Death on the Installment Plan

"It never occurred to me not to go; nor did it occur to me to tell Alice Lee Langman I was going---she came home from dentist to find I had packed and gone. I didn't say good-bye to anybody, just left; I'm the type by no means rare, who might by your closest friend, a buddy you talked to every day, yet if one day you neglected to make contact, if you failed to telephone me, then that would be it, we'd never speak again, for I would never telephone you. I've known lizard-bloods like that and never understood them, even though I was one myself, just left, yes: sailed at midnight, my heartbeat as raucous as the clanging gongs, the hoarsely hollering smokestacks. I remember watching Manhattan's midnight shine flicker and darken through shivering streams of confetti---lights I was not to see again for twelve years."

Answered Prayers by Truman Capote