Introductions kind of waste a little or a lot of time, depending on how long they are. I don't have time to introduce anything, and you'll understand why if you read. I mean read the book. Not the introduction. You're done reading that now.

Delicate squeeze of the hand, then he tells me I’m dead. Almost dead, he says. No, no he doesn’t say that. That’s unprofessional. “You,” then he squeezes my hand with a genuine yet practiced care, “only have twenty-one days to live. I am so, so. . .” He goes on about sentiment and something in my heart that doesn’t do what the doctor wants. I guess that means it isn’t doing what I want, either, but I’d have to know something about medicine. The doctor explains my condition, but I’m too distracted by the sounds my knuckles made when he squeezed my hand. I once met a man who chaired a committee on finding some sound similar to knuckles popping. Two men ended up dead and one woman cut off all her fingers during the course of the investigation. I bet she didn’t count on that ending.

I didn’t count on mine happening so soon. Twenty-one days to live. I couldn’t count to twenty-one if I cut off all my fingers. Couldn’t do it if I left them all where they are now, mostly because I only have nine and a half. That isn’t some kind of morbid joke. My left ring finger didn’t grow out all the way. It’s got to be symbolic somehow. Doctors couldn’t explain it, though.

The doctor explains that my heart does something something but not what it should.

Somewhere out there, there is a tatoo outlining a woman’s left breast. It says The heart wants what the heart wants. Don’t look for that woman because she’s irrelevant anyway. Point is, if the heart wants what the heart wants, then the heart will want what it wants. Whose heart? Mine? If so, I didn’t think it could act on its own behalf, or that the rest of me had to follow.

I'm going to die because my heart wants death.

The doctor is talking about possible treatment options, each of which sound about as fun as dying in fewer than twenty-two days. At this early stage of the early death game, I can’t afford to bother with something so boring as options or possibilities or treatments. Twenty-one days lay ahead like a hop-scotch game erasing in the rain.

I need to get to hopping.

“I need to go,” I tell Dr. Crackle Hands — whose name, I confess, is not Crackle Hands, but something which I completely forgot as soon as we shook our yet uncrackled hands.

“Well,” he smirks, “you’ll definitely be going in twenty-one days.”

We laugh.

“More to the point,” he continues, “I don’t think it’s wise for you to leave the hospital. You should be comfortable in your final weeks, and I don’t believe you’ll find better comfort outside this fine institution.”

“You mean there’s nothing more comfortable than cold linoleum and cold food both literally made of rubber?”

We laugh.

“I can’t force you to remain here,” he explains, “even if. . .” he says the name — a name I’m not even allowed to think without paying a couple thousand in fees — of some academic playground so ballooned with itself that it needs a medical program to booster-seat its big boy name, “. . .is the most suitable place for your condition.” Whatever condition that is. I don’t exactly pay attention when I should.

I thank him for the advice. “Thank you,” I say.

“For what?”

“The advice. I’m certainly not thanking you for telling me I’m going to die soon.”

We laugh.

Doctor Crackle Hands hands me his card. With a finger fish-netted in dry skin and hard lines, he points to some numbers and a dash, in addition to an “at” sign with the little circle-dee-doo, his name, and the institution name which shall remain nameless as long as I have what little money I do. He might have said something else about his office or his secretary (if doctors even have those) but I couldn’t concentrate. I tried to listen, but when I saw his over-sanitized finger, I thought of the woman who cut off all of her fingers in search of the crackling sounds. How did she hold the knife to cut off the remaining digits?

“Give me a call,” he says, “if anything happens. Anything at all. Just dial the number and talk.”

“But I don’t like to talk on the phone.”

“Then you can email me. However, I can’t promise to get back to you within a week.”

“That’s fine.” That’s more than fine. I won’t do anything too big in that window anyway. If I die before the twenty-one day guarantee, at least it’ll be a nice surprise for the both of us.

I take the card. I’m wearing a hospital gown with the inconvenient window to all the concentrated fat on my body, and as an effect of no pants, I have no pockets. No pants pockets, at least. I’ve got a weird, uncomfortable image in my head now and I’m going to say something aloud to sanitize my mind like the doctor sanitizes his hands.

“So do you wash your hands pretty often?” I ask him. “You’ve got some of the driest hands I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s very rude of you to say so.”

“Is it as rude as threatening me?”

“I never threatened you.”

“You told me I’m going to die.”

“It’s hardly my fault you’re going to die. The messenger doesn’t write the email, he simply transliterates it.”

“Ah,” I nod. “Okay. Nevermind.” Likely, I missed that detail when he first told me about my twenty-one days. Oh, speaking of. . . “You said I have twenty-one days to live?”

“Is that a question?”

“There was a question mark.”

“You do have twenty-one days to live.”

“Yes, right. So does that include today, or. . .”

He blinks. He pulls glasses out of his pocket and sets them on a silver rolly table to his left. He pulls a flask out of his pocket and pours into the glasses a liquid which smells like it could really dry out your hands pretty badly (or pretty well, if you fancy a pair of turtle-ish hands). Flask in his pocket again. One dry hand curls around one glass. The fingers align themselves to match grooves that aren’t there. Raising the glass to his eye level, he says, “This is for you.” Glass goes to his lips and liquid goes to his liver. Doctor Crackle Hands repeats the toasty pose and declares to his audience of me, “This is also for you.”

He has drunk both glasses, which is to say he drank the liquid in them.

“You probably shouldn’t drink on the job,” I suggest to him.

“You probably shouldn’t have complete and sudden heart failure without any other apparent symptoms.”

We laugh.

I click my tongue in my mouth and try to come up with a comparable sound to a knuckle popping. “So,” I say, then click my tongue a few times more, “does my twenty-one days include today?”

Doctor Crackle Hands drowns his eyes in the brown teardrops running down one glass. “I do apologize,” he begins, slow and patient as the teardrops that fall, “but our tests can’t confirm that.”

“Who’s our?” I ask. “Your tests and mine?”

“Have you been performing any tests?”

Is he kidding? I can’t even pay full attention without getting distracted by some lady with bloody hand nubs instead of fingers. “No, I haven’t performed any tests.”

The doctor rolls his eyes. “Then why would they be your tests and mine?”

That was harsh, but I don’t tell him I think so.

“The tests,” he tells me, “belong to [name redacted] medical researchers because we invented them.”

“Makes sense.”

“And our tests show that while you have twenty-one days to live, I myself specifically checked your very stipulation. Does that first day begin today or tomorrow?” He pauses to pat his pockets. “Oh,” he snorts. “I already drank.” While he chuckles to himself, I hold my breath and eye my clothes folded up on the waiting chair. No one to wait with me but my clothes. I think that’s a country song. Which country, I can’t say, but I’m sure it’s a song somewhere.

The doctor ends his private comedy club session. “Anyway, I don’t know. You have at least twenty days to live. I can tell you that.”

I stop holding my breath. “A few minutes ago it was twenty-one days.”

He shrugs and hiccups. “I don’t make the clocks. I just watch the hands.”

I watch his hands. They scratch a patch of yarmulke baldness. They straighten his collar and patted his pockets again. My eyes are tired of watching him, so they go back to the clothes. My clothes. No one’s clothes in about twenty-ish days.

“So can I go?” I don’t know why I’m asking permission to leave. No, I understand why. I’m asking permission to leave this conversation. Social interactions make my heart die. After all, I wasn’t going to die before someone sat down and chatted about it.

“Again, I wouldn’t recommend it, but it is your deshifission.”

He laughs. To himself.

“I would like to go, then." He doesn't leave. "I’m going to get dressed now.”

“I shuppose you want me to leeeave. . .” He takes a step. He falls down. His right knee popped a sharp complaint. Doctor Crackle Hands massages the flexing cap as he rose to unreliable feet. “I’m going, I’m going. . .” The door clicks open and clicks shut.

Voices muffle beyond the door. That’s the trouble with an all-linoleum building:  everyone hears everything, from the woman giving birth a building away to the nurses gossiping right outside my room.

“Muffle muffle how did muffle muffle handling it alright muffle muffle tissues muffle so strange we saw the results muffle we can’t go for Italian again I’m getting fat off the bread.”

I shed my gown — a pricetagged word for such a cheap bit of cloth — and trade the blue flower dots for black jeans and a hoodie just big enough to hide my wrists. That’s how I like my hoodies. I’m not ashamed of my wrists, but they blush at the cold weather. It’s November, and the wind blows.

There’s also shoes and underwear to wear on me, although neither suit modern styles well enough to make describing them worthwhile. Using those shoes I’m wearing, I walk out the door and hover my hand under the disinfectant station on the wall. It’s automatic. The little box purrs and vomits a clean white foam into my hand. Rub-a-dub. May as well clean my hands. Getting sick now would be a waste. I wouldn’t want to spend my final days downing cold syrup like my doctor probably does.

According to history, humanity suffered under the cold hands of the common cold, which, when they struck, swept up a fair amount of men and women and children to dump them in an early grave. Like me, I guess, except my case doesn’t quantify as common. Or maybe it’s only somewhat common.

Again, I don’t pay attention very well.

I leave. Some eyes follow and some mouths mutter. One guy nods at me and waves me over to him. Blue scrubs transcend his blue eyes from blue to even slightly a bit more blue, which is very blue indeed. His non-blue fingers chomp on a shiny business card. In a smooth robot motion, he extends his arm to me. I take the business card. Not a business card at all, unless you count optimism or kittens as a kind of business. I usually do not. The card reads “Hang in there!” and has pictured a man dangling from a tree, one hand gripping a branch, and a kitten protracting its claws above the whitened knuckles. Unusual to find such sharp detail on a business card, but I understand the general point of the message.

“Thanks,” I tell the blue guy. “I’ll keep this on me.” In my pocket it goes. I shuffle on toward the elevator.

I think I hear him say, “But I was just showing. . .nevermind.” That also could have been my imagination. My imagination plays about and sometimes gives my mind weird sentences to think. Sometimes I narrate, too. Internally, of course. Any person obnoxious enough to narrate their own actions with their own audible voice deserves a swift kick to the teeth. No, maybe somewhere else. What else can guard a talker’s talking if not that thirty-two barred cell?

Just now, I realize that if I lose one tooth every day for the rest of my life, I still get to wear teeth in my coffin (or cadaver oven, if I go that route).

“Excuse me,” a female voice commands, or requests. I’m inclined to think she commands me because she didn’t say the magic word.

I whip my head around and wonder if it’s possible to break my own neck.

“Over here,” she directs. Whatever she works as in the hospital, she must moonlight as a ventriloquist. Maybe her misdirections have no conspiracy behind them. Maybe it’s the linoleum.

“I said over here,” she says, which doesn’t help in the slightest. A finger bounces on my shoulder. It feels like a finger, at least. I spin to catch my back and find it is, indeed, a finger. At the end of it stands a woman wearing blue scrubs. Her eyes are not blue. “Excuse me.”

“You said that already.”

“I was trying to get your attention.”

I almost tell her she didn’t do a very good job of it, but I remember she might consider it rude. It’s good to consider other people’s feelings, so I’ve heard. From whom, I can’t remember.

Instead, I say, “Yes.”

She checks over her shoulder. Then her other shoulder. I check over my own because this situation of awkward unfamiliarity forces me into a nervous, echoing state. Sometimes I get anxious.

“Do you know who’s watching?” she asks, her round, not-blue eyes waiting on me.

“You are.”

She sighs. “Don’t be stupid. From what I’ve heard, you don’t have the time to be stupid.”

I sigh. “Damn linoleum.” She blinks at me. “Who else knows? Not like it matters much, but—”

“You have twenty or twenty-one days left, correct?”

“Well,” I play with the strings on my hoodie, “that’s the lice in my rice, isn’t it? I don’t know which one is right.”

She puts a hand on my left shoulder. “I need you to listen to me.”

How do I respond to this? Yes? “Yes?”

“That doctor — your doctor — he’s a hack. A quack.” Her finger goes to her lip and taps.

“Are you looking for a third rhyming word?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not good with words, so I can’t help you.”

“You’re not well with words.”

I sniff. “I don’t think that’s correct.”

Her hand waves the comment to the right. “Your doctor doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I believe her, especially because he just knocked over a receptionist’s coffee and slipped in the second-degree puddle. He might be laughing or screaming. She ignores the indiscernible noise. “But I know someone who can help you:  The Specialist.”

If this wasn’t a book, there might be scary sound effects. “The Specialist?” I heard her well enough the first time, but The Specialist is fun to say aloud.

“The Specialist.” I think she enjoys saying it aloud, too.

I'm still harboring some confusion. “I thought my condition was uncommon.”

She nods like someone’s dribbling her head. “Oh yes. Very uncommon. Rare, even. You may even be the first of your kind.”

“If you don’t know, isn’t that a pretty good sign I am the first?”

A frown disturbs the lower half of her face. “You get off topic quickly.” That’s true. I don’t respond for fear of affirming her already accurate statement. “The Specialist knows all about these things.”

“What things?”

“Your condition. He can help you.”

“Can he cure me?”

She bites her lip. “That I can’t say. If anyone could, though, I’m sure it would be him.” She retrieves a pen from her pants pocket and a sticky note from the desk nearby. On the note, she writes something. Some numbers, some letters, some spaces (which she makes as a result of not writing anything). “Take this. It’ll tell you where to go.”

“Why can’t you tell me where to go?”

“I am. I'm telling you in writing. You seem like you get distracted a lot and I don’t want you to forget.”

Point two for the not-blue eyed nurse. “Fair.” I accept the paper. The letters and numbers wave in a little dance. That's what happens when you write on top of your palm. "It's hard to read this."

"Whatever. We don't have time for rewrites." She checks over her shoulders again. I check again again. I don't think either of us found anything. "They're watching us."

"What?" I look over her shoulders for her while she looks over mine. This reminds me of middle school slow dancing. I never participated in that kind of thing, as it sounds awful, but I've seen awkward photos somewhere. Can't remember where.

"Shhh!" That's an onomatopoeia representing the sound the nurse made when shushing me. Shushing is another onomatopoeia for the act of saying "shut up" without actually saying it. I would say this nurse hurt my feelings by using a double onomatopoeia strike against me, but I don’t think I have enough feelings left to hurt — on account of my heart. I have a hurt heart, apparently. I just found out today.

“Shhh!” she shushes again. “They might hear you.”

“Who?”

A janitor passes us with a brunette mop in hand. “Don’t pay attention to her,” he tells me. “She’s paranoid.”

She claps the back of the janitor’s head. “I am not!” Turning to me, she whispers, “They know. You need to leave, and quickly.” Fingers go to a back pocket. I didn’t know scrubs had back pockets. I guess I never checked. “Here’s fifty dollars.” Two folded twenties pinched between her thumb and index finger.

“That’s only forty.”

“Shhhh!” She leans in toward me. Hushing, she whispers, “Don’t let them know we know!”

I’m wasting my day and I don’t have a lot of them. “Got it.” I tap my nose. Do people still do that? I don’t even know from where I learned it.

She taps her nose in response. “What does this mean?”

They don’t still do that. “Thank you for the sort of fifty dollars, and for whatever this paper says.”

A nod. “I don’t know who you are.” Without blinking and without turning around, she walks backwards and away from me. Far behind her, my doctor slips in the coffee again. I read the note. Without speaking, it announces in its shimmying print:

Brother owns the balloon — tell him his sister sent you, then show him this note. He’ll know what that means. Take the noon flight to the city and wait for the Specialist there. The Specialist knows the human body well and always has a way of finding his patients.

I’m shocked she fit all that on an itty paper square. ‘Shocked’ makes me sound like I fell over after I read it. I don’t do that. I put the note in my hoodie pocket — the one attached like a kangaroo pouch — and carry on exiting the building.

Walking walking walking elevator ding button ding I’m standing in a bleak lobby. Two potential patients sit in chairs in the room’s corner while they mumble Spanglish to each other. A receptionist plays Jenga by himself. Arm trembling, he reaches for a block. Closer. Closer. The stress overcomes him and he shrieks like a rainforest sound effect. I turn my head to the television on the wall opposite the poor man. News channel. I take a step to the left. All the better to hear.

“. . .suggests the inclement forecast may present a slight delay in launch, but aeronautical experts are confident this crew will fly before the month’s end.”

Another voice:

“We believe in our staff, believe in the work we’ve done, and I know the people of this world are ready for the next chapter in mankind’s existence. What exactly waits for us, we’re not sure, but we’re sure as [bleep sound] going to find out in person.”

Previous voice:

“Straight from the source, you’re hearing the latest news on the launch of the century. Come whatever weather will, in an estimated three weeks, man may dwell amongst foreign stars. Some have called this a kind of salvation, while some fringe groups protest what they call ‘an invitation for our destruction.’ For good or ill, however, this launch is happening. We will finally set foot on a habitable planet.”

Not all of us.

At least three codgering authors per decade advise against opening with the weather. Not to offend, but that advice goes against nature, against creation itself. I never saw a day dawn that didn’t start with a chance of sunshine.

I open the door and an eyeball-sized raindrop hits me in the eye. It must be eyeball sized because its perfect symmetry with its target had me catching my breath in the doorway. Little miracles like that astound me. No more time to appreciate it, though. If I don’t wash my eyes out in the next thirty seconds, I’ll go blind.

“Water!” I yelp like a dying fish. Dying fish don’t yelp, you understand, but they do require water to live. “Water!”

A young voice shouts from across the street, “We know! We know!” I can’t see them, but they sound like their developing voice hasn’t picked a gender.

Little jerk.

The hospital has water, surely. My doctor made coffee angels just a few minutes ago, which means water in some form or another. I pivot and sprint for the entrance. OW oh my ow ow ow oh ow that isn’t the door it’s a wall I hit a wall.

Hit a wall. I have heard that expression before, although I never understood how much pain came with finding a brick slab with the tip of your speeding nose.

Other voices umbrella above me. They don’t belong to the little jerk.

“Are you okay?”

“What do you think?”

“What’s the matter here?”

I moan in a painful, nonsexual way. “Water. . .”

“Gracious! Get a bottle! Hurry!” I have no one called Gracious in my acquaintance, and I still don’t because we don’t have time for introductions. Gracious shoves a crackling plastic bottle into my slick palms.

“Hurry! Your eyes!”

“I know!” I remind them. New, cool water pricks my eyes and weeps the infected rain down my cheeks.

“You ought to be more careful,” Gracious tells me. “The air is worse than ever nowadays.”

I submit in a mono-I’m-being-lectured-tone. “Yeah.”

“Do you know what this air carries?”

“Yeah.”

“You might have gone blind!”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think this balloon business is helping either.”

“Yeah.” I flutterblink and wipe my face. Gracious comes into view wearing plum lipstick and a fur coat wrapped in that thin plastic used for preserving food. It is raining, after all. “Gracious, thank you.”

She tries to hide a smile. “It’s no bother at all. We’re all in this together.” A horn blasts somewhere above us. My teeth chatter. Gracious’ foxtails shudder despite their confinement. Her painted lips cinch as she lifts her chin to her upper right. Scowl. “They really ought to do something about that smoghorn.”

“Yeah.”

“Of course it serves a purpose — don’t I know that — but really, a person could go blind and deaf in one day. And all for taking a stroll! My, my, what a place to live.” She looks to me and offers her hand. The plastic whines and giggles as she does. We touch palms (platonically, of course) for the traditional lock and shake. “Take care of yourself.”

“I’m going to die in twenty or so days.”

“Oh.” She drops my hand. “Nothing contagious, I hope?”

“Nothing’s more contagious than a good attitude,” I tell her. She stares, not appreciating my street wisdom. “No, ma’am. It isn’t contagious.”

“Excellent.” She kicks the empty water bottle which helped save my vision. “Then I hope you take care of yourself for the next several weeks.” Head bowed, she hurries to join the sidewalk traffic.

The smoghorn blasts again. I feel my bones startle. “Get to shelter!” a man hollers from above my head. “Get inside!”

I pull my hood over my head.

“Get inside!” they shout again.

Crowds bustle, transform into frantic amoebas, and wailflail through any porous entrance they find. I see a white arc peeking from behind a construction site.

Balloon time.

I keep my chin down and jog across the street. A car horn translates a censored message coming from inside a passing vehicle. Jogging. Jogging. Side step a pole. Jog. Why is it called jogging?

Smoghorn sounds and I look up. I shouldn’t, but I do. Greasy grey smears the sky, and gargantuan clouds of something like dirt and ash threaten to stampede. Through the air, through the streets, through our skin and in our eyes and down our throats until we choke. Smogstorm’s a-coming. Great puffs of pollution from the devil’s tobacco pipe.

It isn’t so fun to breathe. Jogging. Jogging. Jogging.

“Hard hats only!” I hear someone shout — presumably at me. Yeah, okay. If I raised my head again, I know I’d see him sprinting for shelter. Ignoring they who warned me, I ducked under stacked wood beams and ran around an unfinished column. I once knew a construction worker who married a dentist. She was a zoo dentist, though, and she mainly worked on panda teeth in San Diego. Interesting pair, those two. They could talk your ear off about crown molding, which is why I avoided them at parties. Imagine living the rest of my now briefer life with only one ear.

I can see a woman with an orange uniform. Perfect. “Hey!” That’s me shouting hey. “Hey!” The ‘eh’ sound breaks off due to the storm’s vanguarding vapors.

She turns her head toward me. A patch of orange cloth tapestries her face beneath the nose. “Reserved seats only! We don’t offer shelter from smogstorms!”

“But —” Cough cough cough choke cough.

“Look somewhere else!” I look right at her as I continue sprinting.

A man in a red uniform rushes into the scene. She taps his shoulder and points at me. “Go away!” he demands. I don’t go away. He fumbles for something in his pocket.

“Sister!” I manage. He doesn’t seem to hear. “Your sister!”

That raises his head, even if it now bears a frown. “Her?” He points to the orange woman. “No.” They hold up their left hands and smile. I’m assuming the woman smiles, although I can’t verify one hundred percent.

Panting, I meet the couple by a railed metal ramp. “Nurse. Your sister.” I hold my knees because, apparently, I’m really out of shape.

“My sister?” Light bulbs flicker in his eyes. “Oh, yes! Her! I’m her brother.”

“She said you own the balloon.”

“I do.” An orange elbow knocks into his ribs. “We do.”

I find the now-crinkled note still tucked in my hoodie-kangaroo pouch, huddled with that kitten business card. If I weren’t dying fairly soon, I would take the time to wonder how they stayed in my pocket.

“Here. This is from her.”

He takes the note. Reads. Gives a few “hm”s and one “uh huh” before returning the paper to me. To his wife, he says, “Find an extra seat.” I walk to the front of the ramp. I smile.

She doesn’t. “We may not have any extra.”

His hand windmills, ushering me up the metal slope. He gives his wife a look. “Find one.”

“They don’t just appear out of thin air, Harry! This is why we have reservations!”

He goes redface. “You think I don’t know why? You think I wasn’t there last June?” Pointed finger. “Mayhem, Lois! Mayhem! That’s why — oh, we should go.”

In the spirit of mayhem, the smoghorn gives a final blast to wish us farewell and welcome the oncoming clouds. Metal thumpings provide percussion to the horn as we three sprint inside the balloon. I never understood why it’s called a “balloon.” That isn’t to say I don’t know what balloons are. I do, of course. We learned about the Great Helium Shortage back in grade school. This big flying contraption into which we flee doesn’t look like one of those air sacks, though. It resembles a balloon as much as the Titanic resembled a tea party. The old word for this slips from my memory like those plastic squeezy things with colorful liquid that would always fly from a tightened grip. What were they called?

My cheeks hits the floor hard. We made it inside the

um

what’s it

blimp!

The doors of the blimp automatically shut behind us while we stand in the blimp and we are now inside the blimp waiting for the blimp to fly. Or, I should say, I wait while red and orange squabble over some fiasco from last June. I should say that because that’s the reality of my situation right now.

“Go get a seat right now,” he hushes.

“I told you we don’t have the seats,” she responds in equal yet escalating-by-a-hair tone.

“You said we may not have them.”

“I also said I can’t make more appear, Harry. Would you like to review a full list of all the other things I’ve said?”

“When did I say that?”

“You may as well have said it!”

“You’re putting words in my mouth!”

“As long as it gets you to say something!”

“You always bring up some semantics issue and it doesn’t make sense!”

“That’s because you don’t make sense!”

I wave my hand. “Excuse me,” I interrupt, wearing a smile so fake it could run for office, “if it’s too much trouble, I can sit in the back or wait with the lu—”

“No,” the nurse’s brother counterinterrupts. “You’ll get a seat. Just look down these aisles and pick whichever one you want.” We all spin our heads a few inches. In a space of about 80-100 seats, only three have occupants:  an old man with a beard and no shirt, a plastic bag filled with what looks like fried chicken fetched from the dumpster, and the man’s pet chihuahua chewing on a fried chicken leg. These three sit in the front.

I point to the general belly of the left aisle. "Is somewhere over there alright?"

The woman huffs. Her husband puts on a smile as fake as mine a moment ago. "Whatever pleases a friend of my sister's." The two aim whispers, like darts, at each other as they hide themselves in the head cabin. Is it called the bridge on a blimp? I never know.

I move to take my seat in the middle section. Walking by the old man, I notice him convulsing.

“Excuse me, are you. . .” But he’s fine. His shoulders shake because he laughs. “What are you laughing at?”

He bares his teeth. Greasy beard frames a spotted grin. “At you!” He laughs. Cackle is a better word. Yeah. Cackle conveys that staccato, popcorn beat he’s laying down. “At you!”

“I heard you the first time.”

He pets his dog. Yellowed nails scratch at an ungroomed neck. “You don’t hear a thing! Ha!”

I twist my left shoe into the floor. The cabin shudders. Difficult to say whether that means the balloon is ready to fly or if another wave of the smogstorm crashed upon us. While I’d like to look out the windows to check, steel shutters shut the blimp’s eyes. Typical.

That crackle pop laugh cuts through my distraction. “I said ‘you don’t hear a thing! Ha!’ Haha!”

“I said I heard you the first time.”

“You wait,” he tells me. Orange grease dribbles down his beard and drips onto his lap. The chihuahua crinkles the plastic as he (or she, I guess) hurries to catch his master’s leftovers. Why doesn’t he or she just eat out of the bag? If I owned a pet, I would almost definitely train it better than this guy did his. However, most pets I can think of live a little longer than maybe-twenty days. There goes that trip to the pound I didn’t plan.

The old man cackles. “I said—”

“—you wait.”

“That’s not what I said!”

“Yes it is.”

“No?” I nod. “That’s what I said. You wait.”

“You remembered. Congratulations.” I take a step down the aisle and am very much aware of how by myself I am right now. I don’t count the fried chicken, the man, or the chihuahua, naturally. At this point, I’m starting to wonder if they’re even real.

The man grips the steel shutters on his left and vomits a fountain onto the floor. I can’t think to describe the stench as anything other than death itself. Extra step down the aisle. “Are you okay?” I ask him, not really caring about his health but not wanting to feel responsible if he dies right here and now. Also, someone helped me out today:  Good Gracious, the kind-hearted stranger. Didn’t even know me and she took the time. I forget that’s a thing.

He wretches again. The dog jumps down and no no no oh yep it’s going it’s licking it up I can’t look I’m feeling sick I feel the bile churning in my stomach

“Okay, then,” I say with my eyes looking anywhere away from him. But the sound of that tongue lapping. . . “I’ll see if there’s an alert button somewhere.”

A garbled voice chuckles. I think the extra fluids transcended his laugh from a cackle to a chuckle. I don’t know. That classification process is pretty subjective.

He chuckles more. “You need an alert.”

“No, seriously, you don’t look well.” No, seriously, I need someone to clean up this vomit so the DOG CAN STOP LICKING IT UP I CAN STILL HEAR IT SO I CAN STILL SEE IT.

“I said you need an alert. I don’t think you have a lot of time.”

My feet pause. I can’t find it in me to watch the dog lick up sick, but I can respond. “What do you know? You’re a dirty old tramp who steals chicken from dumpsters. Your dog’s life is a mess, too.”

He chuckles again. “You think this is chicken?”

“That’s why I said ‘chicken.’”

“Ha! I got this for winning. . .no, no. I think you’ll find out when you find out. Context! It’s a key to unlock things.”

I still won’t look over at them. “All keys unlock things. That’s the point of keys.” Where are those staff alert buttons? How would you even know when I haven’t described the blimp in full detail?

“I said ‘context.’”

“I heard you.”

“And I’ll get yours soon. Or maybe enough of yours for both our contexts to get together and dance.” He hiccups. “But you look like someone who checks their watch a little too much, huh?”

I examine my wrists. Sleeved. Pulling up the sleeves, I find my wrists as I left them:  no watches. “Does anyone still wear a watch?”

Another hiccup. “We’ll get to know each other at least a little bit,” he promises.

An image of his spewing vomit acid-treats my brain. “I know enough, I think.”

He cacklechuckles. Chackles? I don’t like that mashup at all. He does his laugh and says, “We’ll see. Again, you’ll hear what I’ve got to say.”

“Sure.” I lift the neck of my hoodie over my nose. The smell would make me cry if my eyes didn’t undergo such trauma as they did earlier.

Sounds of wet flesh supping on steaming, undigested goop. I can’t hear the steam, but my mind can see it in the sounds that dog makes.

Retreating to my seat, I curl up by the shuttered window and keep my eyes away from the old man. A sizeable gasp sucks the air from. . .somewhere near the cabin, I think. “Oh! My word, oh dear! Ooohhhhh dear.” It’s a woman’s voice. Must be orange.

Light pattering heads my way. “Oh, I do apologize for this crowdedness,” she says. “You never know what sort of people find their way on private transportation — especially when so many seats get booked.”

I shift my body more in her direction. Eyes still protected. “You let that guy on but you weren’t going to let me?”

She permits herself a small laugh. “He made his reservation in advance. I can’t say the same for you.” Something moves in front of me. Plastic and metal clickings near my knees tell me that much. “Here is your complimentary meal.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see something dark placed on what must be a miniature table. A quietness happens. No crickets chirp (they don’t live in our city anymore), but I can hear the dog.

“Do you have any earmuffs?” I just realized that they’re called “earmuffs” because they sit on your ears and muffle the noise. Is that why they’re called “earmuffs”? It seemed like a good reason when I thought it, but now I’m not so sure.

“We do not.” I hear a plastered grin in her voice. Plenty of fake smiles today. “We do provide a complimentary meal, however.” She waits.

Oh.

“Um, you’re welcome,” I say to her.

“It’s no trouble at all.”

“Sorry. I’ve had kind of a weird day.”

“I understand.”

I don’t think she does. “Thanks for the food.”

“It’s no trouble at all.” Footsteps fall away from my seat. Further. Further. I hear a curtain open and a door click twice.

Although I don’t know why, I find myself sighing. As I sigh, I lift my eyes enough to see what meal the orange woman brought. Hm. Cake. Just cake. A full-sized cake, too, not those cakes in cups or the personal sized cakes for those who can’t handle a real meal. It has frosting the color of wet soil, but that could be anything. I swipe my finger over the surface. Hm. Chocolate.

She left a spoon with which to eat this behemoth dessert-dinner. I don’t remember if I ate breakfast, and I forgot to eat after my doctor told me I wouldn’t see next month — understandably, one could say. I’m definitely saying it.

I bury the spoon into my mound of sugar and flour (and other ingredients, I’m sure, but I’m no baker) and static sound fizzles into the air. “Good afternoon, dear guests.” The red man speaks. “Welcome aboard. We’ll be flying into Nigh in, say, twelve hours. Please fasten your seatbelts, as the recent smogstorm will cause slight turbulence.” I look down at my lap and find one string of yarn next to my thigh. Around the end of it clings a paper note. I squint to read it. Out of order.

What can you do? I dig and dig and dig into my cake and chew and swallow and repeat. It fills me. It stuffs me. The blimp rattles and climbs. I keep eating. I keep stuffing.

Anything to drown out that dog and its vomit.