The matchstick girl died in the intersection. I survived in the cemetery, pulling myself from one headstone to another. Flame spilling from the hood of the car. I saw a match tip cinder of black silhouette against burning yellow.

Little miss matchstick was belted into her driver’s seat, then disappeared into a vortex of flames. A Barbie doll on fire burned into my retinas.

Her car ran a red light and t-boned mine. The final tally was a pelvis fractured in three places, a ruptured spleen and a two-week hospital stay.

When I asked my surgeon about the scrotal hematoma, he told me I was lucky. He had the manner of someone who said the word often.

See a penny, pick a penny, good luck all day.

The name on the police report was Jane Doe.

The police said the driver was somewhere between the age of fifteen and twenty. The car was stolen three states away. There were no skid marks. She never engaged the brakes. They couldn’t give me a toxicology report, or anything else.

There was no true crime podcast to tell me who she was. The fodder for my mind was entirely my own, invented from a burning body in a Ford Fiesta.

Taylor Swift at top volume. A teenager looking at her phone. When she looked up she saw a shining star in the intersection. Her grandmother told her when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.

Unlucky life, stolen car, no skid marks.

Watch out for bad pennies.

People go on about miracles. They never tell you about the Johnnys and Janes. The offspring of Doe. How they’re everywhere and nowhere

My Honda was totaled.

The cemetery sent me a bill for the destroyed headstones.

Survival is asymmetrical. The dead require no additional care. For the living, trauma is about paperwork as much as it is about recovery.

Those who survive are never the protagonist once the story is chronicled.

Esteemed father

Beloved mother

Cherished son

Barbecued daughter

They implanted a port next to a fourteen-inch surgical incision in my abdomen. Lymph fluid, pus and blood the color of apple juice accumulated into a flask the size of an airpod case. The flask emptied with a satisfying click.

When you’re in the hospital your day is defined by nurses. I searched for matchstick faces in all the young, thin, pretty nurses. Cinder blondes and brunettes.

See a penny…

She lost the baby.

High school was about feelings, about being your authentic self. Nothing in the cheerful posters or in the guidance counselor’s office could help her with the engulfing waves of terror and joy.

She didn’t leave the bathroom for an hour, only stared at the bloody toilet and then flushed what was in the bowl away. She was missing geometry class.

Alone in the women’s room: laughter, crying, the Pythagorean theorem. Third period was hysteria and right angles.

There was only one thing to do, she had to go.

Her mother found the pregnancy test in the trash. When she told Les about the baby, their baby, he stopped talking to her.

Her parents told her she needed to make plans.

When everyone at school found out, the ones who said they cared turned out to be the ones who talked.

She wanted to run. First from the baby, then the shame and finally the wine-stained toilet bowl.

Les’s car was unlocked, the keys above the visor. He was in geometry class.

She put the key in the ignition.

The fluid in the flask was slowing. The port became aesthetically pleasing after a week. The tube inserted cleanly into my thigh. No redness, just creamy skin with a plastic tube coming directly out of it.

My fingers fondled it without thinking. A newly discovered appendage.

Darla became my regular nurse. Delicate tattoos on her forearm. Long blond hair, fine British features and a Kentucky accent.

Darla talked about clothes she bought and thought about returning. How she worked nights at a bar because her schedule gave her seven days off after seven on. The time off made her lonely. The guys who hit on her at the bar gave her the creeps.

I asked her to come visit on her days off. She shook her head no.

A woman with a clipboard visited. The only pant suit on a floor of scrubs. She asked about my care and slipped in costs. She told me I was lucky to have my insurance. She had the manner of someone who said the word and didn’t care.

Without insurance I was a liability.

Pick a penny…

Detroit was a mistake. Had it ever been anything else?

She threw clothes and the fentanyl in the car and headed east. She heard the owner yelling. Their words were drowned out by the muffler.

A gun was in her waistband. She fumbled with it. Trying to stash the gun in a center console that wasn’t there. Finally dropping it at her feet by the pedals and felt it slide with every turn.

Rodney set her up with the connection. She wasn’t sure where this fentanyl came from. She hadn’t known the courier. He was almost certainly from a cartel.

She found Rodney dead on a couch. The body was arranged. The horror had composition.

Life taught her there was no greater mirage than a smile at a distance. She knew junky logic, the hustle. Having to negotiate between the thing you needed and the things you had to give.

Detroit was just a glow on the horizon in her rearview mirror.

The plan had been Buffalo, a day’s drive away. Why traffic drugs with people in cars that you can ship through the mail? You could never do to a post office what the chainsaw did to Rodney.

She needed to get to Canada, but not by way of Buffalo. She’d go further north to cross the border in upstate New York.

The muzzle of the pistol tickled the back of her foot when she let up on the gas.

My last week in the hospital Darla wasn’t there. Nurses came and went along with the fluid in the flask. The satisfying click came less and less.

My surgeon wheeled me to the lobby to be sent home.

He told me again how lucky I’d been. I avert his gaze. He wore penny loafers with shiny Abraham Lincolns gleaming through the leather slots.

Good luck all day…

When she called I asked her to take me to the scene of the accident.

In daylight a place is just a place. The intersection where the accident happened was a wide horizon of farmland. Tire marks crossed where my car had been smashed sideways into the cemetery.

The headstones were still broken. The bill was still outstanding.

For a moment the matchstick girls collapsed in on each other, a shiny star, high school geometry, Detroit and the possible cinder blondes and brunettes.

All possibilities end. The black lines remembered me. The road remembered nothing of the girls.

I looked down and found my finger in the hole where the port once lived. Searching for her. Survival is asymmetrical. The dead are taken. The living reach for what’s been removed.

With a squint I saw a foot forget the brake. There will never be a documentary to tell me why.

Ashes to ashes. Doe to dust.

Darla waited in the car. She bought another outfit she needed to return. Her shift at the bar started at six.

1. Intake Form

Welcome

Thank you for seeking help. We want nothing more than to get you back on your feet. During your time with us, we are here to help you in every way. To get you to the right department, please fill out the following form.

Read the form and questions through entirely before answering.

Answer the questions honestly.

We will know if you are lying.

Let’s avoid having to disect your lies.

Please print clearly. Cursive may delay care.

1. What brand of cigarettes did they put out in your arm?

2. How long could you hold your breath when he held your head in the toilet bowl?

3. Which one of the scars she gave you bothers you the most?

4. What bothered you most about your mother’s death? Was it the dementia? Or how long it took her to die?

4a. Follow up question. How long did it take for you to get bored waiting for her to die? If so, do you remember the moment when you got impatient for her to pass away?

4.c. If you don’t mind me asking: was it something internal that triggered it? an old childhood resentment, or the way she ignored you as a child? Or was it something external, perhaps the way the home health aide chewed gum, or that one Meals on Wheels driver who rubbed you wrong?

5. Tell me, which one hurt you the most, was it their they or their them? Which pronouns were used to beat you? Did one pronoun hurt worse than the other? Did one act as a safe word? For instance: did you hide when they came home, or feel safe when them walked through the door?

5a. Follow up question. When they changed their pronouns to its / your, how scared were you on a scale of one to ten? Did you feel it was your fault?

6. What lie do you still believe in? Pick from one of the following:

You deserve to be loved

You always do you’re best.

You are essential.

Thank you for reading through the form. Now that you have read everything completely, please write your full name in the upper left hand corner of the form only.

Please hand the form to the intake nurse.

A trauma addiction specialist will be with you shortly.

2. Intake

You pull the tray open, remove the wrinkled paper, and smooth it against your thigh. The toner has smudged across How long did it take for you to get bored waiting for her to die?

The folder is heavier than it looks.

Manila. Creased at the corners.

It smells faintly of toner, stale coffee, and cleaning chemicals.

You’ve been here since 6:42 a.m.

The coffee machine is broken again.

The printer blinks low cyan.

Your badge didn’t scan on the first try.

You tell yourself you’re not the gate. Just the hinge. Your wrist clicks when you open the folder.

You flip the first page.

Welcome. Thank you for seeking help. There are no…

You didn’t write that line.

You inherited it.

You tell yourself it’s clinical. Clear. Efficient.

In the waiting room, pencils move before the form gives permission.

They know what happens to blank spaces.

They unburden themselves in the margins.

You pay close attention to the handwriting. That’s what matters. The handwriting.

Block letters mean control.
All capitals mean contempt.
Illegible means attention-seeking.
Tiny letters pushed into corners mean shame.

They called it training.

There are no wrong answers.

There are patterns.

1. What brand of cigarettes did they put out in your arm?

They wrote: Marlboro Lights. My uncle liked the gold band.

You circle the brand.

You underline uncle.

You try not to picture the gold band.

Your eyes drop to your empty ring finger.

You adjust your glasses.

2. How long could you hold your breath when he held your head in the toilet bowl?

They wrote: Long enough to think about the tiles. The blurry whiteness. I counted backwards from 20. I never made it to 1.

You stop counting your own breathing.

With a red pen you write recurrent physical abuse. RPC. 1

You translate honesty into billing codes.

3. Which one of the scars she gave you bothers you the most?

They wrote: All the ones you can’t see.

The handwriting changes. The letters shrink.

4a. How long did it take for you to get bored waiting for her to die?

They wrote:

Six days. I felt guilty on the seventh. I prayed on the eighth. I googled hospice timelines on the ninth.

You press your tongue against your teeth.

You write in the margin: complicated grief. CG.1

5. Which pronouns were used to beat you?

They wrote:

They. Always they. Like a committee.

You pause

Think about your HR training.

Your continuing education credits.

Your email signature, with the optional pronouns beneath your name.

You circle nothing.

In the margin you underline committee, then erase it.

6. What lie do you still believe in?

They did not pick from the list.

They wrote: Someone will eventually fill out a form about me and understand.

It’s original, but you have to reread the line because it won’t stay in your head.

You look at the clock.

8:14 a.m.

You have nine more intakes before lunch.

There is a line at the bottom:

Please write your full name in the upper left hand corner of the form only.

They wrote it neatly.

First name. Middle initial. Last name.

You check it against their insurance card.

You check it against the chart.

You check it against the wristband.

You confirm identity before you confirm suffering.

Patients think suffering is an identity.

When you walk to the waiting room, you see them before they see you.

Leg bouncing.
Scabs on freshly healed wounds.
Hands folded too tight.
Eyes fixed on a TV that isn’t on.

You say their name.

On the desk there is a laminated script:

Maintain a neutral tone.
Avoid validation language until assessment is complete.
Do not contradict a patient’s narrative.
Do not affirm delusion.

You hate the word patient.

They are pain with paperwork.

They stand like they’ve been called to the principal’s office. The place where all the consequences live.

You smile the smile you practiced in the mirror when you started this job.

“Hi. I’ll be your intake specialist today.”

You don’t tell them you will:

Reduce their history to checkboxes.
Translate their metaphors into manageable diagnoses.
Assign them to a specialist whose calendar is already full.
Send them home with worksheets.

Later you will:

Sit in front of your home for ten minutes before walking inside.
Drink yourself to sleep.
Also lie on a form.

The door is open.

“Follow me.”

They do.

You are very good at walking slightly ahead.

Gentlemen, open your hearts and your wallets. Give it up and welcome to the stage…

She extends her hand and says, “Cher Nova.”

The random name generator, the one that tells you your stripper name.

“Cher, pleased to meet you, Joe Smith.”

Cher looks like she wears Mormon underwear.

We’re at the conference to talk about actuarial tables.
This is our breakout session.

An attendant brings us coffee.
The cocktail napkin has lipstick-red lettering: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Cher goes first.

“Okay. First one. What’s the appropriate discount rate adjustment…

In a city of chances.
Here’s the name you’ll never forget.

…when evaluating a closed block of life annuities under escalating mortality assumptions?”

Cher looks at me, the coffee cup shaking in my hand.

“Well, that would depend on the severity and trajectory of the mortality escalation, and the interest rate environment.”

Every Cher needs a stage. Fellas, keep your eyes in your head and hands to yourself.

“Generally, actuaries adjust the discount rate to match interest rates and life expectancy.”

Cher tilts her head. “So in practice you’re saying?”

“In practice, it means recalibrating escalating mortality assumptions to match market conditions.”

“Good. We should get through this module quick.”

Accountants talk golf. Actuaries talk gardening.

Cher goes on about Shasta daisies over a martini.

The hotel bar runs on parents-aren’t-home rules. No one was looking.

I hadn’t changed out of my suit. Cher was wearing a short, low-cut dress. Her hair was down.

“The thing about daisies is you just let them grow. They don’t need anything.”

Cher stabbed a fat, blue-cheese-stuffed olive and chewed it with her mouth open.

“What do you do for fun?” She leaned back in her chair, tapping a pinky on the cocktail napkin.

“You know, Cher, I’m a simple song-and-dance man.”

“Well, let’s dance then.” She emptied her martini.

Cher was as tall as a snowdrift.
Her smile came from one side of her mouth.

We laughed about stripper names.
I told everyone we met my name was Buck Cameron.

On the ride back, the Uber smelled like alcohol and sweat.

Cher sat close. Our shoulders touched.

The driver kept his eyes on the road. He understood the arrangement.

With the alcohol and drugs in our system, the present value of future discomfort was negligible.

Cher put her head on my shoulder and wiped her palm where a tiny footprint of blood lingered, a remainder.

Her finger left a red smudge on my suit.

“Low probability, high severity, but off our balance sheet.”

Her body snuggled up to mine.

In the morning, I left her room and said, “Statistically, this disappears.” The door slammed.

The sun was too bright. There were two more modules today. Cher led the second.

With enough coffee and food, I came around. A screwdriver drank me sober.

Cher was in her Mormon disguise.

Her module was Infant Mortality Adjustment.

In front of the microphone, she looked like a mouse.

Gentlemen, keep your hands off your privates. This one rearranges priorities and walks away clean. Let’s give a big Sin City welcome for this little lady from the Beehive State.

“Actuaries isolate infant mortality into its own cohort, applying higher initial rates and accelerated discounting to account for volatility. Improvements in care can flatten the curve, but variance remains sensitive to socioeconomic inputs, access, and reporting lag.”

Boys, no way this little gem will flatten your curve. She’ll make your money and your morals disappear.

“Because exposure is brief but impact is permanent, infant mortality is often modeled as an externality. Once survival thresholds are crossed, the risk is removed from the system entirely.”

Fellas, short exposure, permanent outcome. Not everyone survives crossing her threshold. Give it up for the woman of your dreams.

“From a valuation standpoint, losses are front-loaded, fully realized, and non-recoverable. There is no tail. There is no adjustment period. The data either persists forward, or it doesn’t.”

Statistically, the remainder disappears.

I took the suit to the dry cleaner.
The red stain couldn’t be removed.

Kim Gordon gave you the jimmy eye in the line for the bathroom. She looked you up and down like a cocktail weenie. You knew it was her. The girl behind her said, Oh my god. You’re Kim Gordon, and Kim’s eyes went cross, like she knew she was Kim Gordon and wished people would stop pointing it out to her.

You were no longer Kim’s cocktail weenie. But, Bull in the Heather got stuck in your head. You didn’t care that she was annoyed. You wanted her to look at you again.

Kim Gordon’s wandering eyes. A guy lying bloody at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge bike path.

Life’s accidents.

Another man stood by his bike down the path. He wasn’t looking at the man on the ground. He was looking at you. He said something in Chinese and made a few hand gestures.

The man on the bike path was face down. Bloody. Too bloody. You knew it when you saw it. Unmistakably too much. You got off your bike to help, careful where you put your feet.

More Chinese. The man didn’t want to get close to the blood. You called 911.

The bike path was a one-two combination, exit and entrance. On the Manhattan side there was an S-shaped chicane. Ascending toward Brooklyn you took it slowly because of the incline and the fear of colliding with another rider. Descending into Manhattan was different. At twenty miles an hour, the chicane was where you felt your speed most clearly, the moment you finished crossing the bridge.

The man had been coming from Brooklyn. He crashed in the chicane. You’d made the trip so many times you could see him hit the wall, then the concrete.

You leaned down and touched him as gently as you could. His chest was moving. He was breathing.

Cyclists kept coming off the bridge, braking hard and nearly colliding with you. Within minutes there was a fog of bikes and bodies.

People didn’t want to call 911. They wanted to know if someone else had. This is how people say hello at the scene of an accident.

You asked if anyone wanted to help. One woman stepped forward. You told her to go back up the bridge and slow riders down. She nodded and went.

The person closest to the blood was in charge. You were the only one not asking what was happening.

The bloody man on the ground moaned. The first sound he made. You created a mantra.

What’s your name? What day is it? What bridge are you on?

When he didn’t answer, the mantra continued.

You’ve been in a bad accident. You’ve hit your head. Help is coming. Please don’t move.

You looked up at the crowd, in case anyone had something to add. The audience had their phones out, pointed at you.

No one said anything.

The guy started to move and moan, one after the other. Each time he moved, he forgot it hurt.

You asked him not to move, but he continued. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

He flipped over and tried to sit up, missed the side rail, and fell back. He hit the back of his head. The crowd gasped. Someone asked about 911 again. A fresh face.

You tried to catch his head. Your hands were completely covered in blood. You cradled him. An unfocused eyeball, exposed bone at the corner of a socket.

A woman said, Let me help. You were still holding the man’s head in your hands. The blood was sticky. You asked if she knew first aid. She asked if that was important. You said yes, it seemed kind of important right now. She wrinkled her nose and moved away.

You came to terms with the blood on your hands as long as it didn’t get on your clothes. One or the other was acceptable. Both were not. This was reasonable.

Sirens in the distance. The man sat up. The right side of his face looked wrong. Blood dripped on his clothes but not yours. The crowd gasped again. The third act. The monster revealed.

Everyone backed up. You stayed where you were. You started with the mantra again.

What’s your name? What day is it? What bridge are you on?

You took a breath.

Help is coming. Please don’t move.

The bloody man had sunglasses in his hand. He threw them and made a grunt. You gave him more space. The crowd was circular and wide around you.

Walkie talkies. The wheels of a gurney. Two EMTs cleared a path through the crowd. You stood up to tell them what happened. One of them pushed you back. We’ll take it from here. That’s all he said.

You and your bloody hands were part of the audience. People lowered their phones and began to leave. No one looked at you anymore, they were looking at the EMTs. The man on the ground struggled against them.

There were fewer and fewer people as they got him into the gurney. When they strapped him down it was just you and the man who spoke Chinese. He offered you a bottle of water, gesturing at your red-painted hands. Then he, too, jumped on his bike and was gone.

The woman came back down the bridge. She was pretty in a baby doll dress.

You were fumbling with the cap, you wanted to rinse your hands. She asked if she could help. You said, would you mind? Something like pleading.

The woman was smarter about blood. You got the cap off. She held the clean bottom of the bottle, tipping it so water dripped onto your hands. You rinsed them like a doctor before surgery.

You stared at each other. “That was crazy,” she said.

The blood didn’t fully come off. Rich red lines stayed in the creases.

All you could say was, “Are you ok?”

Her brow furrowed. “I’m fine. Are…you ok?”

The sticky red lines wouldn’t go away. She was looking at you with kind eyes. Was this how Kim Gordon looked at you?

You told her you had to go.

You never wanted to be cleaner in your life. You wanted to linger, but needed to go.

You watched her leave, but wished you said something more. There were red creases in your hands.

In the chicane, the bloodstain looked like strawberry jam.

A Manhattan-bound and Brooklyn bound rider nearly collided.

Look where you’re going, you fucking asshole. It was all you heard.

You mounted your bike and rode away.

Howie, in his magician’s fat suit, yelled at everyone to get in line.

Maurice was new to French service and white gloves. He tells you this before the main course is served. A line of tuxedos snakes out of the kitchen. You pull him into the closet to teach him the trick.

You point to the plate of salad spoons. You take two and show him.

The lower spoon rests at the base of the thumb.
The upper spoon lies parallel to it.
The index finger presses along the back of the upper spoon.
The middle finger stabilizes both handles from beneath.
The thumb provides counter-pressure.

Spoons open and close.

Presto.

Maurice watched. He raised his right hand. His middle finger was gone.

You say nothing and give him salad tongs instead.

He tells you, we need to talk about Howie and the catering business.

You fall back into the line of tuxedos.

Howie yelled them out of the kitchen. In the main room there were circular tables and guests. The bride and groom were looking at their phones.

The band played Every Little Thing She Does is Magic. Maurice used the tongs. The meat hit the plate with a thwap. The spoon delivered your meat without sounds.

You keep an eye on Maurice and the empty finger of the glove. He served the bride and groom with spoons in his left hand.

Maurice whispered one word. Howie yelled across the room.

The bride was gone. Maurice’s missing finger sat on her plate. He walked out the catering hall and Howie ran after him.

The band stopped playing. The bride’s seat was empty. Only the finger remained.

Howie returned. He leaned and murmured in the groom’s ear.

Everything went silent.

You return the spoons.

Voilà, the shift was over

.

The Damsel

She spoke about the Tofurkey as if it were a sacred object.

“Are you coming? We’re serving Tofurkey. One bite will make you a true believer. Please tell me you’re coming.” Paige applied the gentle pressure of a friend.

The vegan Thanksgiving sounded less like a meal than an initiation rite.

Kym held the Aldo flats to the mirror, then the Weitzman heels, both pressed against Zara’s black scoop-neck dress as if consulting an oracle.

Would the tofu have an opinion? Would it care?

The dress was too short and too long, depending on the angle. She added black stockings to nullify the issue.

She added the brightest red lipstick she owned, a single flash against all that black.

She agreed to go only because Sam would be there. Newly single.

Life had rescued him from the girl she had never liked.

No one liked her, except Sam.

He was the object of too much adoration.

The lipstick was for him.

It had never come up. If he was vegan, he didn’t evangelize.

They always had colds, though. At the restaurant, the vegans were the canaries in the virus coal mine, first to get sick, first to get it the worst.

A witty observation, though the collapsing schedule made it less funny.

In her mind, she pictured a sickly, phlegmy lot gathered around the Tofurkey.

She pushed the thought away and stepped into the heels.

Paige owned a junior brownstone in Park Slope with her husband, Gabe.

Kym had met her five years earlier, when they worked together at a fancy French restaurant.

Since then, Paige’s life had taken off like a rocket, while Kym’s had stayed stubbornly the same.

The house was their child. They spoiled it with gifts.

Every object came with a story.

The Lindsey Adelman chandelier. The Studio Job furniture.

Nothing had arrived from Crate & Barrel.

Everything had been hunted down, the press-tin toys, the coffee table that had once been the hood of a Mustang.

Trips to the Hudson Valley, each one ending with a new prize and a new backstory.

Gabe joked the house was a fussy eater.

Each offering fed it a little more, pushing Paige and Gabe farther out of reach.

If the house had spoken, it would have had a slow, deliberate voice, the voice of something curating its keepers as carefully as its objects.

It was a whole universe compared to the tiny one-bedroom Kym had kept in Prospect Heights for ten years.

The sun had gone down when she arrived at the stoop. Dinner was served at five. The sun refused to accommodate them.

She could see Paige in the front window.

She was dressed in the white Alexander McQueen dress she told Kym she had just purchased.

“Another piece of McQueen,” she had put it to her, like it was a cup of coffee.

One of her hands gestured at the wall, a champagne flute in the other.

Kym put one foot on the step, knowing this was one less holiday obligation she had to endure.

Another Thanksgiving enjoying the warmth of strangers living lives she could not attain.

She only needed to endure an hour and check Thanksgiving off the list.

The front room was toasty warm, the chandelier casting a soft gold that livened everyone’s faces.

“Hiiiiii…” Paige gasped, surprised, despite having confirmed three times that Kym would come.

“Everyone, this is Kym.”

She announced her to a Sam-less room.

Every fashion choice Kym had made, the low scoop neck, the heels, the loud lipstick, felt irrevocably wrong.

Paige took her arm, gliding her through introductions to people she only knew by reputation and dietary restriction

“This is Darryl and Laurel. They have a farm in North Adams. They make the most incredible gluten-free bread.” Paige rolled her eyes in delight at the thought of the milled nuts.

“Kym’s not a vegan,” Paige said to the couple matter-of-factly.

Darryl chuckled. “No one’s perfect.”

He wore the shirt of a farmer but had the hands of an accountant.

A flute of organic biodynamic prosecco was pressed into her hand.

There was no dampening Paige’s excitement with each introduction, each name spoken like another heirloom for the house.

Each introduction made Kym more of a bauble than a person.

She pulled at the neckline of her scoop-neck dress, fighting a losing battle with her cleavage, wanting the fabric to retreat, the neckline determined to advance.

She finished her rounds and found herself orphaned at an unremarkable hors d’oeuvres table, the most normal-looking thing in the house.

Nothing on it insisted it was meatless or invited a lecture.

She picked up a napkin and a corner of peach galette with fig jam.

She turned back to the room and locked eyes with Sam.

“Well, look at you. Just when I thought I was going to drown in a sea of foreign faces and small talk. Kym to the rescue.”

“Look at you, Clark Kent.” She slid her hand along his arm and felt cashmere. “What makes you think we aren’t going to make small talk? Also, it is your job to rescue me. I am the damsel here.”

She did what she could with the line, clasping her hands behind her back, letting the cleavage find its target, flashing her brightest smile. Letting the ruby lips do their job.

The new glasses gave shape to his face, though the farm-boy rectangle was still there.

He’d come from somewhere in the Midwest, a town whose name suggested too much open space, before landing in the city for a tech job.

He’d worked with Paige and Kym for two months before finding the job he wanted. They’d had a sweet flirtation.

He was a few years younger, but chemistry let her ignore the math.

She’d been dating the sous chef. One morning the sweaty tattooed arm draped over her was enough.

Sam was already gone.

The restaurant group stayed in touch, Sam kept moving.

Other women, a small condo and eventually the beautiful, yet unlikeable girl from Spain.

News of their breakup arrived first-hand in her feed. A spark of hope in the gulf between November and New Year.

He showed up tonight dressed like an adult, none of the performative non-conformity her exes favored. A white collared shirt, v-neck sweater, slacks. Sam smiled with one corner of his mouth.

“Where did you go, by the way? You ghosted all of us.”

He ran a hand through his hair.

His wrist was chained to an expensive watch.

“Well, I think you probably heard by now. The old group talks. I heard about you too.”

There was a pit in her stomach.

“You guys never liked her, did you?” He gave her a knowing smile.

“Well, I only met her twice, but—”

“It is okay. You are preaching to the converted.”

“What happened?”

“She cheated.” He gave a shrug of finality. A wince flashed across his face before he killed it.

“I’m back on the apps. It’s… not optimal. Any pro tips?”

“Uh, well. All my girlfriends are what we call locavores now.”

“What does that mean?”

“We tighten the radius to two miles on the apps and never swipe right on Queens.”

“That works?”

“I’ll never tell.” She shrugged and pursed her lips.

Even as she delivered the quip, a flutter of nerves slipped beneath her confident interior.

“Okay, that’s enough about my catastrophe.” Sam leaned against the wall, folding his arms.

“I heard you quit acting. Is that true?”

The pit in her stomach returned.

“I thought this was about small talk and rescuing a damsel.”

“Aw, come on. I haven’t seen you in two years. Let’s get to the good stuff. I showed you mine, show me yours.”

“Well, you know. Not exactly. I haven’t been auditioning. It was easier when we met. Now?”

She shrugged.

“More competition, fewer roles. Half the room has plastic surgery.”

Her arms found their way around her ribs. “I am not sure my commitment to my craft runs that deep.”

“I never thought of you as one of those skin-deep actresses, Kym.” His face held a trace of a smirk.

“It’s easy to stand on principle if you don’t have the money, Sam.” Her eyes rolled into pointed barbs.

“Ouch, my feelings. I am still part of the lumpen proletariat. Everyone seems to think tech is a cakewalk.”

“Really. Is that where little Ms. Spain took a siesta?”

“Oh God, no. She, uh, got an upgraded model.”

“Ah, Sam. I missed you. I am sorry you are going through this, but it’s good to have you back. Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.”

“Here is to liberation,” he said.

Their glasses clinked.

Gabe joined the conversation without warning. “Hiya, you two. I just got back from walking the dog. She ate a plate of deviled eggs. I will spare you the details. Have you tried the lentil walnut stuffed mini peppers? They are so good.” He raised his fists in the air as an exclamation of their goodness.

None of the questions required an answer.

“Sam, where have you been hiding?” Gabe had given Kym only the barest glance. Sam was the object of interest, as he inevitably was.

“You are at Google? Good for you. Senior programmer? That’s amazing.” Gabe put his hands on his hips and stood on his haunches, beaming a smile too similar to Kym’s.

“Well, I am a programmer. Don’t read too much into titles. I manage a small team. We do good work.

Also, it is a short walk to work.” Sam’s smile was more polite than Gabe’s.

“Oh, I heard about that. Congratulations on the condo.…”

Kym let her eyes trail off into the room full of strangers she had met and forgotten. Every one of them was engaged in communication that looked effortless. There were no lonely faces, and none of the eyes in those faces made any effort to catch her gaze.

From the hors d’oeuvres table, the bright living room framed itself against the dark shape of the parlor windows.

Beyond them, the night looked like a black hole, so complete was the small galaxy of contented faces feeding on each other’s warmth.

At gatherings like this, she felt like an alien. The sense of being watched made her feel cold as well.

Only here, she was the one who ate meat in a room full of native herbivores.

Sam’s voice pulled her back.

“Thanks for having me.

I brought a couple of nice bottles from the North Fork,” he said. “And a vegan maple walnut pecan pie.” The words jumbled out of his mouth.

“Though it looks like you already have a few.”

“Oh, no worries,” Gabe said, touching both their arms, they were in this together.

“Every year, the pie-to-person ratio ends up one to one.”

Pleased with himself, he smiled and drifted off into the crowd.

“You ghosted me, by the way. I texted you a few times.
Prior to the Spaniard, I might add.”

“Well, I tend not to respond to texts sent at one in the morning with the words you up?
It is part of locavore policy. First page of the handbook.”

His face dropped. “You know, I don’t remember it that way.”

“I am not surprised.” She parried and turned to face the room, having won a small battle.

“I seem to remember sending a few texts before ten p.m.”

“Well, if you did, I never got them.”

He threw up his hand in mock surrender.

“Do you know anyone here?” She saw him looking hard for a spot of familiarity.

They were both surveying the room. It had taken on a beautiful holiday murmur, one they stood perfectly on the periphery of.

“Did you go vegan too?” he asked. “I feel like if you had, Paige probably would have announced it to me.”

“Oh God, no. Carnivore through and through.
I have Slim Jims in my purse in case I have a meat emergency.”

She blushed and he laughed.

The Lamb

The clink of glasses came from the other room. The tenor of the ring announced the flutes were crystal.

“Everyone.”

Paige was standing in the center of the room.

On her head was a wreath of sage. The candles that adorned it were candy-apple gray.

Gabe walked slowly around her, lighting the candles with an old-fashioned wick. He was wearing a purple fez with a yellow tassel. An odd detail on anyone but Gabe.

The grin on his face was permanently attached.

Paige raised her glass, every flute in the room rose in unison.

Sam was a little quicker than Kym, arriving only a half beat to her full beat late.

“This is a room for the right people. The people who are family, who make little families and seek refuge from the ones they can no longer be with. Everyone in this room is the chosen family tonight.
You are here because you belong and were brought here.”

There were polite cheers from the crowd, applause meant for Paige as much as for themselves.

This was the right-looking room with the right-looking people.

The space pulled them together. They were on the periphery of the crowd, but now more a part of it.

Sam’s pinky touched hers. Their hands wrapped together.

The interlocked fingers created gravity.

She leaned into his shoulder and caught a whisper of cologne.

The fire from the candles on Paige’s head created long, wispy tongues. Fine tendrils of smoke rose from each flame and pooled slowly at the ceiling.

The smell of sage overpowered Sam’s cologne, pulling her out of him and into the room.

One thread of smoke drifted sideways toward Sam’s shoulder, the one she had not claimed.

The air shifted. The room breathed. The smoke peeled away from him and angled back toward Kym.

It rolled in the air like a lyric and passed beneath her nose.

Paige’s voice boomed. “Fire delivered us the first truth, stolen from Hephaestus, gifted to us by Prometheus.
Its smoke never lies.”

Kym watched the tendril drift away.

The room fell completely silent.

She reflexively reached to pull up the scoop neck, then froze when she saw the roomful of strangers staring at her.

Paige’s finger pointed directly at her.

Sam tightened his grip on her hand.

Gabe lifted his hand and removed his fez.

His head was freshly shaved.

On the clean skin, a purple arrow was painted as thick as her lipstick.

It pulsed, either with its own heartbeat or shared with Gabe’s.

Like everything else in the room, it was trained on Kym.

The smile disappeared from Gabe’s face.

She turned to Sam.

His eyes were locked on the room in front of them. His face was slack.

She tried to pull him in front of her.

He didn’t budge. She retreated behind him.

She wedged herself between Sam and the hors d’oeuvres table.

The shelves above the table had been lined with the hands of dolls.

Each one was severed at the wrist.

Once attached to a tiny arm, now just another piece of the room.

The fingers on one twitched. Then another. Then another.

The shelf trembled with tiny spasms.

One hand toppled off the shelf. Its small fingers caught the threads of the Persian carpet and inched slowly toward her.

“The flame shows us the one among the herd…” Paige’s voice was closer now.

She heard the faint squeak of Gabe’s Vivobarefoot sneakers moving toward her.

“Come out, little lamb.
Little lamb.”

Her hand was still latched to Sam’s wrist.

Gabe’s face appeared around Sam, the one white thing in a sea of curated grays and black.

“There you are, little lamb.”

He was sweating. Purple rivulets ran down his face.

He returned the fez to his head. A tiny slice of dread was tucked back under it.

“No need to be scared, little lamb.”

The people gathered behind him melded into a composite blur of designer brands,
A menagerie of Ulla Johnson dresses, APC Hommes jeans, Paul Smith sweaters, and Todd Snyder button-downs.

They were no longer people.

A single floating mass that breathed together.

Gabe merged into it.

The room shifted and contracted, joining with the people.

Everything was a block now.

Everything except Kym and Sam.

Gabe’s face was the only discernible shape.

His grin returned.

Sam still hadn’t moved.

Kym pulled at Sam.

His arm moved. His body did not.

He was unaffected by everything around him.

“You up?”

The old humiliation landed hard.

Gabe’s lips moved, but it was the voice of many who spoke.

“Kym, you are so lucky. This year’s little lamb
So lucky.”

His face began rising through the block. His eyes stayed fixed on her.

The higher he rose, the lower his eyes traveled.

His face settled into the crease of a Balenciaga sleeve.

“We have so much to be thankful for this year.
We’re thankful for you most of all.
Well, you and Sam.
Cat got his tongue and every other bit of him.
Sam, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Gabe’s head shifted ever so slightly.

The yellow tassel fell across a Canada Goose emblem on the nearest torso.

“Not a word. Only lambs can speak here.
Sam has nothing to say. You will have to do.”

The last line was a chorus. It deafened her.

Her body reacted first.

She crossed her arm over her chest, grabbing blindly for Sam.

“What do you want!”

“I already told you, little lamb.
The house is a picky eater.
Every year it names a lamb.
Nothing fancy with mint jelly.
Mint jelly is loaded with lysozyme, by the way.”

Gabe’s voice led the chorus; behind it she heard wailing, thin and distant.

“Its tastes are simple.
It hungers for someone it can read.
Even someone like you.
In a cheap dress. And cleavage that mistakes attention for taste.”

It was her own private shame, said out loud

She took off a Weitzman heel and threw it at the face.

The mass rippled and slowly absorbed it.

The collective chuckled out of sync.

“A fine offering but not the one the house wants.”

She began to tear at Sam’s arm. Yelling his name.

She only wanted to run.

“SAM! SAM!” She planted her stockinged foot against his leg and pushed, trying to pry herself loose.

Her balance went, her bare foot sliding on the polished floor. She pitched backward, collapsing onto the hors d’oeuvres table.

Cold peach galette, fig jam, and creamy dips smeared across her back.

Beneath the food she felt something else. Something that wasn’t wood. Something not part of the table at all.

She pressed her hand down to brace herself and her fingers sank.

The table wasn’t there anymore.

She was falling inward, down through the slick surface of the hors d’oeuvres, into the mass beneath it.

A soft accountant’s hand closed around her free wrist and tugged her deeper.

She felt herself being absorbed, her edges dissolving, losing a little more of herself with every inch she slipped.

She could see the whole house in its entirety now.

No, that wasn’t right. She could feel the house.

Those feelings produced what she now saw.

It was a living organism Born of a particular appetite.

A warmth spread through her chest.

The terror evaporated.

Replaced by a smell in which everything smelled exquisitely delicious.

Sam’s hand pulling her arm out of its socket, barely registered.

The house elicited her sympathy as she sank, inch by inch, feeling by feeling.

She felt Gabe’s we’re all in this together touch on her arm, as if the house were offering it back to her.

The thought filled her body like syrupy chocolate.

Her entire body felt decadent.

Her periphery was fading, replaced by an emotion.

One that said: You belonged here.

Not to the house, Gabe, Paige or even Sam.

She belonged to everything.

Inside everything, time would save her, preserve her and everyone.

This was her escape velocity, the doorway into the life she had always dreamed of.

The thing she’d been orbiting for years, finally pulling her in.

To be chosen.

To be kept.

This was salvation.

Then, abruptly, it stopped.

She was no longer ascending.

She felt architecture reconstituting itself.

Through the sticky wetness of a Fiesta ware plate full of spinach dip, the house pushed her away.

The edges of her body snapped back into place with the voices of every small cruelty she’d endured. Every relationship where her name had never been spoken with affection. Every time she’d been the rebound, never the beginning. Every careless voice that said she looked good “for your age.”

The house held up a mirror: the dress no longer fit the way it once had; she wore makeup not to stand out but to look “naturally” acceptable. The mirror whispered about a new line, an old scar, the blunt reality of the bathroom scale, the effort to maintain what was already falling apart.

It fed her back to herself in reverse

The villi and microvilli of the house’s intestines worked in reverse order.

All the beautiful smells were replaced with bile and bitter acid.

The house had rejected her. It was throwing her up.

She slipped onto the floor.

Her hands slid uselessly through the spinach dip, its slickness giving her nothing to push against.

Yanking Sam’s arm every time she fell down again.

Sam’s wrist twitched and then his hand moved.

The house began to shudder. Then began to shake.

Thirty assimilated bodies rippled like a bowl of viscous fluid and began to fall apart.

Impacts on the floor. A series of wet, heavy impacts.

Gabe’s head slid free from the Balenciaga sleeve and tumbled across the boards.

Unmade body parts followed: a delicate foot lacquered in deep emerald polish, a sculpted bicep etched with Nordic tattoos; each piece slithering past the head, searching for the right designer label that would make it whole again.

Sam’s hand closed around her arm and hauled her upright, turning her toward the wall, shielding her.

She looked up through the warped reflection in his glasses and saw the room reassembling itself, heard the suction, the cracking, the wet pops as joints and limbs sought out their original owners.

Wherever Sam had been, he had missed the scene.

He walked into the horror movie at the end.

His whole body jolted.

“What the fuck is going on?” He pulled her tighter in. She felt the force of the words pass through his chest.

Gabe’s head rejoined its neck. A thick gelatinous snail trail ran diagonally up his vintage Pierre Cardin sweater.

His fez was gone, a face smeared and dripping with purple.

His voice was his own now. Resonated only by his own shock. “We chose wrong.”

The words arrived as if such a thing was never possible.

He said to the room of people whose bodies were slowly receding from every disturbing angle.

Smoothing themselves back into people again.

The eyes which had once been trained on Kym fell to Paige..

“You know it only wants grass-fed meat.” The words tumbled out in normal domestic annoyance

Kym thought of the plate of deviled eggs.

Gabe’s eyes were trained on Paige’s.

Her wide eyes glimmering with guilt, caught between a lie and its consequence

The white McQueen dress covered in smears of viscera.

“Gabe…” It was all she had

“Jesus, how many times have we been through this!”

Every finger in the room pointed at Paige.

The house’s delicate geometry unfolded again.

Its tentacles came close enough and with a sharp jerk pulled herself and Sam to the front door.

No one took notice of them. Every warm body they rubbed up against felt like steel.

They ducked under outstretched arms that would have clotheslined them.

As their hands touched the doorknob the human melange formed again. In the vestibule, pops, the sound of air escaping and suction as the ritual began itself again.

They ran down the stoop. Kym could feel the cold masonry through her stockinged feet.

They stopped at the bottom of the stairs, the same way she had when she arrived.

They could both feel the house’s disinterest, it was completely separated from them.

The parlor windows were black from the outside. The black holes were inside now.

Like all digestion, what happened behind the windows was invisible to them.

Kym moved from foot to foot. Warming one while the other froze.

Sam pulled out his phone and ordered an Uber.

He pulled her into his arms so she could stand on his shoes, soft Ferragamo Oxfords polished to a quiet shine, until the car arrived.

She could do nothing but put her arms around him and breathe into cashmere. The bile was replaced again by cologne.

The car whisked them home to his condo where they spent the night and the next morning together.

After Black Friday, she never heard from Paige or received a late-night text from Sam again.

Why do you carry a ten-sided die? What’s with the candles? People pester me.

Like my dad used to say—keep asking and you’ll find out.

He didn’t say this in a friendly way.

My father wasn’t a friendly man.

You’ll find out, the same way I did.

Is it okay if we address my personal anxiety with academic rigor?

There are 49,785 hotels in the U.S., with roughly 5.6 million hotel rooms.

On average, each room is occupied 63% of the time.

Let’s look at the average mortality rate in the United States for the last 20 years.

The numbers vary, but the average is about .85%.

I’m treating .85% as the twenty-year “average exposure rate.” Don’t email me about actuarial tables. The point is: probability doesn’t reset every January like some cosmic Etch A Sketch. It accumulates. It stacks. It compounds.

You want to stay safe? You want to sleep through the night? Round up, not down.

Go on Reddit if you feel otherwise. Put your dukes up over there and swing away. I’m not telling you this to encourage conversation. I’m telling you this to shut you up.

How old is the average hotel?

Let’s just say the hotel has been open continuously for 20 years and apply that to the numbers above.

I’m not going to adjust hotels for new construction, closures, the COVID pandemic, or the financial crisis. If that bothers you, stop reading. Beat it.

Good. The crybabies are gone.

For you, this is a mental exercise; for me, this is real life.

People think sunglasses and phone chargers are the only lost things accumulating in hotels

What are the odds of staying in a hotel room where someone has died?

Let’s work with the dataset above and build a formula. Don’t worry—you only need to do this once.

You don’t need to do this for every hotel or motel stay.

If you want to refute Einstein’s quote—“I refuse to believe that God plays dice with the universe”—have the sort of hotel room experiences I’ve had.

This is why I carry the ten-sided die.

Formula:

D = N × O × Y × M

Where N = 5.6M rooms, O = 0.63 occupancy, M = 0.0085 mortality rate.

One-year:

D₁ = 5,600,000 × 0.63 × 1 × 0.0085 ≈ 30,096 deaths

Per-room probability ≈ 0.54%

Twenty-year:

D₂₀ = D₁ × 20 ≈ 601,920 deaths

Per-room probability ≈ 10.75%

Get through that? Are you happy now?

You never thought you’d use algebra again? Joke’s on you, kid.

My dad had nothing but contempt for my lack of math skills.

If we use these numbers, there is a 10.75% chance you are staying in a hotel room where someone died.

My methodology seems sound to you? Good. If not, I am once again asking you to shut up or go elsewhere.

The MGM Grand in Vegas must have racked up a 9/11’s worth of deaths over the last twenty years. Probably more.

I guess it’s true what they say: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

But I can hear you chatter about death clusters by hotel chains… oh, is it safe to say the mortality rate at an Ace Hotel is less than in a Comfort Inn?

I would humor you by saying yes, but I stay almost exclusively at Choice Hotels—Comfort Inns, Quality Inns, Econo Lodges. Nothing but the best.

I’m a Diamond member of the worst hotel chain.

There are ways you might want to adjust that number.

According to U.S. News & World Report, 50% of people die in the hospital.

When I heard that, I thought: Whoopie! 5.375%! Now that’s a number I can live with.

Then I thought about it more.

People who travel are a self-selecting group—stressed, jet-lagged, dehydrated, exposed to every germ and virus in a three-mile radius. Half of them sit too long and flirt with a blood clot; the other half drink like they’re celebrating the end of Prohibition. You get the gist. The list runs deep.

And there is no way—none—to account for the people who start to die in a hotel room but finish the job in a hospital bed. They still died “on the trip,” they just didn’t die on the paperwork.

Once I factored that in, the percentage didn’t shrink.

It grew.

If you think too much about the number, it just goes up.

If you find yourself in my situation, stick to my math, or if you must, do your own math—but only once.

But we are not worried about the macro; we are worried about the micro. We are concerned only about ourselves.

Actually, strike that. We are not in this together. I’m worried only about myself.

I stay at hotels a lot—too much.

That percentage gnawed at me.

I know what a bone feels like in the mouth of a dog: that brief release before the jaw resets for a better angle.

That’s how the percentage worked on me.

Five years ago, I started to bring candles with me to honor the dead and to keep them away from me.

Like everyone else today, I just want to be left alone.

When people think of hauntings, they think ghosts just want to scare you. After all, what is a ghost supposed to do? They say “boo” for a reason.

What if they’re trying to get your attention? What if the haunting isn’t about fear but about what the ghost wants, or won’t let go of? Maybe it wants you to remember something you’d rather forget.

If I had the luxury of dragging a therapist to every hotel room, he’d probably say, “Why is the man interested in you in particular? What is it about you?”

I’ve never had that luxury.

The way I do it is not to wait. I keep my coat on and a loaded suitcase by the door.

I take the die out of my breast pocket and roll it either on a coffee table, a counter, or—if I’m forced to—a newly made bed.

If anything other than a 1 comes up, I don’t breathe a sigh of relief.

It just means I’ve avoided the first 10%. That’s all.

There’s still the remainder to deal with—the ugly 0.75% the die can’t cleanly express.

That’s why the second roll exists.

The first roll tells me whether I’m in the broad danger zone.

This second roll handles the spillover—the sliver of risk you can’t round out.

So I roll again.

If anything other than a 1 shows up on that second roll, fine.

That puts me in the 9.25% buffer—the statistically safe majority.

I can go about my night. Enjoy whatever shenanigans there are for someone staying just off an interstate exit.

But if it comes up a 1 again?

That’s the remainder.

That’s the ghost in the machine.

The percentage the math can’t smooth out, the part my brain can’t ignore.

Is that statistically precise? No. Is it close enough for a brain that believes in dice and ghosts? Yes.

What did I tell you about rounding up?

If your rolls make a pair of snake eyes, that’s when it’s time to act.

Grab a candle and place it as close as you can to the center of the wall at the foot of the bed. Remove the brass candle holder you got at a flea market just for this occasion.

I’ve gotten the best results with wooden safety-strike matches. But that sulfur smell is a dead giveaway, and you’ll get an unwelcome knock on your door.

If you answer the knock, telling them you are trying to exorcise the dead with a match, it will only confirm what they already suspect: you’ve been smoking meth.

And no, thank you very much, I don’t smoke meth.

You people go straight to the worst possible version of me.

Take off your coat. Leave your shoes on.

Sit on the edge of the bed and face the candle.

You will need to do everything below in one motion.

You can’t stop once you start.

Take out the photo of your father—the one tucked in your wallet, smudged with wax fingerprints.

Take the lighter you keep with the candle holder and light the candle.

Place the photo at the base of the candle holder. Close your eyes and say:

“Please stay away.”

Wait.

Hold still.

You’ll find out.

The government sent John, his sister, Ronnie, and the rest of the children away in 1939 — to the countryside. To keep them safe, they said. Safe from bombs. Safe from war.

Safety meant sending them all in different directions. He didn’t see anyone he knew.

On the small farm in Northallerton, he spent more time with animals than people.It wasn’t so much that he missed being at home. He missed being known.

Everything he interacted with had changed from people to animals. The trams, lorries, cars, and the sound of hoofbeats on cobblestone were replaced by the soot-stained belch of a tractor.When he saw the occasional lorry, it made him miss home.

Everyone told him it was an adventure. The adventure mostly involved feeding hay to cows — not the one he’d hoped for. It was quiet on the farm. Except for the pigs and cows in the barn.

Three months later, he was back. Home was safe.

The bombers came from the east, over the moors, past the council flats. Each speck, each flash burned into his retinas. He could see them in the dark.

His father grabbed him, his sister, and his mum, and they hid under the stairs by the garden.

His father dug the trench from the back door, heading west. John wanted him to build it east, so the opening could face the horizon. He wanted to see the bombs drop again.

His father made him help with the shelter — shovel by brick, they built it away from where he hoped the bombs might fall.

He looked at the horizon whenever he could, ever since the attack back in August. He thought of little else.

His mum told him not to be afraid. He pretended he was. The war was exciting.

The adults talked about the bombing like the weather. It was always worse down south — or “Could you imagine being in London right now? Deary me.” As if the Thames had overflown

Every day, the pile of bricks by the front door grew smaller. It was the end of September, and they still hadn’t finished the shelter.

Some of the other boys brought pieces of bombs to school — scraps of metal. A few had scuffed insignia. They would try to piece them together.

None of them spoke German. There was no way to make sense of the puzzle.

They were just scraps of metal. Wherever they had come from.

The real search was for swastikas. That was what they all really wanted to see.

One hundred and twenty bombs had killed one person. But not a single swastika survived.

Was this proof of a master race? He didn’t think so.

How could they conquer England if they couldn’t plant their flag with a bomb?

John thought about this a lot, though he never said a word about it.

Ronnie had brought in the most prized piece — a stabilizer flashing that kept the bomb straight as it fell from the bomber onto Bradford.

It was treasured because it had survived the fall without being mangled — unlike the house it had fallen into.

It looked like a giant grey ice-skate blade. Everyone tried to trade with Ronnie for it, but no matter how many scraps were on offer, he wouldn’t budge.

One day, men in carts came by to collect scrap metal for the war. All the bits of bombs went away.

Ronnie hadn’t been bothered at losing his prized possession.

“They’re going to take all the bits of Gerry’s bombs, remake them, and drop them on their rotten German heads,” he said.

John thought this was an exciting idea.

The shelter still wasn’t finished.

They should have started earlier. France had fallen. Then came the joy of Dunkirk. People got distracted.

There were air-raid drills all the time, but the bombers never came back — even though he, Ronnie, and the other boys from school wanted them to.

They still looked for shrapnel, but it was harder to find. The men with the carts had taken away all the rubble as well.

His father told him about giants in Ireland — how they had once fought the giants in England. How an English giant had struck the Irish giant, Fionn mac Cumhaill, in the eye.

Enraged, the Irish giant had ripped a great clod of earth from the land and hurled it at the English giant — but missed. The wound left behind became Lough Neagh. The clod landed in the sea and became the Isle of Man.

His father said the war was like that. He didn’t explain any further.

The war he knew was about pigs, cows, scraps of metal, and absent swastikas.

He heard the way the adults talked.

It sounded like real swastikas would arrive on the ground — in person — soon enough.

They kept working on the shelter, and he kept looking at the horizon.

The brick pile grew smaller. The pile of dirt in the back corner of the garden grew bigger, as the trench wove ever westward.

His mother said she would plant daisies on the mound after the war. One for every boy from Bradford who didn’t make it home.

He heard about this — other boys whose fathers were gone. He didn’t know any of them.

Was it wrong that he wanted all the details? Where had it happened? Could you show me a map? What exactly happened to your father?

These were the questions they all wanted to ask. But no one did.

He didn’t know why, not then.

Not until his own father was conscripted into the British Army.

His father had broken his leg in his twenties and walked with a limp. He said Churchill didn’t need “an old heap like your dad.”

He reached out his hand and rubbed John’s head — something he almost never did.

It would keep him safe and at home from the war.

He was drafted into the Administrative Service Arm of the Army. He told John that if he couldn’t shoot the Huns, he’d use the weapon they gave him and type Adolf to death.

“You know what the British Commandos use to strangle Gerrys? Typewriter ribbon,” he said.

They talked more that morning than they had in most months.

He told John that while he was gone, he had to be a good boy — and on top of that, he had to be a man.

“Listen, luv — you have to take care of your mum and sister. You can’t let anything happen to them. Understand?”

He thought of the other boys — fathers gone. Had they had this talk with their sons?

He told him he would.

Then they got back to work on the trench.

On Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh, everyone’s eagerly waiting for a bus. They can’t wait for it. The buses are everywhere, and the people whoop and holler as they stand in clumps, waiting for them to arrive. The crimson coaches approach the curb, Port Authority emblazoned across them, repeated in such a chorus that the words seem to yell.

The surrounding fog of people narrows one by one into the doorway of the bus. This bus must be taking them someplace spectacular. Far up on Penn Avenue, something incredible must be happening this evening.

The bus crowd vapes, flaunts tattoos, and sports wild hair. One guy’s dreadlocks point skyward and to the left; another’s hair is bright blue. Others boast complementary hues. Some have speakers built into their backpacks, blaring trap and sing-rap. Some talk into their phones, held inches from their faces, speakers on, so everyone gets to hear their excited or angry conversations.

All this generous music, these conversations, this synthetic aroma of vanilla, apple, and strawberry — taking the bus in Pittsburgh is quite a trip.

I prefer walking. No matter how fun these buses seem, walking is what I do. There are clods of people everywhere. Block by block, street by street, I dodge past them. Their numbers swell; the sidewalk narrows. I too am lucky enough to indulge in the scent of vape pens, to take in their boisterous talk and the autotuned rap.

It’s the middle of October, early evening, and I’m looking for something to eat. There is a lot to be said about Pittsburgh, and this evening it’s saying it all at once. Downtown isn’t much to speak of, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in sound.

Noise comes from everywhere — not just from backpacks and phones but from every business, each one competing with the next.

My walk is a battle. Mariah Carey competes with Gucci Mane and Bobby Pulido, while down the street Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish are in a skirmish.

Further on, there seems to be a declarative winner, although I can’t imagine anyone being happy with the victor. Even through my earphones, I can hear the piercing aria from blocks away. Handel’s Messiah is playing at peak volume from a speaker outside the UFC gym.

Below the speaker, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor stare, fists raised from a poster on the wall. Their eyes are transfixed in the distance. Even in two dimensions, they seem deeply affected by Handel’s masterpiece.

I’m not sure what’s being implied here, or if anything is. Was Jesus, in fact, the Ultimate Fighter? If he was — if the New Testament is to be believed — he didn’t put up much of a fight.

Perhaps the music at the gym is telling all who enter: Toughen up, buttercup! Or: Listen up, jabroni. If you can’t handle the arias of this exquisite two-hour mass, how are you going to manage ground strikes and flying kimuras?

Perhaps it’s a little of both — the music meant to imply there was once a man who claimed to be the Son of God and was willing to die for our sins, but you don’t even need to do one one-hundredth of that to be an ultimate fighter.

“Get Jesus or get wrecked,” says some flat-nosed, cauliflower-eared trainer. “You make me sick. You’re soft. If you can’t handle an oratorio, you’ve got no business in the octagon.” He’s ragdolling this trainee around the gym. “Next week is Bach’s Mass in D Minor, you useless fuck! Get ready or get out of my gym!”

Perhaps this means nothing at all. It’s just music. I’m hungry. My stomach rumbles, but I can’t hear it above the noise — over the cacophony.

This randomness is what happens when people clump together. So much vying for attention.

I walk over to Triangle Square, where the recorded music is replaced by something alive. Under a tent, a man is playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” Laid out in front of him is his guitar case, optimistically lined with a few conspicuous bills and a few spots of change.

No one seems willing to get too close to him, despite the number of people in the cobbled park.

In the park — like the bus stops — there are more of these people clusters, these noisy brigades, these chatty cohorts. The park is wide and, as its name implies, shaped like a triangle. These groups cling to the periphery. No one chances walking in the open. No one wants to get near the man with the guitar.

I arrive at a diner and grab a seat at the counter. The girl behind it doesn’t make eye contact. She simply asks what I’d like to drink.

“Water and a cup of coffee,” I say, “and I’m ready to order.” I tell her I’d like “two eggs over medium, sausage patty, well-done home fries, and whole wheat toast — buttered.” I put extra emphasis on the word buttered.

She scribbles it all down, walks to the kitchen window, and says “Order in!” before the ticket is placed on a hook. Shortly after, a disembodied hand appears and makes the ticket go away.

This is a wonderfully honest transaction. At no point does she tell me her name, or that she will in fact be my server this evening. She doesn’t care if I’ve been here before. Nothing about her implies we’re about to engage in a wonderful journey through the dining experience of Cherries Diner, 115 Forbes Street, Pittsburgh, PA.

All the synthetic niceties of modern dining are absent here. There’s no implication we’re about to be friends, or even friendly. We’re not in this together. She is merely the go-between — me and the kitchen.

Any further question will be easy to answer and will require only a yes or no. This is bliss.

“Need anything else with that?”

“More water?”

“More coffee?”

This is dining as it was intended to be: quick, to the point, with nothing drawn out of you except money.

The girl is perfect for this job. She shows the barest minimum of interest in me. She drops the check without asking. She doesn’t look at me. She’s my employee of the month.

The diner is about to close, and I’m one of its final customers. The girl is at the other end of the counter, on her phone. One finger quickly swipes left, left again, then slowly swipes right.

She has tattoos. Everyone everywhere has tattoos. Human skin has become a battlefield. In some places I’ve been, the tattoos seemed to be losing the fight, but in Pittsburgh they are making a spectacular advance.

When it comes to tattoos, sometimes infection seems the more apt term — at least for a certain type of person. For those who’ve lost the battle, whose bare skin is now actively in retreat.

This may seem harsh, but it’s hard to argue otherwise. The word tattoo suggests something permanent, fixed. An infection is living, moving, growing, always trying to take over its host.

Once it’s in the skin, there’s no end to its need for attention. Look at me, I’m cellulitis! it says. Look how I blush! Have you ever seen anything so pretty? Oh, look at that — I’ve gone ahead and spread. Have you noticed? Yoo-hoo! I’m a boil, don’t mind me protruding here. I’m as big as a strawberry and just the same color. Don’t mind those white spots on my peak. Don’t mind those at all.

The vanity of skin infections makes you appreciate the quiet cancers — the ones in the pancreas or liver — who go about the yeoman’s work of killing you without being showy about it.

When I was a kid, tattoos were an anomaly. They were rare. Most of the folks who had them were former military or known “bad people,” the ones with what were called “sailor tattoos.”

On sun-faded skin, you might see an anchor, a heart (with or without an arrow through it), a mermaid, Bugs Bunny, the word Mom, or even a baby devil with a pitchfork and “Hot Stuff” emblazoned across its ass. When you saw them, you noticed them — it was such a novelty.

A lot of them had come back from Nam, and I was told some had really been “in the shit.” That phrase was offered to me as both explanation and warning. The implication: you don’t mess with someone who’s been “in the shit.” Give them a wide berth. There’s no telling what they’ll do.

It was an odd thing to tell a six-year-old. It set me on a course in life where I became very leery of people with tattoos.

Things change. Of course they do. That’s what things do — they change. Entropy for everyone involved, that’s what the universe says.

Tattoos, once rare, are everywhere now — spreading. Tattoo parlors are countless, each with someone holding a needle who can’t wait to give you your first fix.

“First time? You don’t say. Lay right back here. This won’t hurt a bit.”

One of them had gotten to the girl behind the counter. She’d received a serious dose. The infection began as a rose on her forearm — an innocent start. The rose erupted into a lion, then birds and octopi, spreading northward, up her arm to her neck, and now invading her face.

Lines ran from her neck to her cheek. Lines now, but you could see where the infection would soon do its work — where it would claim that empty space.

You wonder about the individual decisions of the host body. How one arrives at the unfinished heron in mid-flight emblazoned on neck and face. Were there inner negotiations? What does this stork say about me? What is the essence of my storkness?

Similarly, the lion on her forearm — drawn from the rear, looking back at the viewer — bears the words Deez Nuts where its testicles should be. What was that inner dialogue? What does this majestic beast, what do Deez Nuts, have to say about me?

Above her right eyebrow is an outlier, a stand-alone: the name Benjy, inked in calligraphy, as if a 15th-century monk had crept in while she slept and vandalized her face.

Her infection says: Look at me. It also says: Leave me alone. Unless, of course, your name is Benjy.

Cellulitis would die of envy if it knew anything about this girl.

I leave twenty bucks on the counter and thank her as I walk by.

“Have a nice day,” she says, hand propped under her chin, finger still swiping, eyes still on the phone.

From the kitchen, a cook yells, “Order up!”

Outside, the guitarist is still playing Hendrix — All Along the Watchtower. He’s failed to win over the folks in the square. He sings alone and unbothered in the no man’s land of Triangle Square.

I start back the way I came — back to the throngs of bus-goers on Penn Avenue, back to Handel’s Messiah. Lyrics trail off behind me as I go:

“Well, uh, outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl, hey
All along the watchtower
All along the watchtower…”

Tonight these lyrics hold no meaning. Like the square, they’re empty. Like the diner, the song is finished. The city’s symphony of sounds blends into a distant hum. I chart a quieter path back home.