Sleeping Lions

This story is Escrisal 2, and if you’re not familiar with the phrase, click on the tag for this post and it will take you to the first entry that explains what (and why) it exists.

I broke the 300 word rule.  In fact, I broke it for #1.  So let’s call that one more of a suggestion than a guideline.  :)  Everything’s coming in around 380.

*   *   *

The hills were sleeping lions, tawny flanks baking in the California sun.  To Walter Groves, they felt more alive than his passengers.   His Greyhound was weaving through the torpor of high noon at fifty miles an hour, a hurtling gray pill filled with ten sleeping bodies.  In the oversized mirror hanging above his head Walter could watch them with their backs flattened to their seats and their heads nodding and swinging with the curves of the coastal highway.  They seemed more like ragdolls than human beings.  And meanwhile the hills were flashing their golden manes of wheat at every turn and dabbling rocky paws in the Pacific, as if only moments away from the hunt, as if the right scent or the right sound would muster them into wakefulness, and only Walter would see them stir. 

                The bus made an odd rumbling noise; Walter heard it as a growl that shook the cabin.  The highway before him was a long black line; a lion’s soot covered tail, ending in a tuft of willows.  He looked up and as startled to see eyes blinking in the hills.  They were emerald and slit like a cat’s.  A mouth opened beneath them—rows of long white teeth, like sun-bleached logs strung together with barbed wire.  A red carpet emerged from a lion’s yawning face and found no parable in nature.  Walter stood stricken by the vision, found his hands in the wheat, in the feline fur.  Where should they be?  Surely not stroking these soft golden stalks that sprouted from the sides of lions.  He heard the beast growl again, felt it through the seat of his pants.  It jogged loose urgent thoughts that had been growing in the slow corners of his brain.  

                He was not alone.  He was not on safari. He was Walter Groves.  He was not driving his bus.

                His head jerked up off his chest.  He looked up, saw a flashing field of blue and white.  In the mirror all his passengers were astronauts, floating up out of their seats.  A nickel passed before his eyes, moving strangely, right to left.  He followed its movement with his head and saw the cliffs, the rocky paws of lions.  They lunged parallel to the bus, past his window, into a wall of water.  That, and the hideous silence, tore a scream from his throat.  From the part of him that remained an observer came the thought that it was a primal, jungle sound.

Escrita de Salão

Brazil is well-known for being a global soccer factory.  One reason some of the best players in the world come from Brazil is related to a national obsession: Futbol de Salão.  The name of the game is translated, from Portuguese, as “Football in the Hall.”  The game is played with a smaller and less bouncy ball than normal soccer, and is played indoors, in rooms much smaller than your traditional grass pitch.  Because of the smaller dimensions and more frenetic pace, players touch the ball some six hundred percent more than in your standard soccer match, and soccer skills are developed much more quickly as a result. 

When I learned this, the first thing I thought was, “how do I apply this to writing?”  The answer is the following experiment.  I call it “Escrita de Salão.”  Writing in the Hall.  The name of this game is imitation of the Brazilian game, the art of condensed repetition.  The rules: each escrisal (the Brazilians similarly smoosh the name together) must tell a complete story.  This story must be under 300 words and have a distinct story arc.  The arc itself is somewhat loosely defined; though it might consist of the classic storytelling elements of beginning, conflict, climax, and resolution, the arc might eschew these in favor of a more narrowly focused story.  Dynamism.  Change.  Metamorphosis.  

As a writer who wants to tell epic stories spanning a wide variety of genres and concepts, I intuitively think this is nuts.  But it’s worth a go, if it worked for Brazilian soccer.  Maybe next week I’ll try a writing exercise inspired by the Netherlands.  If you watched the World Cup this year, you know what I mean.

*     *     *

Escrisal 1

On his way out he looked down at precisely the wrong moment and saw her wedding ring sitting on the kitchen table.  The reminder was a warm wet shock, an internal mechanism flopping loose and hanging obscenely.  He willed his hand to the doorknob and blinked back the sting.  In the car he fumbled to plug his cell phone into the car charger with cold fingers.  He watched the tiny battery in the corner of the screen fill up as the car idled and smoked, and the windshield slowly changed from frost to glass. On a whim he paged over to text messaging.  Stared at her name. 

There had been a trip to Tahoe, in the first years of their marriage, when they had seen a truck hit a deer at fifty miles an hour.  In that instant before the impact she had reached out and grabbed his hand, barked “Ron!” as if somehow he could pause the frame with the deer unharmed, and change the terrible course of physics.  Later, much later, with their second son hours away from being born, he’d called her from Minnesota and wept while she’d listened.  Her voice had been a too-taut violin string on the other end of the line.  “You’ll make it,” she’d said. 

Thinking of how she’d smiled at him, propped up in the hospital bed with their son in her arms, he let go of the breath he’d been holding and looked up through the sweating windshield into leafless branches.  Up past the tangle of gray limbs, up into the second story window where her orchid was blooming.  She’d cooed at the plant all winter long, right up until the end.  The flower had grown sickly beneath the antiseptic glare of the hospital fluorescents, but she’d reassured it during its long sojourn.  “Soon you’ll be right back in your spot,” she’d said, “right back in that East window.  Okay?  You’ll make it.”  Her frail hand had patted the leaves reassuringly. 

He glanced down at the phone, paused.  Her lovely name.  He opened the last message.  “We’ll make a greenthumb of you yet,” it read. 

The engine shuddered to a stop as he turned the key, slipped back out into the cold.  He would be late.  But at least he’d remembered to water the plants.

Morning Pages 1

My friend Wayne explained to me that ecologists can tell the health of a river by digging a meter-cubed sample out of the bank and counting all the critters, the invertebrates, that inhabit it.  If a river is stressed, there will be fewer creatures rummaging around in the silt. 

I read in a book that a good way to stimulate creativity is to just create, three full pages every morning.  The rule is no self-criticism.  Nothing edited, or changed.  Just what floats through the mind.  Faithful.

So this is my meter cubed, my sample.  Just don’t jump to too many conclusions about my mental health based on how many creatures are crawling through the silt.  Deal?

*   *   *

Now he sits, his hat on a little crooked.  Didn’t bother to wash his hair.  A gray hood over the hat.  His legs are twisted around the table leg, jeans running into beaten tennis shoes.  He hasn’t played tennis in two years.  The computer in front of him is small.  He doesn’t move as he types, just flicks his eyes up and down, from time to time and from face to screen, to take in the line of customers whom he observes, making little observations of his own.  Little stories.  Trying to force himself out of his own, crowd himself out so that he can see what’s really happening here.  All his life he has been convinced that there was more to the story.  He has been a fly on the wall, on the window.  Wandering along the glass of his life, a portal stiff and sterile, seeing colors and branches moved by the wind, but buzzing. Trapped. Resisting the newspaper.  Stupid fly—get out of the sill and fly—up, up!—and you won’t wander anymore.  Glass deserts.  How many fly corpses line the sill? 

John taught the bible.  He would have fit in a TV show about ancient rome.  He’s wearing a dark gray jacket, a mountain-ready conglomeration of fabric.  He’s found his purpose.  One hand holds the bible open towards the end.  The index.  It’s best to know the context of this term in other books, he is saying.  Gestures with his coffee-cup.  The young man in the red shirt opens his bible and points something out, eager.  The roman grins.  Be humble Caesar, he is thinking to himself, but don’t let this opportunity pass.  Let the wise sit at the gate and make their proclamations.  The young are so.  Poor Stacy.  She’s working, like a dog right now.  Not my fault she hates her job.  Doesn’t claim to have time for this.  For giving back.  I made my money, and I don’t need to make any more.  Don’t need to prove anything to anybody.  I’ve got Jesus now.  So, look at this passage.  What does it mean to you?  I’ll help.  Why don’t you let me?  She never lets me help.  Shoulders the world, and takes it all out on me on the sailboat.  Stresses me.  There’s a reason we bought the damn thing.  I imagined white wine and waves.  I should drive to the marina when the kids leave.  Nice day to scrape the hull.

Sam watches and he just doesn’t get it.  He has a headache.  He hates Starbucks.  He sits in the chair and fills it, just with his knees and elbows.  The core of him is somewhere else.  It’s thinking about the argument he had with his roommate.  He’s reminded how much he hates to read.  Swipe a hand beneath the old  ball cap.  God, my head.  Stop with the Word.  No more words.  Sam doesn’t want to get it.  Sam hates his name.  Mom named him Samuel because she was told she couldn’t have children.  Along came the miracle baby.  Miracle baby grew up and developed a love for Copenhagen.  Went adrift.  Sits in Starbucks and thinks about playing Call of Duty.  No room for anything else.  Sam is not permeable.  He does not permit osmosis.  He does not read his bible.  He had a conversion experience, once, but it was a pull-myself-up-by-the-bootstraps conversion, a do it yourself.  He worked on his Dad’s deck last summer, thought maybe this was what it was about—a day of splinters, nails, hot sun on your back.  Honest punishment.  Sitting with his Dad, swapping stories over a Pepsi.  Thought maybe he would move in, get the dirtbike running.  Dad, you could come to church with me.  But then the winter came, and Dad had to cancel, flew to New York.  He’ll be back in the spring.  Rain check.

Playing with Fire

Click or scroll to see more.  |  So, after some wise feedback from the writer’s guild–which I’ve named it in my own private universe, mind you–I’ve put down some of the story arc for Jahn and his band of weirdos, with the following excerpt as a result.  I realized today that I’ve written about 6000 words thus far.  I hadn’t realized I was grooving quite so long on this particular go.  But having found a point at which to begin that seems to satisfy some of the holes my fellow guildies pointed out to me, I find that I am cruising.  So. 

When I put down these excerpts, I sometimes get feedback that would benefit from a longer section.  That’s the curse of only reading a chunk out of context, I suppose.  I’ve tried to include a little more, though in order to truly get the flavor of what’s happening in this section, you’d need another five pages. 

Ah well.

*   *   *

He was dreaming again.

This time he was seated around a campfire, one of five cloaked figures who sat staring into the flames.  The light danced with particular vitality in the eyes of a young woman.  He noted, as he always did when he dreamed of her, how her eyes caught any sort of light and seemed to draw it down deep inside of her.  They were eyes filled with a silent sadness.  Her usually full lips were set in a line—a shame, he thought, since her smile was brighter than flame, brighter even than the red gold of her long hair when it caught the sun at midday, as it had in countless dreams before this.  It was a smile as rare and fleeting as the silence before morning light.  He missed it.

He watched her for a long moment before the figure next to him leaned forward to throw another log on the fire.

“Better not let her catch you staring,” the figure whispered.  His voice had the cold rasp of steel, a sound flexible but crisp, like the long thin sword that lay between them on the log.  The man turned his hooded head.  Only his nose, a beak of a nose, and a few stray wisps of long black hair caught the firelight.

“Jahn,” the man said, even more quietly, “What happened today?”

Don’t ask me, Jahn wanted to say.  I’m dreaming.  But he knew it would do no good. 

Another of the fire watchers pulled something out of a backpack—a small harp—and struck a few plaintive notes.  Everyone around the fire stirred as if waking from dreams of their own.  The beak-nosed man groaned and scuffled his toes in the dirt.

“Please not tonight, Tamper,” said the woman. 

“And why not?”  The man named Tamper threw his hood back.  He was an impish looking man, face slim and sprightly, his head fringed by a perpetually floating halo of thin white hair.  Jahn thought his frown looked petulant.  “This is a morose bunch, is what this is,” he said.

Next to him, the largest of the five figures raised a huge gloved hand to his shadowed face and rubbed at an invisible chin.  “Morose,” it said, slowly and in a voice sounding to Jahn like a subtle avalanche, “What does it mean, Tamper?”

The old man glared at the woman for a moment before answering.  “It means,” he said, “to have a brooding, ill humor.”  He turned a lofty eye towards the woman. 

The massive figure hummed to itself.  “Oh,” it said. 

The woman sighed and glanced at Jahn.  She caught his eyes for only a moment before looking back at Tamper.  He wished she would have let the look linger, would have seen his thoughts unraveled there in his eyes for her to see.  But the rules of the dream were explicit.  He could not speak, could not move—only watch as the dream unfolded around him. 

            Maybe if she looked long enough, she would see: we’ve never met except in dreams, but I love her.  The Weaver bless me, I don’t even know her name.  But I love her.  The thought caught up with him and he shook his head inwardly, marveling at himself.  She’s not even real.  How ridiculous am I?

But there had been many dreams.  He could recall easily how she had looked standing in the market square of Jubal town, the white shirt she wore clinging to her body as they all stood sweating in the heat of the desert city.  He remembered the keen edge of her voice slicing through the crowd to catch the attention of the man who sold them their myriad, felt the warmth of her hand as she handed him the tiny glass bottle of sand that she had purchased with her own silver.  For Tamper’s obscure rituals, she had said. 

In another dream, he recalled her singing.  Her voice wasn’t as fair as the young lady’s with the harp who played before them in the crowded inn, but it had a richness to it, a quality at once warm and sad.  Everything she did was tinged with that great sadness.  She wore it like a second skin.  But though he had spent many nights dreaming of her, her sorrow was as mysterious as her name.  She was the dark beneath the waves, and he was a battered bark riding high on the crest of a dream.

“Tonight is not the night for practice, old man,” she said.  Her eyes grew clouded.

Tamper clutched his harp to his chest.  “Careful your words,” he hissed, “You’ll warp the wood.”

“How about I cut the strings?” the beak-nosed man said, and allowed himself a small chuckle.  “In the name of all those whose purses have inexplicably suffered the same fate in your presence?”

Tamper gave him a look of both horror and disgust, and clutched the harp even tighter.  “When we first met, recall who tried to rob whom,” he said.  Then he drew himself up straight.  “Anyway, the harp is a noble instrument,” he said.  “I wouldn’t expect to find noble ears on a man whose favorite pastime is skewering mice.”

Like lightning, the sword that had laid still and silent between Jahn and the beak-nosed man sang as it was pulled from its sheath.  The man had gone from sitting to crouched on the balls of his feet in an instant, had pulled the sword so fast that it seemed as though it had always been there in his hand, reflecting the fire along its entire curved length.  The tip was pointed right at Tamper’s heart.

“Found one,” said the swordsman.

In the time it took for Jahn to take one long unsteady breath, a complete silence settled around the fire.  Then Tamper began to laugh, a high-pitched, wheezing sound.  He laughed so hard he had to gasp for breath. 

Then he shrugged, and threw the harp in the fire.

“The harp is a miserable instrument,” he said, his eyes wide and serious.

Kal chuckled and put his sword back in its sheath.  Tamper grinned and pretended to be relieved.  Even the woman, as absorbed as she was in her own thoughts, smiled briefly.  Only the huge man seated beside Tamper seemed concerned.  His hand still hung in the air where he had reached out, reflexively, to catch the harp before it arced into the fire.  Slowly he let it drop to his side, empty.  “But Tamper,” came the dull rumble from beneath the man’s hood, “I heard you.  You were talking to yourself, I heard what you said after you took that from the lady’s cabinet.  You’ve always wanted to learn to play the harp.”

The old man sighed and patted the huge fellow on his massive shoulder.  “I am a man of many fancies, Rul,” he said.  “But I fancy my life above all others.  It was only a toy, anyhow.  Not what you’d consider Tryia’s finest.  She’ll hardly miss it.”  He looked up at the man with the long thin blade.  “Oh do sit down, Kal.  You’re making us all nervous.”

Kal, Jahn thought, Shyrian for hawk.  The man certainly seemed to fit the part.  It was the first time he had heard the man’s name spoken aloud, in all his dreams.  And Rul?  Must be something Tamper made up.  I’ve never heard of a golem with a name.

I Buried Him Beneath the Ninth Fairway

Or, another writing prompt.  I liked the first title.

This past Monday we accumulated about the fire and told tall tales again.  I shared an excerpt from the story I am writing and was very grateful for the criticism that came back to me–so grateful, in fact, that I scrapped my entire draft and started anew.  I’m going to post the fruits of that labor here, but in the meantime I wanted to share a writing prompt.

As always, please feel free to submit your own, if you have the time and inclination.  We were given a 20 minute time limit this time.

The Prompt: 

Elise had never owned a cat, for obvious reasons; obvious to anyone who knew her, anyway.

*   *   *

Elise had never owned a cat, for obvious reasons; obvious to anyone who knew her, anyway.

It wasn’t that she was allergic, no—she had grown up in a house, or as her neighbors were fond of saying, a barn—whose doors were always open to the strays of the neighborhood, wayward dogs and cats, mice caught late at night in baking bowls and promptly given names, even the odd turtle that Micah brought home from the pond behind Mr. Lankershire’s house.  There had always been cats. 

No, Elise and cats had gotten along quite swimmingly for the majority of her life.  She had even saved one, once, a bold ginger tabby that had gotten stuck in an oak and mewled outside her apartment window until she went outside and climbed up herself to fetch it.  She had set the kitty down and even given him a little pep-talk to cheer up—it was their little secret. 

No, Elise had never owned a cat because of the episode with Lance Norquist, the one-time editor in chief of Glance Magazine, now moldering corpse tucked mostly forgotten under the ninth fairway at Bittershanks. 

They had met on the subway one evening, when Elise was still waiting tables at the 45^th Street Diner.  It had been one of those days, when she hadn’t bothered to count her tips the pile was so small, and her work-apron had almost caught on fire when she’d taken it off for a break and laid it, stupidly, on the hot stove.  In fact, it was the dark black spot on the front of her apron that had caught Lance’s eye while they were smashed together on the train.

“You have an accident?”  He had looked down at her with his smile, one tooth, a bottom inscisor, slightly crooked.  She had thought that the imperfection was one small proof of justice in an otherwise flawless face, the sort of face that came out of a magazine after it had been photo-shopped into impossibility.  But Lance was real.  Thank God for that crooked tooth. 

All day long she stared at faces and wondered what sort of mind lay behind them.  She was often surprised.  The old curmudgeon with the stormy eyes sweetly complimented her on her blouse.  The heavyset woman in the pink jacket and “I heart puppies” lapel pin swore at her when she brought the woman’s change in one dollar bills instead of a ten.  “Dammit!  You fishing for a tip, sweetheart?” the woman had said, and Elise had found herself staring at the woman’s jowels, how they swung much like a bulldog’s.  In fact, one was waiting for her on a leash outside.  And now this man, with the perfect tan and the angles of a greek statue—what was he like?  Did that one crooked tooth hint at a man whose appearance belied a playful, nonchalant attitude, a devil-may-care outlook on life in the Big Apple?  Or did it imply a certain mindlessness, an inattention to details?  What sort of work did he do?  She imagined him in a movie, imagined him lying with a woman with long blonde hair spread out around him like a fan of gold, and him naked to the waist, their legs twined beneath the sheet–

When she didn’t answer, only stared, Lance tried again.  “I didn’t mean to bother you.  You seem—a little distracted.  Is everything all right?”

Almost Stabbed, In Drag: The Story of Tukwila

So I’m at Southcenter mall, and I think I almost got stabbed.  No, I’m serious.

The youth group is here today, Saturday, when the throngs of Tukwila are at their peak and it’s easy to get lost in the crowd.  Unless, like me, you’re dressed in women’s clothing, are wearing lipstick and eye-liner, and a shaggy white wig.  That’s kind of the point, though.  We’re playing “Where’s Waldo,” though from the looks people are giving me, the name of the game might as well be “Where’s Weirdo.”  Which is cool, except I’m learning that you can’t go out in public dressed like a curiously shaped grandmother with a man’s jowls and expect not to walk away with a few stories.

The first of which occurred as I walked in the front door from the parking lot.  A man—I can only describe him as being thuggish—did a violent double take as I passed by.  Wanting to let him know that I was in on the joke, that I didn’t actually dress up like this as normal Saturday entertainment, I winked at him. 

Then I fled.

So lesson one: if you’re going to dress up like this, don’t wink at anyone, especially people who belong in the ”Gangsta” folder of your “People-in-the-World” filing cabinet.  They take life seriously.

I was found, rather easily, by the various groups of students who were out hunting for me.  Not able to bear the Dear God What is that Thing looks I was getting from every passerby, I deposited myself in front of a Starbucks and brought out my laptop.  I lowered my shaggy head over the keyboard and didn’t look up until I saw a crowd of Converse sneakers around me.  Then I signed their paper and bid them a fond hunt.

Things were going pretty well, after that.

After the next group found me, I made my next mistake. In the midst of a crowd, I yelled out, “Hey, can one of you get me a Starbucks?”  When I stop to think about it, I imagine that I also would have spun around and stared had a misshapen white-haired lady sitting on a bench next to me yelled out to a bunch of teenage girls in a rich baritone. 

One of the onlookers, a man with diamonds in his ears and a baggy white shirt, looked beneath my white locks and instantly became, well, aghast.  His mouth dropped open and he put his hands on his knees.  He asked me, “Dude, are you a dude?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you gay?”  I could see his mind trying desperately to find some category for me.  I can’t blame him for that, either, since most cross-dressing men at least dress up to look good.  I absolutely did not in any way resemble an attractive human.

“No,” I said.

“Well, how old are you?”  He was still bent over a little bit at the waist, like the angle was the only appropriate way in which to puzzle through a man who dresses up like an ugly grandmother and demands coffee from passing mall-rats. 

“Twenty-seven,” I said.

He jumped, put both hands on his chest like he’s been punched there, said “I’m twenty-seven!”  Like maybe the similarity of our ages meant that whatever had compelled me to dress like this, it was waiting right around the corner for him.  Or maybe he was just amazed that a man my age would play dress-up.

“How old are you,” he asked one of the teenage girls.

When she told him that they were all around 16, he looked back at me and shook his head.  Now I was a twenty-seven year old man dressing up like a hideous white-haired woman with lopsided breasts, harassing minors.

It was time for an explanation, which he accepted reluctantly.  Then he asked me if he could take my picture with his camera phone.  Then he called his buddy to tell him about it.  Then he asked me for my email address, so he could email me the picture of myself.  Like maybe he thought that I had no idea what I looked like.  I obliged.  Here it is.

Later, when the game was near finished and we had all begun to make our way back to Nordstroms to meet with the rest of the group, I saw Laz walking toward me.  Earlier we had met and exchanged stories about our adventures, and drawn even more strange looks from passersby, me with my full head of tangled white mane and him with his iron-gray beard and fisherman’s hat.  We must have looked like the strangest couple in Tukwila, come to the mall specifically to scare children.  Kind of like anti-Santas.  Anyway, when he approached me he had taken his beard off.

“We’re not allowed to dress like this,” he said, and he held up a piece of paper.  It had a numbered list on it.  He drew my attention to the eighth item.

“It is against Mall Policy to conceal your true identity,” it said, “or to disguise yourself so as to be unrecognizable.”

I smiled at him.  “Aw, what… someone say something to you?”

He nodded gravely.  “Yeah, and they told me,” he said, “they mean business.  They’ve had their eyes on a strange lady in a hideous white wig all night long.”

That would be me.

Later, when we returned to the group, I was sans glasses and wig.  The boys in our group gasped—my glasses had concealed the mascara and eye-liner I had meticulously applied under the tutelage of a youtube video an hour before the game.  The girls had a different reaction.

“Who did your makeup?”  They looked at my face with the practiced eyes of experts.

“I did,” I said.

I’m still trying to figure out if I should be proud of that.

A Writing Prompt

I don’t suppose you have the time to jam on this, but if you find yourself up at midnight like me with a creative impulse, maybe you can create a story out of this writing prompt, submitted to our writers’ group by Steve Matlock.  My entry follows after the break.  If the other writers are interested, I hope they’ll post their own.  We all got on the train at the same stop, but we ended up in very different places.  I love that.

Oh, did I mention there’s a time limit?  Ten minutes.  Go!

The prompt…

Eleven.  Eleven people.  What was so terrifying about eleven people?

*   *   *

Eleven.  Eleven people.  What was so terrifying about eleven people?

You have no idea.  Let’s break it down.

The math, okay?  The math was terrifying.  Ten million bullets, if one counted mutation.  Ten million forms of bacteria, viral time-bombs, parasitic opportunists.  Let’s see—ten million ways to die, multiplied by eleven.  Eleven people.  Eleven breeding grounds.  Probably sneezing all over their hands and touching door knobs and pushing…

Elevator buttons.

Yeah, I know.  I only had to be in there with them for thirty seconds.  What was so terrifying about eleven people?

One hundred and ten million tiny creatures swam through the air in that tiny box.

I was petrified.  So what did I do?

I mostly looked down at my white shoes and tried not to breathe the entire ride.  The woman in front of me reeked of cigarette smoke.  Can you get second-hand smoke from smelling it on someone’s clothes?  Maybe you can–I felt a tickle in my throat.  A headache blossomed between my temples. 

Three more floors to go.

And look at this guy.  Neck like a bull’s.  Leaning on the handrail, sweating all over it.  Did he run to the hospital, maybe jump on a bike to come visit his buddy?  Like a pig, this guy.  Greasy.  The shirt he was sweating through had a corporate logo on it.  Two diamonds connected by a lightning bolt.  I remembered that later, looked it up on google.  He worked for a consulting firm specializing in restaurants.  I made a mental note.  I haven’t eaten at a restaurant in this city since then. 

Two more floors.

I looked down at my watch.  I couldn’t read the time.  My glasses were fogging up in the jungle air.  Perfect: an incubator, a petri-dish metal box biohazard.  Why had the stair doors been locked?  I called the hospital afterwards, found out they don’t use them unless there’s an emergency.  Funny, I said, because I was kind of in a hurry.  You know, I consider it an emergency when a life is on the line.  She said the kind of emergency she was talking about was like a fire, or an earthquake.  A general sort of emergency.

One more floor.

There was a kid.  He was breathing really loud.

Ding.

Out into the cool air, the sweet air, the dirty-filthy-lung-coating air of LA.  Smog is better than Pestilence.  Back on my bike.  I reflected on the experience.  I decided I didn’t get paid enough to deliver to Hospitals.  Not without hazard pay.

Maybe I should have checked myself into the Emergency Room, had them look me over.  It counts, doesn’t it, when you run out of Purell?  Doesn’t matter if you use a whole bottle while you’re there, I mean I was liberal, but that was warranted.  Those places are infested. 

And eleven people?  Eleven chances to play bacterial roulette?

Terrifying.