The story opens with the unnamed narrator visiting her friend, who is also unnamed, in a hospital near Hollywood, California, where the friend is dying, presumably of cancer. The friend asks the narrator to "tell me things I won't mind forgetting." The things the narrator tells her friend are funny and light, items of trivia about the first tape recorder in America and the flying patterns of insects, things which may or may not be true. The friend is interested in hearing about the first chimp that was trained to talk until the narrator warns her that the outcome is sad, at which point the friend commands her to stop the story.

When the friend introduces the narrator to her nurse as "the Best Friend," the narrator is sufficiently attuned to language to note that her use of "the" here rather than "my" implies that in...