We agree to meet the next day at 4pm at the Mozart Café coffee shop in Evanston. When I arrive, Meiselman is seated at an ice-cream table along the back wall. He looks up as I enter. Do I imagine it, or does he look thinner, greyer? He is unshaven; if he is going for the Don Johnson Miami Vice look, it's not coming off. 

"Hi, Ed," he says, not getting up. He has a cup of coffee before him and a biscotti. He makes no offer to buy me a coffee, so I excuse myself to walk over to the counter and buy a coffee and biscotti for myself. 

When I return to the small table, I remark that biscotti is really nothing more than a $3 piece of mandel bread with a slight Italian accent. My small joke gets no response. 

"So what's your big news?" I ask. 

"I have cancer," he says, looking down into his coffee. "Pancreatic. A death sentence, I'm told."

I was expecting to hear that he had found a publisher. Or that he was planning to write a novel. Or had obtained another agent. I wasn't expecting to hear cancer. 

"Shitty luck," is all I can think to say. 

"Yeah," he replies. "It comes at a time when I was closing in on my chapter on Asian immigration to the West Coast. Anyhow I've agreed to undergo chemotherapy in the hope of lasting another eight or ten months, which I hope will give me time to finish my book."

"Is the chemo rough?"

"Very," he says.  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

What's next? What's he going to ask of me? Pancreatic cancer, I think, doesn't involve bone marrow transplant, thank God, or I'm sure he'd ask me for that. 

"I'm exhausted after my chemo sessions. I can get to St Francis Hospital here in Evanston on my own. But can I ask you to take me home after? I'm too zonked to call and wait for a cab."

"How often do you go?"

"Three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, two weeks on, one off. It's a lot to ask, I know."