Against disease in Cameroon, we took Proquanil and Paludrine, Fansidar plus Chloroquine. Mario drank his tea without milk or sugar but with a little salt; the same for fruit juice. We ate no salads, nothing that might’ve been rinsed in bad water. Bilharzia or hepatitis happened from bathing in the rivers or lakes, but the sea was safe. The first two weeks, every day, we swallowed an antibiotic named Trimethoprimsulphamethoxazole.

Beat Like a Heart

AS I CROSSED THE Rhode Island–Massachusetts border, a string orchestra on the car radio made music for a green, graceful landscape and not what I saw in this horizontal stretch, which seemed optionless and menacing, with clouds that were dirty, industrial, shaped like attacking fish.

I felt forces at work on me, vise grips closing down with each revolution of the earth.

Thumbtacked to the front door of the Brookline place was a puffy manila envelope, sealed and—no postmark or stamp—hand delivered. Inside was a single sheet of paper, ripped from a grocery sack into the ragged profile of some forgotten country.

I stood in the bike clatter and yelp of the neighbor kids, in cold sunlight, and read the pencil writing.

Paige,

They got me this time, or HAD me. The poleeze.

Luckily I started wiggling & could not stop as in convulsions and I donut recommend them & even the cops didn’t want me like that—shoulda seen it—so I went from the pokey into the bug house or SOMEPLACE like a toilet but with doctors. It’s been tough to get to a phone. Withal, now am OUT and back in town, but I got to go away for three days or a week but I’ll meet you out at your angel mom’s inn on the shore & real soon? Is it Wednesday 2-day. So next Monday I’ll see u??? Please? I got the gall to suggest it all because you’re the only girl for me, girl

And I thought: You ought to know, Raf. You’ve tried most of the others.

I felt stupid crying in front of kids on bikes and my Irish neighbor, who was passing with his drugstore copy of the Globe.

“You-ah beck?” he asked.

“I’m back,” I said after a mighty inhale that gave me some control.

He touched his newspaper to his hat brim, a fine salute.

Inside was dusty, and the bed had been undone and done. An empty Johnnie Walker Black bottle lay among the pillows.

I had to sleep, and so flung off the used linen, flapped down new.

Sleep didn’t come. I fetched and lugged back to bed The Concise History of the World, and read from Mesopotamia to the Missouri Compromise before my eyes lowered to a close.

They opened after a few minutes, and my body jerked up and rolled out of the bed. I couldn’t sleep in it alone anymore.