Under my either bony knee, train wheels clatter a more dignifying rhythm, I cradle and then get to name these dolls and dicks and dolldicks and dolls of dicks, these unlikeliest encapsulated friends. Sorry for being so slow to recognize you David, Hiram, Darrell, and James, sweet Tony Wu, Kit and Kirk, Paul, Ramon, Geoff, Bruce and Ansel and R.J., Stan and Roland, Bill, Gideon, John, the other Jody, Roger, Wayne, Jody, Paulo, Todd, Peter, Lance, Ernie, Marco, Jay, Jerry. And Robert, especially you, Robert, who—polite—aware how far your folks have come today, at what great cost and trouble, and with you being so kind and organized even if mostly dead, will see to it you die while they’re in town, to save them a second trip, and because that is so like you, so like our Robert … and James, and our Hugh, and Deke, and our Patrick, and our Nick, and our our …

As my fellow passengers, understandably, fearing contaminants, scared that these are used ones, which they are—as strangers press against one another, dissing me and mine, it’s odd to find I hold these slightly higher. I clutch with some new strength, suspecting whom I’ve got here. Upright before my chest, now bunched under my chin … A stemlike rectitude, a certain, simple, rustic Gaudí beauty, my bouquet.

Often symbols of hospitality.

“Friends.” I cough toward my trapped glowering audience. I need a new logic in this, my exhaustion. “See how many? And, boy, you lose ’em, you really know it. Thirty friends are a lot of friends!”

Am I saying this out loud, or thinking it too hard? Am I overburdening them? I do have quite an armful. I consider trying a nifty Muppet voice for each. —Instead, I’m praying for this goddamn train to stop. Pleeeease let all this stop. I draw nearer the door. Others let me. Such courtesy.

I’ll deposit these; I’ll take a cab. I’ll let his parents in. They will be waiting. They will be seated on six blue suitcases before his place’s flaking stoop, furious, checking their watches, faces pink, looking left, looking right. Irked, they are exactly that scared. Somebody’s Doberman in a spiked collar will be chained, snarling, to a fire hydrant nearby. Scruffy alien kids smoke herb upwind and these Iowans, miffed by their son’s illness and his friend’s insolence, scan every approaching face for my flushed apologetic grin. I’ll trot it toward them, puffing, “Sooo sorry. Had to rush uptown to drop some of Robert’s things. But, how good you’ve come. Flight okay? You’ll need an hour’s nap, I know.”