First time I cut flesh I cried. I was ordered to – not the crying. Next time not so bad. I'm not going to say it progressed and progressed to further callousness, no, there's a kind of plateau unless you are sick, it's the screams. The helpless yowling. You hate them for it after awhile and yet you produce more of it, almost like for revenge. That's the experience. But you forget all about the experience in a way. Go back to work in the states, say a teacher in middle school, you could even be reading Shelly at them. You keep a kid after class for something he said or did when you were trying to read the Shelly with feeling. You philosophize about civilization, about being a citizen, joining a church or a program or something. Satisfied, you send the kid home with a brave smile on your own face.
She hardly had any hair left but what she did she tried to keep up in the same old formal do. The phone was ringing. She didn't answer. She didn't know how to any more. Often she just couldn't find it.
Always abrupt answering the door. "Ah, you," she'd say, and then pull me inside by my shirtsleeve the way she did when I was a boy.
"What's happening?" she'd ask. "Anything I should know about? The streets look empty today. I guess because August. Even the basketball is stopped. Those kids down at the end. Sometimes they speak, sometimes not. I think it's they're shy, not that they don't like you. Kids that age. Want a beer?"
"I can't now," I tell her.
"Are you a policeman?"
I laugh. "Not any more."
"Go on, sit down."
She looks around the room for something, anything , it could be a bobby pin, TV remote, whatever. Something she's forgotten.
"You can get that beer yourself," she says. "I'm tired. You ever been this tired? So you have to move or you'll just fall asleep? I guess that's part of it."
"Well, they said …"
"Oh, cripes, 'they said'. Their friggin' lists. May as well tear a page out of the phone book."
"You could go back to the Clinic," I told her. "At least you have friends there."
She smiled. "'Friends, no doctor. Doctor, no friends.' Old native saying."
"Yeah, I remember."
"Truer now."
"Why do you stay here?"
"Do I have to explain the whole thing again? I can't stay in Ken's house. That wife of his at me day and night. We'd end up killing each other for sure. Why don't you move in with them?"
"I have my own place."
"That closet at Beata's? Listening to her banging all day? Make me insane."
"I don't care. I just slap on the headphones."
"Oh, you and that Bartoke character. No wonder you're on pills.
"I keep telling you, it's not depressing to me. It's intricate. He's not going after melody but relations."
"Oh, blow it out your asshole."
"Maybe I will."
This is how we talk. Usually for about an hour. I time it like a Social Worker. Then I leave, kissing her cracking forehead. She still doesn't stink. That always surprises me.
Then I scrounge around the neighborhood, opening dumpsters, peeking down drains with a pocket flashlight. I take my time. Stop at a bar and order a Calistoga to chase down whatever medication I'm on. Sometimes I get an eye from a hooker, male or female. I smile and point at my crotch, as if that explains it. They seem to accept that. If there's a street performer I usually move over to a table by the window and watch the act for awhile. That's when I make my call to Ken from the cell , so I'll have something to keep me interested while I'm talking to him. I always get his message. I know if I talk he'll pick up but I really don't want him to. What would we say to each other? And later, at the café: "You look great, man. Great. Must be that new stuff they're giving you."
"How's your wife?"
"What do you care? You hate my wife?"
"Everybody hates your wife."
"Not very many of 'em left to do the hating."
"So you're saying it's her own fucked up religion that did this? Not El Presidente's?
Funny. The old recruiting poster is still there by the cafe. I can't believe it. Must be worth something huge to war buffs but nobody takes it.
By now it's twelve or so. Lunch if I could eat. But even by one I'm not hungry. I stop at a drug store after awhile and get a can of Insure, which I have to force down. I almost hope I throw it up. Even water makes me gag now. Well, the water. What water? These are the last times promised by the Administration. Didn't turn out, though. Some glitch. We call it the After-rapture. Not pretty. Why us Cleanup guys make the big bucks.
Once or twice I have tried to find my old house. First I think it used to be in one place, then another. A lot of things are like that. They seem to have moved – not far, only an inch or two, maybe – but just far enough so that you can't find them. I just want to go to sleep, thinking about such things. Often I find myself coming awake at a bus stop, looking straight up into the face of the sun and wondering what it is.
Brent Powers says, "Nothing to add to my bio other than the fact that I am growing less important as I tour the homes of the stars."