For reasons unknowable to myself, I was drawn to excavate the Sherman Alexie short story What You Pawn I Will Redeem first from the recesses of my mind and thence from the archives of the New Yorker. It remains as astonishing and moving as it was on first reading. I so want to read it aloud to Viv, but I shall refrain. I know I did at the time that it first appeared in the magazine. While I read to her now and again this was the hardest thing I have ever read aloud.