Is it fair to impose consciousness on others? My husband and I intended to have children, but what we got was the diagnosis. I dream of Keiths or Stephanies or Daniels or Nicoles we might have made but did not. After my Keith is tucked in and comfortable, I place my palm upon his forehead. Keith was someone in particular once, before he was many and before he was nothing. At least I loved this particular Keith.

“I love you, Keith,” I say, and I inject him with a lethal amount of morphine. It was a cache of relief I had apportioned bit by bit for personal use, but, like my husband, like Keith, it was never really mine.

I whisper to my Keith with a mole, “Good night.”

the age of love

Walter Perkins was the night nurse on duty who discovered that certain male patients—excuse me, community convalescents—at the North Shore Nursing Home were getting their jollies by dialing up phone sex hotlines. We were both working the graveyard shifts that week and had bonded over the fact that we were the only two guys on the staff, and by making bets on which convalescents listed on the Critical Care board would expire during their sleep. I went to check on a call light, and when I came back his ear was clamped against the receiver in front reception, his dumb ass nearly falling out of the chair from laughing.

“Hey, babe,” I said. “What’s so funny?”

“You gotta listen to this,” he replied, putting the call on speakerphone.

MAN: What do you look like?

OPERATOR: I’m twenty-two years old, with green eyes, D-cup breasts, and long blond hair.

MAN: You sound like my granddaughter. She just entered college to learn how to restore paintings or some malarkey.

OPERATOR: That’s nice.

MAN: What kind of getup you got on?

OPERATOR: Oh, not much. Black silk nightgown, thigh-high leather boots, tiny thong.

MAN: Have you been a bad girl?

OPERATOR: So bad.

MAN: You know, when I was young, if we were naughty, what we got was a belt upside the bottom. Do you deserve to be punished?

OPERATOR: I’m getting wet just thinking about it.

MAN: You little tramp. I’m not going to hold back.

OPERATOR: I can’t wait, pops. Give it to me.

“Did he say ‘malarkey’?” I interrupted.

“Lower your voice,” he hissed. Then he added, “It’s his third call tonight. Mr. Olson.”

“Mr. Olson, I-have-a-pacemaker-and-no-prostate Mr. Olson?”

“The very same. He’s been calling adult lines and telling girls he wants to come on their faces. Real hard-core.”

“Since when do you listen to the phone conversations of the elderly, sicko?”

“I don’t know, since the week the satellite dish was down. It really takes the edge off.”

When my shift got out at six, it was and wasn’t dark. It was my favorite time of day: driving into the city from the suburbs in advance of dawn, watching joggers huffing and puffing white breath alongside Lake Shore Drive, the ice floes in Lake Michigan rising and falling as if breathing behind them, the Gold Coast cut out crisp and black before it turned gold. I idled down a few blocks looking for a parking spot, then walked to my basement apartment in Andersonville. Grimy light filtered through a single window with iron bars, but it was sufficient. The shower was running as I opened the door. Jill was home.