"I found my wife at the kitchen sink and told her the good news. She was more reserved in her enthusiasm than I had hoped. "You're going into the woods for weeks and weeks with a person you have barely seen for twenty-five years. Have you really thought this through?" (As if I have ever thought anything through.) "I thought you two ended up getting on each other's nerves in Europe." "No." This was not quite correct. "We started off on each other's nerves. We ended up despising each other. But that was a long time ago." She gave me a look of some dubiety. "You have nothing in common." "We have everything in common. We're forty-four years old. We'll talk about hemorrhoids and lower back pain and how we can't remember where we put anything, and the next night I'll say, 'Hey, did I tell you about my back problems?' and he'll say, 'No, I don't think so,' and we'll do it all over again. It'll be great." "It'll be hell." "Yeah, I know," I said."