If you are a man, have you had sex with another man? Circle one: yes or no.
They met at the blood bank. They laughed because they would not have been paid anyway. They were rejected by triage at the same time, bumped into each other on the way out the door. Both of impure mothers, unclean lifestyles, and unstable immigration statuses. And so they became lovers. But then A's unclean mother died, and so he had to return to the desert land behind the impenetrable wall. "Don't try to contact me," he told B. "My family is too poor to own a telephone. I'll be too busy to access an internet cafe." "Can I write you?" "No, we don't have a postal service. Everything goes to a P.O. box." He would, of course, be too busy to check his family's box.
The funds for A's flight were raised in a flurry of late night shifts, desperate gambling, and begging. A did not have a job; he lived on a scholarship allowance and was, as such, penniless. He felt no need to ask B for help in his time of need. Nor was there any need to explain that, no, my family does not know who you are. I will never tell them as long as I live. B, too, had been baptized under the muddy foot of a bloody prophet. There was an understanding, both between themselves and with the country they inhabited. They lived their lives as secrets.
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B took to carrying a jacknife on his person while driving the cab. This was not an unusual practice for a cabbie to get into. He had been robbed before, had known cabbies who had been killed. Yet, he knew this was not a precautionary measure. He did not interrogate himself further.
An old woman in green ruffles entered his cab outside the airport at 1 a.m. She did not speak. In his mind's eye, he could see the vapor escaping the exhaust pipe.
"Where to?"
She began to speak in French. The sound of it irritated him, brought up childhood memories of doctors. Moreover, she knew he was Haitian. No, tonight I am just a black. He could make out from her meandering speech that she was mentally unstable. He drove into the marsh by the airport. He cut off her skin with the jacknife. Hung it on a piece of driftwood. They found him wandering through the muck of the marsh, draped in green ruffles.
