I grinned to see it twisting her. She wanted me to lie down and be still where she could see me. She could not abide an idle healthy body. I was an interloper on her domain, yet she would have fumed over and scorched any meal she felt required to serve to a non-worker. She did want me, though she couldn’t bear the necessary fact of my presence. She did not dare to quarrel with me.

We never mentioned the suicide. I moved back to town.

Still, the triviality of my death had impressed me. The horror I once had of my own death had disappeared. All I fear now is pain, my own and that of others. Being dead is not important at all. Being dead is the least important thing.

Siesta Time 24-Hour Laundromat

Something had to be done. It was one of those days. I wandered down to the basement of the house, where there was only one occupied room. Most of the space was waiting to be partitioned with cardboard into more rentable rooms. I found rags and brooms in a corner and took some upstairs.

I’d never cleaned the place or put up a picture. Not a poster or a cartoon. My four books were hidden in the cardboard box beneath the bed that also held my spare clothes. The two cups and two spoons took up a corner in the box, next to my toothbrush. There was a small gas ring with its miniature tank beside it and a one-pound coffee tin rustling on top of it. The sight of it used to annoy me, but I sat and slept with my face turned away from it. That’s all there was. Sometimes my boots and socks were strewn under the bed. Still, there was a crowded, dirty feel to the place.

With the first stroke of the broom under the bed I pulled out a used condom. It gave me a jolt. I went to the bathroom for a piece of tissue to pick it up with. It was dry, almost cracking between my fingers. I dumped it into the toilet and watched it flush. I went back to sweeping, coughing at the dust. There were hairpins in the corners.

I’d filled the coffee can with hot water and was standing on the chair to wipe at the skylight when Rennel poked his head in and groaned.

“I didn’t hear you coming,” I said.

His face was strange—he had a hurt, honest expression. “Aram and Carlotta are down there. They want to see you. I came to see if you were here first.”

I stepped off the chair. Water jumped out of the coffee can and ran down my wrists.

“Did you know their baby died?”

“Yes. How are they?”

His face twisted. “I don’t know, I don’t know! Can I bring them up?”