“Yeah. I decided I needed a new name. Mr. Sing is the teacher of the painting class. He’s a weird little guy in a black wool suit. Very clean ears. He looks like a doctor. He kept saying, ‘Oh my.’ Every time he looked at me, he said, ‘Oh my.’ It seems like an omen. I just took the nearest sounding name.”

“Omar Herschel Rosen?”

“No. I’ll never use that name again. I’ll think of the rest of the name and tell you later. Want to come to the laundromat? We can eat ice cream.”

So we read haiku in the Siesta Time 24-Hour Laundromat, sitting on the washers to keep warm. Jiggled during the rinse and kicked our feet rhythmically during the wash. At the end of the night, Omar paid me the money Lance Sterling had borrowed.

Carlotta

I’m not invulnerable. I could be softened even now. Boiling and steeping me in thick syrup would do it. Though there’s always the question of whether it would be worth anybody’s while. It hasn’t been for some time, I must admit. I am a dried fruit; my juices have evaporated, and I am tough and flexible. The old patterns of my life are wrinkled but they persist, and probably will until I fold them neatly around me in my grave, though that sounds too severe for any resting place of mine. One thing I can’t help noticing, which I am even able to laugh about, is that all the men who’ve been my friends would not take me to bed, no matter how insistent I was, while all the men who’ve been my lovers I couldn’t abide for long outside of bed. It’s a terrible thing to be a natural-born buddy, a pal, a sympathetic face peering over the top of a glass, there to be wounded or cheered by others. An abomination to be loved by the despicable, a mystery to be liked by the enchanting.

But I love myself now better than anyone else ever could. My foibles amuse me, my stupidities are endearing to me, the overriding innocence and zeal of my crudest actions make them lovable. I am a dear and a darling, and it is quite unfair that there is no one to appreciate the full scope of my loveliness. No mother could be more solicitous of my moods.

Of course I have always felt that anyone who was truly familiar with all the facets of my character must have found me lovable, but it’s only in this house and this time that I have come to love myself.