had all of her limbs.

Karen had acquired her Type 2 diagnosis just three years earlier. Annie remembers a walk they took shortly afterward, when Karen declared that she’d sooner die than take insulin shots, and vowed to improve her diet. She did buy some yogurt and a few frozen meals around then.

But she degenerated rapidly. The oral meds didn’t control her sugar and she didn’t seek attention for a troublesome foot until it swelled too large for any of her shoes. She learned in the ER that she had broken it, but she hadn’t felt the pain signals. She had to go on insulin. She learned to inject herself, and by this lunch, of quiche and potatoes at Liaison, she was up to four shots a day. She was also just released from six weeks of wound care at the hospital and then a rehab facility, because she had developed a sore in that troublesome foot, ignored it till the infection had dug into bone, and now her walking-for-pleasure days were over. She was glad to be out of a chair, but she really couldn’t amble more than a block or two.

So Annie watched her old acquaintance make her way through egg pie and fried potatoes, and felt sorry. But she didn’t comment. She didn’t argue. And Karen was mostly slow and calm, eerily so. The only contentious moment was when she described her goddaughter’s recent diagnosis of Type 1. Isabella was 17. Karen reported that Isabella and her mother had just returned from a session in San Francisco where Isabella had an insulin pump implanted.

“They don’t implant pumps,” Annie stated.

“Yes they did.”

“No. Really. You wear the pump, and a tube from it is inserted into you. But you have to change the insertion site at least once a week.” Annie spoke from actual knowledge. Her best friend and former college roommate had developed Type 1 when they were both 35, and Annie had taken on the science aspect of Mary’s disease. That’s how work had always been allocated between them; Mary was the sociologist and Annie’s strength was math & science. So Annie had been a member of the ADA and a reader in the subject for almost 30 years. She knew how a pump works.

Karen reasserted the implant idea and started to raise her voice. But then she closed her eyes for a moment, shook her shoulders a little, and calmed herself. They changed the subject.

The new Karen did not seem to get angry or yell or use obscenities. She acted warmer and humbler and more appreciative. She laughed readily. Unfortunately the laugh was still a startling loud cackle.