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Tell me your life story, Cherry.

Said a man with liquid black eyes on a summer night while he topped up my red wine and nudged a basket of garlic bread toward me across a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, and he said it like he really wanted to know.

You do not want to know my life story, at least not in the same way that he did, because you are not hopeful that I will take off my green crocheted dress later tonight and go to bed with you.

But you do want to understand how I came to be “the Death Lady.” I want to understand it myself.

I will therefore attempt to tell as accurate and concise a version of my life story as possible, and I will not try to be charming or funny, like I did that night in the Italian restaurant in Glebe.

( Don’t try to be funny, Cherry, the liquid-eyed man said, years later. That’s the way it goes sometimes. You no longer beguile.)

I promise I will circle back to the dinner party and the ringing of the doorbell.

My good friend Jill hated that phrase: circle back. She worked for a man who said it all the time: “Let’s circle back to that, Jill.” It made her grind her teeth. Sorry, Jill.

But the older you get, the less linear your memories, and the more everything seems to circle back to something else.