Stu thinks he is sick. The air around him feels flat, stifling. He is congested; he needs medicine. He can't find his pulse. Then Karen speaks and he hears her and he knows the synthetic muteness of the room is only due to all those windows, all the windows are sealed and the glass is thick, that thick kind of glass, aquariums are made from it. They are built this way, they were never meant to open.

And she says, "When my dad was dying he kept saying he could feel his blood moving around. He kept saying that. He said he could always feel it, but he'd just never noticed before. I don't know, I never feel anything."

Karen turns her head then and regards the photo and Stu follows her gaze. The seconds tick by and he begins to feel a funny tightness in his chest. He wishes she would say something. Stu and Karen and Karen's mother grin out at them, protected, innocent beneath the glass plate and the fluorescent glare of the hospital lights. A minute passes, then two. He can't look at the photo anymore so he looks down at his shoes, rearranges his feet so they are planted squarely within the borders of one ancient linoleum tile, waits some more. Finally Karen reaches for the photo and holds it out to him. Her hand is bony and white like some small starving bird.

"It's not okay to be normal here," she says flatly.

Ears burning, Stu takes the photo from her and shoves it as far down in his bag as he can. It's too late to apologize. The ugly red frame is undeniable proof there between them in the bag. He can see every corner of her room from his chair. Everything is too close. Everything is white and stale, even the air. He focuses on taking even breaths but starts to pant and quickly closes his mouth.

"I used to walk past a strip club called Donny's," Karen says after awhile. "You know when I lived in Vegas. All those people walking around looking for a good time, but me I wasn't looking for anything. I lived there so it was nothing to me. I might have been anywhere else. And I walked around at night because I slept all day or watched television and by midnight or one or two I had to get out of there, I had to walk around some even though everywhere else was just as bad, and I felt too exhausted to move all the time. And I would walk and walk and walk all night. And I walked past Donny's. It was the biggest place, all the way at the end of the strip. You could hear the music from far away, not the song but the beat of it. You could tell it was all red and sweaty and smoky inside and the goings-on were grotesque obviously. Anyway one night I decided to walk around the back of Donny's because I thought everyone goes into strip clubs but nobody ever thinks to go around the back. So I walked back there and there wasn't anything going on of course but you know what there were flying cockroaches." She sighs.

Stu continues to lean forward in his chair, every muscle tense and his heart beating rapidly, his body in a still grip and his eyes fixed intently on the wall. His attentive/listening expression is frozen on his face like a mask. If there is a meaning to her story he can't see it. He's just another one of the guilty. He glances surreptitiously at her. There is a plastic cup with nothing in it on the table by her bed and she is pushing it around in little circles. He struggles for something to say. He can't believe he brought that photo. He remembers the way he used to catalog her insecurities, storing them for later use and his own ego. His face feels damp at the bridge of his nose and his hairline but he might be imagining it. The cup has left a ring of water on the fake wood and Karen begins to trace little patterns in it with her finger: a star, a triangle, a heart. He makes a wish and words it carefully for whoever is listening so that there will be no mistakes. The speaker attached to the corner of the ceiling suddenly crackles and begins to drone carefully unobtrusive music into Karen's room and the corridors and the cafeteria and anyplace else on the ward you might happen to be. Stu nods his head but manages to stop himself from humming.

"I'm so sick of irony," Karen says.

Stu inadvertently coughs out a little laugh and something flutters in his gut when she opens her eyes and gives him a weak but probably genuine smile.

"Karen, I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he says abruptly. "With work and school-"

"I know." Karen shuts her eyes again. "I used to work too."

Stu wonders if he should say more. He decides with some difficulty to quit while he's ahead, if he is ahead now. He clears his throat, gearing up to cobble together some sort of halfway coherent goodbye and feels something land lightly on his arm. He looks down and it's her hand and her face magically looms an inch before his, all round gray eyes and then her lips kind of rub themselves against his for a second, very soft. Even as his mind prepares to fight he can feel it coming, rushing at him too fast for his overworked defenses, some glimmer of a thing grown familiar and then lost...Karen in the laundromat banging her heels against the drier pulls up her knee socks and tells him about her days in boarding school and the jungle; Karen unsnapping that fat blue barrette, her long red hair falls obediently to her waist like a magic trick; he peels off strips of sunburn from her back and holds them up for her to see; Karen's face is red and puffy from crying, she's lost something; he's looking for it everywhere, pulling back sofa cushions what was it that she lost she was crying it was something small and golden and she pulls back and lies down and turns away and makes herself a small white bundle under the stiff hospital sheets drawn up over her head now like a corpse.



An hour later Stu stands out on the street on a sunny day looking over a card table a street vendor has unfolded on the corner. It's loaded down with used books and home-made tapes and some old looking toys. He feels hyper as he inspects the tapes, he can't read the titles, his eyes flick back and forth along the brightly colored rows, he beats his hands against his thighs.

"See anything you like?"

Stu smiles at the guy, can't really speak, doesn't want to. Karen draws a wet heart before him.

"Are you looking for something? This one's good. You like it? You can't get this anymore."

Stu buys the tape and walks on, three dollars, it's all he has on him but he doesn't care. It might be a sign. It might be his favorite tape in the world. He's on his best behavior now; he whistles and slips through the crowd easily. It's an easy day, sometimes that happens. Two old men face one another, their bony asses parked on orange crates, an oversized checkerboard balanced on their knees. Four moves left, it will be hours. They have all the time in the world. He's off the street in a small park now, speeding along, just zipping right along under the whole of the sky, the children all whirring and spinning around like stupid little animals, sticky and scraped and overfed, helpless and doughy and growing out of their skins, he's all done growing and he strides by them without hesitation. Light from the sun crawls the ass-end of a billion miles to blind him, he is a dinosaur on this tiny plain and everything's too sweet.

Back on the street he spots a small restaurant on the corner and walks in. He gives the stoic girl behind the register a smile as he passes, feeling bold. He brushes past the approaching waiter and the three empty booths and the one booth occupied by an old man who has carefully placed his teeth on a dirty looking napkin and he's reached the back of the restaurant. There's nowhere to go but the restroom but he doesn't need to use the restroom. He might get a cup of coffee, coffee would be good, but he spent all his money on the tape. Beside the restroom, there is a pay phone and he finds some coins in his pocket and feeds them into the slot. He's holding the receiver now and the only person he can think of who will be home is his grandmother so he presses the buttons harder than he needs to, pleased that he can still recall the number.

The phone rings in his ear three, four times. It always takes her forever to answer. Stu taps his fingers against the wall and gazes out of the plate glass window that faces the street. It's still so sunny out but he spots a group of clouds clustering in the distance. He has to start watching the news again so he can know what the weather will be like. He watches a traffic light for awhile, counting the seconds between the changes of color.

"Grandma? It's me. It's Stuart. How are you? Oh, everything's great. I just wanted to say hello. I know, it's been awhile. I'm sorry. School and everything. Yes, fine. French, I think. Yes, I have always enjoyed foreign languages too. Grandma it's so good to talk to you. Yes, I miss you too. Sure that would be nice. It's too bad the old house is gone. Grandma do you remember the barbecues we used to have on the patio? Remember how Grandpa and Jack would argue about the coal? What? Oh, I had forgotten about that! That was a really long time ago. I used to carry it around everywhere. Grandma, do the Lintz' still have that ugly little white dog? Oh, I forgot they moved. Yes, I was always scared of that dog. I don't know why. Yes I guess I always was too sensitive."

The streetlight glows from red to green to gold and he can't get the words out fast enough.