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Show lying on the cots, and above the head of each something was suspended. For some it was a bottle of perfectly clear fluid, for others a plastic bag full of red blood. Plastic tubes connected the bottles and bags to the men's arms. They all looked up as the woman clattered on heels to the bathroom. At the front of the building were a dozen metal folding chairs. After a moment the man sat on one of these. Behind the counter where the girls in white worked, he could see the two open cubicles. Inside each cubicle was a small desk, and attached to the wall, a black dangling blood-pressure cuff. On the folding chair next to the man sat a curly-headed boy of maybe eighteen with a gold earring in his left ear. In front of them a color television was tuned to the two-thirty soap opera. "Hey man," said the boy, "you got a cigarette?" The man got out two cigarettes. For several minutes they silently watched the soap opera together. Then the boy said, "That's some sharp lady you got with you, man. The real thing. I've been watching. How come you bring her to a place like this?" The man looked at the boy and wondered exactly what he meant. Then he followed the boy's eyes to the back of the building where he saw that the woman had emerged from the bathroom and was coming back toward them, the white cup held out in front of her as though it contained an exact measure of olive oil for cooking. "That didn't take long," he said, standing up. "It's a small cup," she said, "now what." "Now our fingers," he said. |