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Show 16 he is turned away from the camera, his hands on his hips as though surveying, from a firm position over the dead, his world, the distance, eternity. "It is almost done," he says. "Now I have only to put together the finished product." All night Garrett hears him, talking, in his room; but in the morning he is surprised to find Ahmed on the living room floor, disassembling his four photo albums, until he realizes that they are all being consolidated into one. "I am making decisions," says the Turk, "hard choices. I have not slept. It is not easy." Garrett goes to work. He helps to pin a hip in the morning and spends the afternoon removing casts, an easy day. When he gets home the house is quiet. Ahmed's car is in the driveway, the air conditioner in the living room has been turned on, there are no more photos stacked on chairs and end-tables. Ahmed's bedroom door is shut. Finished, thinks Garrett, done. Sleeping. And wonders if things will be different now, if Ahmed will once again become withdrawn, quiet, private. Garrett fools around in the garden, takes a short turn through the cemetery, then-when Ahmed is still not up-changes clothes and for the first time in weeks goes into town for a beer. He would have taken Ahmed. But when he gets home, after one in the morning, the house is still quiet. Ahmed's door is still shut. Garrett puts himself to bed. The next day the hospital air conditioning breaks down, a child they are afraid to anesthetize is brought in screaming with a pulverized tibula, and Garrett has to stay late when the cast-man on |