What finally led to my self-quarantine was a chronic gnawing of the intestine, a steady and faithful worm of anxiety that questioned and weighed and twisted the most inoffensive words of my acquaintances. It considered my own comments, re-measured their trajectory, tested each phrase for every potential toxicity. No action or gesture was ever found completely innocent. But the worm always slept when I was speaking and came out when I was alone and quiet again. And every word I let fly, every idle snicker and coarse laugh, all the affected flopping of my ungainly body sprang forth once more, ungoverned, as my pulse raced and my indigestion flared and I failed to sleep.

I knew myself to be wild, essentially cut off from the eyes up. I was constantly terrified of the damage that I knew I was capable of. I was afraid of plate glass and the large windows of banks and department stores. I saw their vastness, their fragility, and my hand itched for a brick. On certain streets I forced myself to clasp my hands in front of me and hurry along, not looking. Among other people, I strove to maintain an aloofness to protect them, a perpetual mufti of language and demeanor to shield them from my harm. I would perform a smile or laugh, grow serious, force warmth or sympathy into my expression. All the while, inside me there was the restless creeping of the worm.

I was asleep when I heard a noise at the door. I turned over, and the rusty bedsprings made a racket. The door creaked open. They were angels grinning through the crack, they must have felt like that. They swooped in, stirring the dust with their wings. They smiled around, glowing with the power in their bellies. Silly as hell.

“Turnabout’s fair play, as they say!”

Sam giggled and bounced, Carlotta floated over to the foot of my bed. She hopped in and crawled up toward me, planted her hands on my belly and smiled down at me, right in the face, like a message from heaven.

“We’re going to be friends,” she said.

“I thought you already were,” I grunted.

Sam hopped onto the bed and tapped his head softly against the low slope of the ceiling. “She means her and you.”

Carlotta smiled some more and dug her fingers into my belly to tickle.

“Let go or I’ll piss on you.”

She fell back and laughed, grabbed Sam’s knees and pulled him down on top of her. They rolled and wrestled, kicking me, pushing me off the mattress. I got up, pulled a blanket around me, and went down the hall.

They were cuddled in my bed when I came back, peeping out from under my blankets and giggling. Sam’s work shoes poked out over the end of the bed. He sat up and pulled his cigarettes from his pocket.

“Do you always sleep with the light on?” she asked.