“Just use me,” she whispers.

Simon feels faint, the stairs seem to tilt and fade, but they make it. She opens a door and Simon stumbles in.

The apartment is clean. The kitchen linoleum streak-free. The old wood floors waxed. There are no pictures on the Sheetrocked walls except for three medical posters. One with a human body with no skin, front and back, another with the organs exposed, and the last which shows just the skeleton. There is only one room, the kitchen hugs one corner and a door leads to the small bathroom. Irene guides Simon to the bed in the corner. She peels him off her shoulder and rolls him onto the bed. He blinks and turns his head as she walks to the bathroom. Without her touch he is suddenly disoriented, unmoored.

“Where are we?” he shouts.

“My place. Just my place. Take it easy.”

“No. No. Where in the city? What street?”

“Does it matter?”

“Where? What building?”

“We’re on Portland. Can’t you hear the freeway?”

“I can’t hear nothin.”

She returns from the bathroom with a glass of water and two pills. She hands them to Simon.

“What’s this?”

“Trust me. You’ll like it.”

He swallows them and lies back down. He closes his eyes and hears her humming. He opens them again and sees her shirt drop to the floor. She uncaps some skin lotion and rubs her arms until they glow.

“You’re goddamn pretty,” he says.

“No I’m not. You’re just hurt.”

He hears her slam a dresser drawer and she struggles into a new blouse.

“What’d you give me?” he slurs.

“Vicadin.”

“We’re in the Balmoral, aren’t we. It was built in the teens.”

“Go to sleep.”

“This was the edge of the milling district. You know that after World War One Minneapolis was the artificial limb capital of the world? They needed the best white pine, no knots or weird grain. They needed that and the technology.”

Irene smiles. “You gonna need one if you don’t heal up.” She puts her hand on his forehead.

“You smell like a flower,” says Simon dreamily. “Imagine that, these huge warehouses full of feet and hands, legs, full of them.”

“Go to sleep.”

He nods off to the sound of the door closing and locking.

When he wakes up it is dark. Irene is next to the bed taking off her clothes.

“What time is it?”

“Shhhh.”

“What time?”

“Late,” she says, whispering.

She slides into bed next to him. He jumps when he feels her skin next to his.

“I ain’t got no clothes on,” he says in surprise.

“I took them off. They stink.”

“Trucker clothes,” he says, grasping groggily for an explanation.

“Yours stink too?”

“Shhhh.”

“I don’t feel so good.”

“You’re sick. You got giardia.”

“What?”

“Giardia. Beaver fever. From bad water.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Shhhh.”