I felt bad for him, I who cried bitter tears across the aisle from him over Hen Pierson, who was never coming back. Hen walked out with a clear mind. He knew without dialysis he had a week, maybe ten days.

One night when Super Huge Hudson was out sick, I was lying in my geri chair, half flaked, and I could hear Jerome crying again. I said, “Jerome, I know that normally you are a nice person—”

“No I’m not!” he shouted back. He leaped forward at me with such blinding speed I thought he would rip the tubes to the fistula loose. Instead he half toppled his machine, screaming, “If I could get away with it, I would kill you right now, today!”

Dixie looked over and said, “Put a lid on it, dorkhead. You aren’t supposed to talk. Jesus H.”

I spoke to Jerome in low confidential tones. “Down deep inside you are a nice person, Jerome. Down deep you are wonderful and I love you.”

None of what I said was true, but why hit someone when they are down? I was freezing cold. It felt like a Jack Frost crew of half-inch Eskimos had infiltrated my machine with sacks of dry ice over their shoulders. My blood sugar was so low that I fainted amid a room of fellow sufferers. Dixie said, “That’s the third time this month.”

The skies cleared and it got colder. I went back to the Goodwill store, where I saw a coat that wasn’t too bad. More importantly it was lined with sheepskin. Like some hand-me-down from Cinderella. I like a coat with loose sleeves. I wear long sleeves even in the summer to hide my fistula. For knock-around activities I wrap an Ace bandage around it.

Damn! Look at the lovely bride wearing a black ruffle petticoat with a large conspicuous fistula bulging out of her arm. Isn’t she lovely? Ha-ha.

I was at the bus stop and along comes Hannes Smit, another type 1 diabetic, and he’s back to drinking again. He’s on the list for his third kidney. He won’t get one; he’s sixty-two years old. He was some kind of part-time janitor.

“You live in a dangerous neighborhood,” he said. “Let me walk you home.”

“Naw, the bus is good.”

Hannes said the whole world would end before dawn, and being gay, could he fuck me since he never had sex with a woman before? Tell me what chick hasn’t heard that come-on a thousand times?

We were on a long desolate street inhabited by empty shops and failed restaurants. Down the road I watched the approach of the yellow Union Street bus, bumping and squealing along on a leaf-spring suspension and razor-thin drum brakes, its headlights imperceptible.