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Sugartown? she replied. Sure. She nodded, I love it here, I wish I’d grown up here. It’s where nice buildings go when they die. You’ll love it here, too, I can tell. She said this not because she was trying to convince me, but because it was gospel, just a song she knew and believed. Have you found a job? she asked.
I’m just about to start, I told her. I’m going to be changing bedsheets at an old-age home.
Is it good? she said.
I don’t know yet, I said.
I’d like to do something like that, she said. Help out. Now I’m tending bar, but I’m not going to do it for the rest of my life. It’s O.K., but I’m going to get out.
She was playing with a ring of keys, twisting them in and out of her fingers, humming very softly, not a song but sheer want of better work; she was quietly levitating just an inch or so above her seat. Do you want to conquer distant lands? Do you want to bring back spices, silk cloth, and silver? Do you want to be carried in through the gates of the city on an ivory chair? Someone dropped a glass in the kitchen and swore as it shattered. She took a sip from her soda and smiled. Soon as I pay my doctor, she said.
We rose to leave and she reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill; when I started to open my bag, she said, I’ve got this, let me, and she touched my wrist. No, come on, I said.—Just let me, she replied. So I put my money away; but as we were walking out the door I turned back for a moment and watched as the waitress put her hand over the banknote and transferred it into the pocket of her apron without looking at it.
Out in the street, Bonnie seemed to burn a little bit, like an ember in the sun. A black dog lay sleeping on the sidewalk across the street. On a passing car radio a singer was crooning, Have you seen my baby? It was a consummate moment, everything seemed to fit into one faultless composition: calm, proportionate, meaningful. Bonnie was standing beside me; and I knew at once that I wanted her there all the time. Call it love at first sight, or sudden beatitude, or just one of those things, I don’t care. She drove me home and we traded phone numbers; we stood on the sidewalk and said a thousand last things quickly, as if a whole new conversation was trying to fit itself into the time we had left. Twice she took one step toward her car; twice she gave up and took the distance back. At last she laughed and said, Good-bye. Call me. So it was that she became the first best friend I’d had since I was in high school. I watched her taillights glowing madly as she braked at the corner, like some strange little spaceship trying to force its way into the traffic on the main road.
At nine the following Monday morning I arrived at Eden View; by nine-thirty the administrator had started me on a tour, and for the next few hours she led me up and down the hallways. In all that time I never heard a sound louder than our heels on the floor: the residents roamed noiselessly through the place, shuffling in their bare feet, creeping along behind shiny steel walkers, wheeling inch by inch, drifting in and out of the rooms, through the foyers and down the halls, while the staff moved among them, more quickly but just as quietly. The atmosphere was at once exact and inane: each thing had its place, was named and counted and put away in a closet, each resident had a file in the office and a chart in the nurses’ station, and every event and activity was scheduled to the quarter hour. But none of it made any difference. I could see right away that the years had driven the old folks deeper and deeper into disorder; their lives were shaped like hourglasses, and as they neared the far end all the natural laws that had held them together were coming undone; right before my eyes, they were returning to the original chaos from which they’d fallen.
Here we have the Nutritional Counseling Office, said the administrator. In a wheelchair outside the door sat a woman so aged that she looked like a wormwood tree. Hello, Mrs. Chapman. The woman raised her eyes and opened her mouth, but she said nothing, and we walked on.
Cafeteria. Nurses’ station. Supply room. Staff lounge. In the residents’ recreation room we came upon a group of old men sitting around a round table playing cards, while a thin black man dressed all in yellow played aimlessly on an upright piano that sat a few feet away from the rear wall. Andre, snapped the administrator. Can you come here? He hit three more notes and left the rest of the song hanging. For a moment he stared at the air before his eyes, as if he were watching the music disappear; then he produced a final, silent flourish of his hands, quit his bench, and came across the room.
Yes, ma’am? he said.
This is Caroline Harrison, said the administrator.
He reached out and shook my hand; his fingers were so long that they extended to my wrist. Welcome, he said.
Caroline is our newest orderly. I’m giving her to you. Will you show her where to change and get her started?
He nodded seriously and watched her back as she passed out the door. For a full thirty seconds he waited, one hand held up to quiet me, while I wondered if he was going to be good to me. At last he smiled. Come on, then, he said, and led me from the room.
The sunlight on the windows was ancient and brittle, the hallway was dark, the air smelled of ammonia. This way, this way, said André, and he set off down the hall in the opposite direction from the administrator. Shhh, he said.—But as soon as we’d rounded the first corner, he began to prate. I’ve been here three years, he said. Almost four years. Every two weeks I get my paycheck and send half of it home, go down to Western Union. I’m still here, the big lady can yell at me, but I’m still here. She doesn’t like anyone but the doctors—ha!—but the doctors don’t like her. They have her for blood trouble, they yell at her and she goes in her room. I put my ear to the door and booo … booo, she’s crying. So I know. I know.—And he went on, and he never let up: for the next two hours I trailed him through the place and listened to his pitch: he gossiped, he joked and flirted, he ran down the nurses and mimicked the doctors. I caught no more than half of what he had to say—somewhere along the line it came out that he was from Kingston, and his accent was so strong that every other sentence was lost to me. He didn’t notice, he laughed and talked, he sang little verses of songs, he said, Right? Yes? Right? I nodded and laughed along with him, and followed him to the next station.
The end of the day came earlier than I expected. So this was twenty-seven, I thought. These are my people, so soon; a sleep of snow and ashes. I was exhausted, I had too much to remember, and I wanted so badly for my masquerade to be successful. I wondered. In the women’s bathroom I changed back into my street clothes, and the face I saw in the mirror wore a determined expression. An orderly—yes—in an old-age home—yes—in Sugartown, Texas. It was a new life: I didn’t know what to expect, I really didn’t know. I had no idea.
As I walked out the door, I found André waiting for me. A pair of men in dirty white uniforms passed between us with furtive looks on their faces. As soon as they were out of sight, André scowled. Custodians, he said, and clicked his tongue. Don’t bother with them. They have no names: they come to here, they sit around like stones, and as soon as they steal enough drugs, they leave.
I nodded. O.K., I said. Well, O.K. Good night, and thank you so much. I’ll see you tomorrow. Last words, I started to leave, but he suddenly grabbed my hand, tugging it slightly to bring me closer. He bent his head, and for a second I saw the smell of his skin. Yes, but now you listen, he said. Everyone here is very nice. Except for Billy, you keep your eyes out for him.
Who’s that? I asked. Billy?
This old man, a bad man, you take my advice and watch out for him.
I started to ask him more, but he shook his head; he had already warned me, and that was all he would say.
I came home and found a message from Bonnie. Caroline? she said. Hi, it’s Bonnie, we met last Friday? Hi, I just wanted to say hello. I know you started work today and so, good luck and all that. I have to work tonight too—nights all this week. But look, if you have time, why don’t you come and visit me? It’s this place called Uncle Carl’s, on Route 36. You go out past the zoo about a mile, and it’s on the right. O.K.? So come out some night. O.K. Bye.
As soon as I heard her voice I wanted to see her, but I didn’t have the time right away, I didn’t have the energy. We left messages for each other every few days: that was all I could manage, at the start. But I grew used to hearing her recorded voice on the phone, tentative and near, telling me, yes, she’d heard the last thing I’d said. She was waiting for me, she was thinking of me.
I went to work whenever I was scheduled to go, five days a week, eight hours a shift, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes at night. As soon as I got home again, no matter what time it was, I’d take a shower and fall asleep right away; there was nothing else I could do, and soon my days were divided so irregularly that I could hardly tell dawn from dusk, and the only forms of consciousness I could recognize were other people’s fear and my own sleep.
There was no place on earth so filled with terrified people as Eden View. It was a death row populated by the innocent, they had long since exhausted every appeal, all they had left was waiting. So they waited, some for judgment, some for extinction, some just to know what they were waiting for. The idleness made them feel as if the waiting itself was all they were ever going to experience; it was punishment by eternal apprehension, which grew until they couldn’t stand it any longer, and then grew some more. Some of them screamed and some of them shook until I thought their bones would come apart; some complained to children who had long since left them and some cried without shedding any tears. It didn’t help them at all. Death was coming for them in pieces, taking their hair, their teeth, their organs, their memories, leaving them dazed, fatless, and compliant. And they were wrinkled, they were filthy, they smelled strange, and they frightened me. I tried very hard to love them all, each for what each was losing, but I’d be lying if I said I always succeeded.
There was Judith, with ninety years out of her mother and a meantime spent God knows where, she crooned to gone ghosts in a language no one could understand; she had long ago stopped eating, she lived on cups of air and the mysterious syllables of her singular vernacular. Bart, a retired businessman, who had lost his entire family in a burning house and was always trying to explain how tired he was. A colonel named Farley, a quiet man in a black shirt and a bolo tie, who would go for days without doing much more than coughing and saying, Ah! now and again, releasing a little puff of being that drifted lazily up to the ceiling. Colonel, it’s time to go to sleep, please. For God’s sake.—Cough. Ah! Cough. All right. Please.
I was putting the Colonel to bed one night when an old man I hadn’t seen before came striding down the hall. He had enormous pale pink ears, from which tufts of reddish white hair grew, and that was all the hair he had; his nose was fleshy and hooked and his eyes were nearly black. He was wearing a dapper dark blue suit and a white shirt that was yellow with age, and he was strutting along without shoes or socks. When he was close by me, he stopped and held up his foot so that I could see the dust that had blackened its thick underside. See this? he said. See this, all this dirt? This is a slovenly place. Aren’t any of you working? Look at this.—I looked. I want my money back, he said. Give me my fucking money, or I’ll set the dogs on you.
I stared at him. What?
Who the fuck are you, anyway? he demanded.
I froze.
Come on, he said.
… Caroline, I said. I’m new … Where did you come from? Where is your room?
Ah! he said, and dismissed me with a wave of his long ivory fingers. Get out of my way. And before I could react he disappeared down around the corner, muttering something vicious, and that was how I met Billy.
The doctors believed that he was dying, and when he waved away their recommendations they told him so, softly but insistently. Still, they never said what was killing him, and in fact he was never at all weakened. He would spend hours in the rec room, banging a basketball against the wall and catching it again with one hand. The noise drove the doctors crazy and they would send orderlies to make him stop; instead, he would pick fistfights with them, and they would have to restrain him by pinning his arms behind his back while he struggled to free himself and called them all cocksuckers and cunts.
Billy had been at Eden View longer than anyone else; in fact, he’d outlasted all of the staff, and there was no one there who remembered when he’d arrived. Once I checked his file in the main office and found that he’d been admitted about twelve years earlier, but he used to insist, sometimes that he’d just arrived, and other times that he’d been there forever. In any case, he’d managed to get himself moved into the best of the residents’ rooms, a large single in a corner of the third floor, with a tiny balcony from which he could look out on the whole of Sugartown, the hills behind it and the sky above. On clear evenings he would sit outside with a penknife and carve pieces of wood into fantastic shapes, a guitar, a woman, a rosebush complete with delicate buds, which he would pass off on the staff, always warning them in a low voice that the things were hexed and might kill them if they weren’t careful. Later still, he would lock himself in his room, turn his desk light on, and take out a canvas bag. Inside of it there was a rolled-up piece of cloth, and inside of that there were dozens of delicate implements—they looked liked dentist’s tools—which he would use to meticulously engrave on something about the size of an envelope. No one ever saw what he was working on; if someone came to his door, he would hide it in his lap and hold it there until he was left alone again.
The orderlies said that he was the Devil’s servant and he was never going to die. André told me that flowers withered and turned brown when he breathed on them, that he could light a match just by looking at it, that he had wings on his back and wore his suits to cover them, that he hid bottles of codeine in his room and had pornographic magazines delivered by mail, that he kept five thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills rolled up in a sock in his dresser drawer. I’m telling you, Eden View ran with gossip like blood runs with sugar. But I began to watch old Billy, just out of curiosity; I couldn’t help myself, the rumors were an itch. I hung by his room, playing temptation and waiting to see what he would do. I made excuses to be there: I had his pills, I needed to change his sheets, I wanted to be sure his room was not too warm.
I tried to get him into one of the games that the other orderlies played with their favorites, brief rituals that meant nothing, fair questions and simple tests. Do you know what day today is?
Do I know what day today is? Of course I do. Today is the twenty-seventy-seventh of Pestember. I don’t care for a second what day it is.
What day of the week.
If it isn’t Sunday, I don’t know. I know it isn’t Sunday.
Is it Thursday?
I don’t know.
It’s Thursday, yeah.
Well, shit, he said in a tone of utter disgust at my dumbness. What difference does that make?
Never mind, I said brusquely, and tried to dismiss him with a blank expression. But my cheeks were hot; I was betrayed by my face and Billy noticed it right away. Caroline is angry, he said in a schoolyard singsong voice. I don’t give a shit. Caroline doesn’t think it’s fair that I should be so mean to her, when she’s trying to make nice with an old man. She wants to be all over me, like a mood. She wants to go through my pockets, she wants what I’ve got. And who knows? She may be right, maybe I can help her, maybe I can use her. But—he wagged a finger at me—is she smart enough? Brave enough? Confident enough? Oh, I know I’m not supposed to ask anything like that. Because you people … Take a look at these, he said, holding out a pair of small pale green pills in his palm. They give me these to sleep, so I’ll dream, so I won’t remember what they’ve said to me, so every day we can start all over again at the beginning. Take them, go on, try them, you’ll see.
Billy, these are yours.
I don’t want them, he said. I’m giving them to you. You take them.
I put them in the breast pocket of my uniform, where I found them again a few days later, dissolved into dust and crumbs that clung to my fingertips, and as I hurried to the bathroom to wash my hands I spoke under my breath to an imaginary inquiry. I don’t know what they are, I said. I don’t know where they came from.
One afternoon I went to invite him to a game of bingo in the cafeteria and found him sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring down at something that was lying in his lap. For a long moment he didn’t move, just watched the thing; then he sighed and lifted it before him and I saw a chrome pistol in his hands, staring steadily back at him like a snake. He turned it, brought it to his face, and peered through the chambers, and as I watched he blew forcefully into one of the holes and then checked it again. Then he reached down to the bed and began to load it from a pile of shiny brass shells, one by one by one. I stood speechless on the floor. Beautiful, he said when he was done, and I began to back out the door, but before I could get away he spoke up. Go on and tell. Go on and be a snitch, be another disappointment. It won’t help you sleep one bit.—Only then did he look up at me. Because you didn’t sleep last night, did you? I know. Poor little princess. You got out of bed at about two in the morning and went to sit at your kitchen table, buck naked, but you didn’t care. You made tea and read magazines, and wondered what your next man is going to look like.
He was exactly right about that, and at first I thought he’d been spying on me; but he couldn’t have been, my shades had been down against the streetlights, and anyway, he hadn’t left Eden View in years. It was just that he’d suddenly laid me open, and he was watching my thoughts right through my forehead. I felt him where he shouldn’t have been and I panicked; but in a moment I’d collected myself and concentrated on a hell I conceived for him. Can you hear me now? I thought. Just mind your own business. I turned on my heel, walked out of the room, and carefully shut his door behind me; but I never told a soul about the gun.
At last I had a free night and a little self-possession, and I took a bus out to visit Bonnie at her bar. I found her watching over an empty room; it took her a moment to recognize me. Caroline? she said. That’s you, right? She laughed with delight, and I was delighted to hear her. I’m so glad you made it, finally. No one’s coming out: they’re all at home with their families. Behind her the bottles stood, with their cool glass, caramel colors, and invocations of the country, each one topped by a plastic spout. Come on, keep me company. Let me make you one of those fancy drinks, I never get a chance to make them.
We started talking and we didn’t stop. We went on, the girl and I, gently and carelessly, drinking our drinks and mentioning this and that. This trip down to Padre Island, that neighbor’s barking dog in the backyard. I can’t sleep, said Bonnie. Or if I do, all I dream about is dogs. Does that ever happen to you? When you dream the same thing over and over again?
Only when I’m awake, I said, and she laughed before I did.
Another drink, a sound in my ears. Slowly the world was reducing to just we two, our faces, our small questions and confessions. I lied to my doctor, I said to her. I lied to him, I don’t even know why. He asked me if I’d ever been hospitalized before, and I said, Yes, once, for pneumonia. Which I never was. But I didn’t want him to think I was … inexperienced.
Of course not, said Bonnie. Because otherwise he wouldn’t respect you.
Was there another drink? Some time later I stood, stretched, and looked around the room. I’ll be right back, I said. The bathroom was cold, and I was quick. When I was finished I studied my face in the dark mirror under the dim blue junkie lights, my skin perfectly clear, smooth and glowing, my eyes hidden in shadows.
Do you have any brothers or sisters? asked Bonnie when I returned.
Not really, I said. I was the only baby born to my mother alive: she had one miscarriage before me, and another after, so there I was. She didn’t talk about it, but there I was.—I held my hands out on the table as if I were cupping an invisible infant.
She sipped and stared at the bartop. I have some stepbrothers somewhere, she said, but I never see them. My mother’s dead, and my father could be anywhere, you know, so I don’t know a soul except for you. Even though I’m sort of very social. Sociable. But just to a point. I don’t really know a single person, except for the people that I see in here, and I only see them here. And you. Does that make you uncomfortable?
I said, No, not at all. I was playing brave and everclear, but in fact the moment was painful; the debut of a friend was so great a moment that I could hardly stand to consider its consequences. No new lover with his hand on my naked ass could have gotten close to me so quickly.
She was embarrassed, she looked down and nodded. Looked up. Without flinching she rose from the table and went to make us each another drink, and I walked over to the jukebox, played five songs, and forgot right away what they were. We met at the table again. We were too good for anybody.—Boo! to the bosses, to the rude ones and the tattletales. I like that shirt, said Bonnie. It was loose and black. I like the buttons.
Later, she talked a little bit about mothers who ran their boys in gangs, and I answered her with a brief elegy on child brides, rooming-house whores, and after-hours abortionists. She told me a story that began with a description of a piece of one-hundred-year-old lace, and another that ended with the sentence, I had to change all the locks on my fucking doors, which cost me about two hundred dollars that I didn’t have. I told her a few things I had learned about landlords, which led me to a remark on the saleswomen at makeup counters, and another on table manners. I added some thoughts on the smell of burning hair. She made a point about skin, and the nerves beneath the skin, all the while gently stroking the inside of her wrist with the index finger of her other hand.
I was married, I said, out of nowhere.
Tell me, tell me.
His name was Roy. I met him in New York, he worked for the City. So what happened … I fell in love with him, and then I married him. I took his name.—I took his name. We lasted about a year.
How was it? she asked.
It was perfect until it ended, I said, and then it was a perfect tragedy. Bonnie pursed her lips and lowered her eyes, and I gave her a moment … I married him, O.K., and I was faithful to him, but I couldn’t stay married. I left, and when I left I didn’t take anything, but that didn’t make it any better. Well … that was long ago and far away …
A middle-aged man walked through the front door of the bar, looked around at the room, and found it deserted but for the two of us. We stared at him. He hesitated for a moment, and then said, Sorry, and left again.
I changed the subject, I didn’t really want to talk about New York. I have this fear of heights, I said. I’ve had it all my life. I get it when I’m on a balcony or near a high window, or when I’m looking down a stairwell from a few stories up. But it’s not that I’m afraid I’m going to fall, or someone’s going to push me. It’s that I’m afraid I’m going to jump. I start to hear this voice in my head, and the voice is me. Go on, I say to myself. Just go on, just jump.
Bonnie nodded. When I was younger, she said—and then she started laughing and couldn’t stop, and I laughed along with her without knowing what was funny. She began again. When I was younger, I used to fake not having orgasms.
Not having orgasms, I said.
Right. I would just stare at the ceiling, even when I was getting all ganged up inside, trying not to show it. It was a lot of work. But I didn’t want some guy to know he’d made me lose control, so I’d lie there going—she made a noise like a matron trying to suppress a cough. I had this one, poor little skinny boy, who thought it was his fault and went down on me for about an hour, and never even knew how many times I busted.—She exploded with laughter, so violently that she had to wipe her chin. Oh God, she said. Oh fucking God. Who told me I was nothing but a place to put things?
I went to the jukebox again, she went behind the bar to mix us another round. When she returned, she sat the glasses down on the table and immediately lifted one of them up again. What time is it? I asked.
She pointed to a clock behind the bar that read eleven-thirty. About eleven, she said, and sighed. I’m drunk, she went on. I’m dry and I’m drunk. She interlaced her fingers and turned her palms out so that her knuckles cracked loudly. I’m dry, and I’m drunk, she said again. So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to start paying more attention to things. I’m not going to go around in my little daze anymore. You’re so much smarter than me, more thoughtful, right? You always try to know what’s going on. I bet you don’t get caught at things the way I do.
I’m going to finish everything I start, I insisted. You have far more self-control than I do, I can tell, you don’t give up as easily. So I won’t write letters that I never send; I won’t put the book down on page ninety-two; I won’t leave food on my plate.
When we had finished pledging our improvements, we shook hands across the murky table. It’s a deal, said Bonnie. Done.
Early the next morning I was at Eden View; I was tired, my neck ached, my eyes itched. As I walked through the lobby I passed one of the janitors mopping down the floor, and the smell of the cleaning fluid got right to me and made me dizzy and irritated. DID YOU REMEMBER TO SMILE? said a discolored sign in the staff lounge; I couldn’t remember where I had left my work shoes. The fibers of my ugly yellow uniform were making fun of me. André came in and found me half-reclined on the couch. You look like you’ve been poisoned, he said, shaking his head with exaggerated disapproval. Come on, pretty Caroline. He handed me a Styrofoam cup: Have some coffee. If the big lady comes in, you’re going to get in trouble.
I wasn’t scared of the administrator, but I drank the coffee and when I was done I went on my rounds. The clocks in the hallways kept stopping and starting again, and the sun shining through the windows was sharp enough to slit my throat.
I went to the assignment board to see what test was waiting for me, and there it was: I was supposed to give Judith a bath. She was waiting in the patients’ lounge.—No, she wasn’t waiting, but she was there, sitting in her wheelchair with a single playing card clutched in her hand, while a few of the other residents played rummy with the remaining fifty-one cards at a table across the room. Do you want to take a bath? Do you want a bath? It’s time. She looked up at me expectantly as I rolled her out the door and down the hall. In the washroom that she shared with four other residents I pushed her to the edge of the tub. Upsy daisy, I said, and helped her step slowly into the water. With her nightgown removed, she was naked; her tiny back was pale and curved away from her protruding spine like the dorsum of an ancient dolphin. A bleached, dying dolphin. She leaned back, showing her flattened breasts, her belly, her loose and balding sex … to be so old, in a body that had become so exhausted and discouraged, to be so brittle and unable. If I asked her and she understood me, what would she say she had been, before she became this phenomenon? What history had brought her here? Was it something like mine? The idea made me wince, and to keep from dwelling on it I began to wash her gently. Under my hands she was even smaller than she looked, I stroked her shoulders, and she began to make an unconscious rhythmic sound, a moaning, a singing that she couldn’t hear herself; it was as if some siren living deep inside her were calling the dead to come get her. I lifted her arm to wash beneath it and her voice rose, her tune became more urgent, and all of a sudden it seemed to me that they were on their way: I could feel their footsteps on the floor outside: I could hear their heavy breathing. I didn’t want them to find me so I quickly finished cleaning her, dried her down and hastily dressed her, and then wheeled her to her room and left her alone.
I spent the next half an hour wandering along the halls, hating myself and looking for a place to hide, but there was nowhere safe. From behind the clouded window of the Therapy Room I heard the sound of a man laughing; in the cafeteria I saw two janitors sitting together at a table, hunched over a box of glass ampules filled with amber fluid that they were carefully dividing between them. At last I came to Billy’s room, and without thinking I knocked on his door.
Who’s that? he demanded, and I heard three or four footsteps and the sound of a drawer being shut.
Me. Can I come in?
No answer, but more noises. Then the door jerked open. What is it?
… I need to strip your bedding.
He hesitated for a moment, and then said, About fucking time, and stood aside. I crossed the room and began to pull the sheets from his mattress; the bed was cold. He stood restlessly in the corner, and when I turned back to look at him he just cocked his eyebrow and shifted his weight impatiently. At length his silence became too much for me. Billy? I said while I pulled his pillowcases from his pillows.
He made a noise.
Where did you come from?
Where did I come from? he asked back, and at once his temper was in gorgeous flower. I was born about ten thousand years ago! he said.
Shhh, I said, stepping backward.
My father was a big black bear! My mother was the fucking moon! I left home when I was three years old. I left home, and I never looked back!
Don’t shout, I said. Where did you go?
I went everywhere and I did everything.—Again his voice rose. I made a million dollars a hundred times! I promoted bum boxers who fell down, I hawked houses built on fault lines, I stole songs from their composers! I buried a thousand men, I betrayed a thousand women, I sold children into slavery! He paused. William Mahoney, they called me Dollar Bill. Except once when I captured a river and held it hostage for ransom; then they used my middle name, Misery. What the fuck do you want?
From the floor below came the sound of André on the piano playing Let’s Get Lost. What do I want?
What do you want from me? What do you want? I see you coming around here like I’m payday. I know you want something. What is it?
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to know him, to sit at his feet and study with him. I wanted him to tell me stories and dirty jokes, I wanted to get into everything with him, I thought maybe he was my escape; but I wasn’t going to confess all that. I was afraid he’d laugh at me. I don’t want anything, I said.
Don’t you lie to me, he said softly. You can lie to everyone else, but don’t you dare lie to me.
He thought he had me trapped and bare, but I’d learned the right response when I was just a little girl; it had been taught to me along with my earliest manners. Well, I said, just as softly. If you don’t already know what I want, you’re never going to find out.
He hesitated. Bitch! he said, but by then I was already slipping away, laughing to myself, because I knew it was a compliment, and it meant that I was still alive.
