Summary

In "July 3, 1918—The Garden District," Beatrice is lying awake at midnight, her thoughts racing along with the large ticking clock in her room, a gift from one of her late husband’s “uncles.” Giorgio is out late, and she does not know where he is. She muses on the four immortalities: poetic immortality, biological immortality, immortality of the soul, and immortality of the flesh. She hopes that by 1940 advances in science will have progressed enough that immortality of the flesh will be a possibility for. So, she does all she can to extend her life, from chewing each bite 32 times to taking a bath that claims to increase her lifespan every other day.

Beatrice is worried that her son Giorgio may have been responsible for the disappearance of Professor Fishman, but she also thinks that worry is silly. She gets up to make...