She would be under clover and the house would still be going strong. It was a waste of money keeping the yard so perfect. Putting on the vinyl siding—whew, she got jobbed on that one, but the salesman was so nice—man, that motherfucker poured out the charm. Oh well. It did look good. The roof needed work. Maybe next year. If there is a next year, huh? There wouldn’t be any tomorrow if she could implement the plan, but she was an ol’ scaredy-cat in regards to the plan.

Anyhow, there was the illusion of safety in keeping everything approximately the same. Better the old phone than something new. A brand-new, glossy, plastic featherweight phone would be a kind of formal acknowledgment, open up a two-lane highway from the pineal gland and pump out the death hormones. Dead wasn’t so bad but dying like this was a bitch. A real live sumbitch and then pfffttt! So much for this incarnation. “Dear God, what was I supposed to figure out forty-eight years in this wheelchair?” Forty years plus of staring at the ceiling in silence, looking out the window, staring at the wallpaper, listening to classical FM radio, and looking at her face in the bureau mirror—a pretty face once, now not so hot, not with all of the makeup in the world. Bust the damn mirror. Stare at the ceiling, stare at the floor. Drink gin and watch TV. She never got out much but she knew life all too well, this life this…shadow cave and from her life she could extrapolate. Nobody but nobody was happy. They might think so, but they were wrong. When you got right down to it, they would rue the day they were born. Ho, ho, ho. Don’t believe it? Wait and see. Ain’t nobody escaped dying. Yeah, everybody wants to go to heaven, but ain’t nobody wants to die.

Bobby was back in town. A blast from the past. Just out of prison and he lays a diamond necklace on her, a little trifling he picked up. He barely hits the streets and he’s stealing again. Came over that afternoon, hardly says hi, and suddenly he’s on the phone trying to buy her a new refrigerator ’cause the one she’s got is “too loud.” Whoever heard of such a thing? Too loud. That was pure Bobby. “But I spent a lot of money on that refrigerator. It’s not even a year old.”

“Yeah,” he says, “and it just goes to show ya, they’ve been making refrigerators for years and listen to it. How can you even think? It’s loud in jail, let me tell you, but that refrigerator is a killer. Good heavens, child, that machine is putting out Richter waves. What we gonna have to do here is go with the foreign made. Japanese.”

“What, a Panasonic refrigerator?”