Dolly and I have been properly introduced, and she’s sitting right beside me at the end of this long metal table, but clearly there’s no point in trying to have a conversation with her. She’s talking CP talk. I can’t understand at all.

So I sit here and watch my eyes get adjusted to the inside darkness. In deep shade under the eaves, with open screens all around, you’d expect it to be cool here, but instead it’s just a different kind of heat. Outside, the heat was hammered into my head; here it oozes into me from all sides. At the other end of the table I see another girl, sitting stiff and tense on the edge of a metal folding chair.

Dolly keeps on talking. She doesn’t seem to care whether I understand or not. A geyser of meaningless vocalization shoots from a contorted throat toward the beams overhead. I’m not really trying, but I start catching phrases. “The Tonight Show … Johnny Carson … at the earliest … you know what I mean … never before midnight … to bed with the chickens … hate to complain … my novella … PRETTY RISQUÉ.…” Saliva bubbles up, and her right arm shoots out with force that startles me.

“I work on it constantly … well, you know … pretty steamy in spots.…” Her body has slipped down, almost off the chair seat; it fights against straps that are supposed to bind her waist but instead mash into the flesh under her arms. The right knee punches into her rib cage, and the left foot is pinched between the aluminum footrests of the wheelchair. It looks painful. “But here lights out at ten P.M. … Tonight Show … Doc Severinsen.…” Tangled shorts and tank top barely cover the essentials. She should wear a bib to catch all the drool.

I try not to listen, try not to look. That rigid girl at the far end of the table is tapping one eyebrow with the tips of two fingers. Her thin face is pasty white, and her hair, as short as a boy’s.

“Pretty explicit.…”

I see a plump young woman on a stretcher, lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows like a sunbather. She is talking to a blind girl, who gently sways from side to side.

“It takes up a lot of my time … novella … risqué in places … for adult readers … MOST definitely.…”

A quadriplegic is driving his electric wheelchair with his mouth. Whirring and clicking.

“Not at all what I’m used to … Taps … And I can’t seem to fall asleep … one or two in the morning … Johnny Carson every night.…”

A boy camper and a good-looking boy counselor are talking in sign language. That eyebrow tapper across the table is still at it.