In July he returned to his post on Cermak, though he could hardly stand. In between button pushings he rested on the floor. The wax was fragrant still. One nice thing, he had done a good job on the floor. He felt as if he would die. Day after day it was the same routine. By midsummer he was feeling a little better, though he was unable to reestablish contact with the higher power. It was a bleak and godless universe.

In early August, Cotton had a hernia operation, and Clifford filled in for him. He wasn’t used to bright sunshine and the heat of summer. He sat in the bridge house with his binoculars. There had been three jumpers that month, there was a full moon, and he was told to be on the lookout for anyone gathering his nerve. The advice was ironic, since Clifford wanted to jump himself.

The river smelled of rotten carp. Clifford needed to hit the floor again, but a barge was coming downriver. He could lie down and get up in five minutes, but that would entail doing a sit-up to right himself. So he stood waiting on frail, toothpick legs. Since he quit the juice, and since he had been away from the gym, he’d lost so much muscle mass that he was just a gray bag of skin. He pushed the button, and as the cement barge chugged through the oily waters, Clifford spotted three dead dogs in its wake, bloated like sausage boiled to the point of bursting. They were medium-size dogs, one black, another gray, and the third—whew, the third!—a rotten blob of golden fur without shape or form. In the dogs Clifford saw dimensions of death no mortal was meant to see.

Meanwhile, horns blared on Cermak, punctuated by psychotic screams of murder. The sun shimmering off the chrome bumpers and trim was blinding. Drivers stepped out of their vehicles and shook their fists at Clifford, who stood at his post in the watchtower feeling nine inches tall. The air was saturated with misery; the room spun, the dying carp gasped. Clifford pushed the red button.

Diary of My Health