We all have one foot in the grave, the poet insisted.

Well, if that’s the case, the pretty girl drawled, I should get a pedicure every week instead of just a coupla weeks.

They looked at her slim, tanned feet in their strappy sandals. It was summer. The grass was green as jade and freshly cut.

Who had been the first to notice, they wondered later, that swelling on her instep? The swelling, tender to the touch, that, even she would later say, hadn’t been there yesterday.