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Show 190 He pointed toward the rear of the building, across a large tiled area that was filled with thirty or forty cots. Men were lying on the cots, and above the head of each something was suspended in the air. 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 two-inch heels to the bathroom. A dozen metal folding chairs were grouped at the front of the building. In the woman's absence, the man sat on one of them. 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 wearing a gold earring in his left ear. In front of them stood an old color television, tuned to the two-thirty soap opera. "Hey man," said the boy during a commercial, "you got a cigarette?" The man got out two cigarettes. The second one he lit for himself. For several minutes they smoked and silently watched as the soap opera continued. 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. |
