II. Memory

‘Vee,’ her grandmother had said through motionless lips, her skin delicate and clinging to her bones like crumpled silk, her breath a miniature burst of moist warmth in the surrounding dryness of a hospice room, ‘Vee,’ using the name she’d adopted as a teenager, and then proceeded to tell her something.

III. Your brain

Ben’s come home with a bouquet of red roses for Vee on the third day she’s sick; he sits with her, tells her he loves her and hopes he doesn’t come down with it too. The next day at work he meets a woman named Tara, while Vee is lying on the bathroom floor watching the ceiling enclose her and periodically sitting up to vomit, missing the toilet once.

‘This is one of the nicest in the complex,’ says Ben, a leasing agent, holding the door for ginger Tara, lithe for her height. ‘Corner unit, cathedral ceiling in the great room, balcony overlooking the pool.’

She turns and her freckles make his stomach jolt. ‘It’s nice,’ she says, looking at him, not the room.

He swallows and walks farther in. ‘New carpets, all walk-in closets…’

She prowls into the kitchen where he tries to show her new appliances. ‘Show me the balcony,’ she says.

And there, overlooking the pool, where he can see his own building’s roof a few blocks away, she pushes him against the railing; she’s soft and orange-hued; she runs her little hands up his back and says in his ear ‘I have something for us.’ Her small fingers with their clipped nails slip in between his shirt buttons and stroke his prickling skin. In her other hand she produces a plastic bag with two little white tablets, each with a little ‘i’ on it.

At this moment is when Vee misses the toilet; a chunk of watery vomit spews onto the floor before she rests her chin on the bowl’s rim, eyes almost shut with fatigue, and then a new wave of full-body gagging wracks her, and more liquid hits the bowl. On her eyelids the wavy gray pattern of brains wiggles across and forms a lifeless maze.