I froze under Krystal’s blanket, the pea bag melting against my eye. I was bearing witness to my own salvation. Now here was a world, I thought. Now here is a world. The show was bright and silly, escapist pap, but the most important thing was that none of it had anything to do with me. The show didn’t know where I lived or how I lived, or anything I had seen or endured; the screen showed me something blissfully ignorant. Innocent. I hadn’t even been born when this episode was filmed. It was untouched by my existence and the world that hung around me, and it would forever remain that way. It was a Season 2 episode of Three’s Company.

By the end of the week at Krystal’s, I could get around without limping too much, and the diarrhea attacks and weird numbness in my face and hands had abated somewhat, and my neck only throbbed a little, and upon arriving home in my dark, chilly trailer I immediately ordered my first set of Three’s Company DVDs. I played them so much I worried I would ruin them, so after a few weeks I bought an extra set. After that I bought another DVD player, and another set of the DVDs. After that I bought a third player just in case the first two broke (you never know), and one more set of DVDs. I rotated them diligently, in order to avoid wearing any one set out. I cleared out half of the only closet in my home to make room for my collection. Each evening I stood back and looked at my horde. It was stacked neatly on milk carton shelves, the colors of each boxed season repeating pleasantly.

I felt pretty good, having a collection of something. When I wasn’t being careful I would let a memory of Geannie’s Beanie Babies slip through, and I’d wish she were there with me. I wanted her to look into my closet and see herself there.

Other things went on in the year after I found the show. One funeral for three people. Court dates and sentencing. By the time everything was said and done, I was past caring. I felt I had transcended my previous self, had shed the skin of the lone survivor of the robbed market, and when a stray reporter called for an update, to get a comment on the capture of the final man, I told him he had the wrong number.

Life kept grinding onward. I got a job at the big chain grocery store in town, but in the back stockroom, away from the public. First I had tried my luck at the deli counter for a while, but kept flinching at every little thing, and hesitating at the mouth of the cooler. To bring me out of one of these spells, the shift manager would invariably clap at me, saying “Chop-chop!” I hated her. She would hand me large sandwich orders, sandwiches I had made a hundred thousand times at the market, but the olives became eyes and the ketchup was blood, or maybe my brain didn’t consciously make those connections, actually, but it’s easier if I write it that way. Something would happen and my stomach turned to jelly and I’d go into slow motion, or I would stop moving completely, the knife in my hand hovering over the sandwich, and one time I put my hand over my nose and mouth (a no-no in the food-prep world) and ran to the sink to puke my guts out. Then I had to bleach the sink.