Baboon

MOSQUITO BITE

MARCH

On Thursday, he'd been out on the town all night. He was drunk. A woman with shiny high-heeled boots came on to him, and he ended up going home with her. He can't remember if it came to anything more than some fooling around and sleeping. He simply can't recall—did they have sex or not — it's impossible to remember. When he woke up the first thing he heard was a strange scratching sound. Scratching and scraping and then a peeping sound as well. Something living was puttering around alarmingly near, and he froze. He opened his eyes. But it wasn't until he came up on his elbows that he realized where the sound was coming from: at least forty hamsters were darting around in their cages stacked in a high tower, one of them rested its front paws on the chicken wire and was staring him right in the eye. He shivered. Then he heard a flush in the bathroom and the woman, who looked clearly older than he, staggered across the room, white as a sheet, drying her mouth with the back of her hand; she had likely been throwing up. She fell on the bed groaning and pulled the blanket over her. It smelled stale and sour. He hurried to get up and dressed. On his way out he noticed that the apartment was a mess, completely filthy. When he got out to the street, he had no idea where he was at first, but then it became clear to him that he was on the outskirts of Copenhagen. He felt fine actually. He bought a cup of coffee and began to walk toward the center of town. His sister was arriving home from London that day and they'd made plans to go straight from the airport to the summerhouse. It was drizzling. Quiet rain. Nice on the skin. He looked at his watch and picked up his pace. His thoughts lapped gently in his head: It was good that he was in excellent shape, that's probably why he didn't have a hangover. It was good that he'd gotten lucky. It was good that it was raining, and good that he was so horny, that meant at least that he had something good to look forward to. He crossed the Town Hall Square. A flock of greedy pigeons picking at rice on the steps flew up in a fright when he walked through them. Fifteen minutes later he let himself into his apartment in Christianshavn. Twenty minutes later he had showered and dressed. He boiled two eggs and packed his overnight bag. Then he squeezed a couple of oranges and warmed some milk for more coffee. He only had time to skim through the newspaper and eat his fill before he drove to the airport.

* * *

He noticed right away that Charlotte had bought new perfume on her trip. He couldn't figure out if the dominant scent was jasmine or orange blossoms. She looked good, fit. They hugged and he kissed her on the cheek. She laughed at his bloodshot eyes, and he told her he'd been out with the guys from his office and they had forced him to do shots. She stroked his cheek. He sped up. It looked like it was going to be nice weather. They talked about how he needed to cut the grass, and about their mutual friends who were coming for dinner and would stay overnight. They decided to make curried lamb with the meat they had in the freezer.

She had bought new sheets in London. Sateen. And three pairs of shoes. The show had gone well for her. He turned up the soft, ambient music, she stopped talking and relaxed. Suddenly he remembered that the woman had been wearing a garter belt. Now he remembered that he had stripped her panties off her. It was going to be a wonderful Easter. Their brother and his children might come on Sunday. Then he'll hide Easter eggs in the garden and be fun and avuncular. He smiled and looked for his sunglasses. The sky was cloudless and the spring light was so bright it almost blinded him.

* * *

That evening they got cozy on the futon couch with their blankets. She had made cardamom tea. He watched the news on three different stations, she read magazines. They gossiped about their mother and laughed. He felt tired and warm.

The next morning he went for a run on the beach. There was nearly no wind. The sand was wet from the rain during the night. He enjoyed the cold salt air, he felt strong and at ease and decided to sprint the final leg; lyme grass and sand as far as the eye could see.

* * *

When he got back, Charlotte was setting out lunch on the patio. He did his exercises on a yoga mat in the hallway, stretching at the wall bar. They ate. He put more logs in the fireplace. She hummed in the kitchen while kneading dough. He rested. Then he went to cut the grass. The neighbor looked over the fence and greeted them. Charlotte waved from the kitchen; now she had a towel on her head and her face was covered with a white facial mask. She looked like a clown. When he was finished with the lawn he drank a cold beer. It's useless to rake up clippings when they're wet. Then they started to make dinner, and at six o'clock Stine and Jakob arrived with Emily in a bassinet. They both knew Jakob from elementary school, and he had also gone to high school with him. Charlotte had hung small gold and silver eggs from a bouquet of birch branches. The meal was well prepared and the wine, delicious. The women talked about Charlotte's boutique and how difficult it was to find a good au pair. He told Jakob that he had to hire two casting directors for a new TV show on homes of the rich and famous. Jakob asked if people weren't tired of such programs but he said that they'd found a whole new spin on the subject. At around midnight, when Stine and Jakob retired to the guest wing, Charlotte also went to bed. He relaxed in the living room with a glass of cognac and noticed the light from the kitchen pouring out the open door onto the wall bar in the entryway, illuminating it so that it shone, red and warm. And suddenly he saw Maja, his ex-girlfriend, leaning against it, one evening when she had been lying seductively on the bed, but he had wanted to take her standing. And so she held onto the wall bar with both hands, and it was only because his thigh muscles were so strong that they could do it in that position. The thought had crossed his mind right before he came, and was maybe even part of the pleasure. He laughed at the thought, emptied his glass, and got up to do the dishes.

* * *

The next morning was the first time he noticed the mosquito bite. It itched on his left buttock. He must have gotten it when he was cutting the grass. They waved good-bye to Stine and Jakob and went for a long walk. Charlotte said that it was so wonderful to take time off. She really needed it, moving the shop to a better and larger location had really taken its toll on her. She looked sweet in her green rain jacket, like when they were children. He could smell himself. They went through the pine forest, where it was dark and slate gray, the dampness rose from the ground, Charlotte looked at him and said something, but her eyes had changed to dark holes, she looked like a skeleton, he thought, stopping to take a piss.

In the evening he noticed there was an opening in the mosquito bite. He had obviously scratched it. It was Saturday. They watched a movie and drank the rest of the wine. Charlotte fell asleep during it, snoring lightly with her mouth open. Suddenly he remembered that the woman with the shiny boots had rolled a joint in bed. But he still couldn't remember if they'd had sex. He shook his head, irritated.

* * *

But the bite was really tender and swollen when he showered on Sunday morning. He got Charlotte to look at it. She washed it with some rubbing alcohol and he winced and she said he was a baby and slapped his behind; he pretended to faint, then sprang up and howled like a wild animal and she hunted him down through the house; they laughed. A horn sounded in the driveway loud and long, then the door opened and Pete, their brother, sauntered into the living room, ruddycheeked and loud. The children had already run out to the yard to climb the trees. He went outside to bring them in for lunch, one in each arm, both of them squirming and squealing with delight.

They had herring and schnapps. Charlotte made an effort to be friendly to the children. But they were out of control, running from the table constantly, peeling the painted eggs, knocking over a beer, crawling up on his lap and pulling at his beard. He thought it was pleasant to have a little warm kid sitting on his lap, but Charlotte was clearly not amused. As she used to say, she didn't like children, and now she looked obviously put off. In contrast, Peter didn't seem to notice the commotion. He talked about the divorce, getting himself all worked up, until finally he was forced to signal to him that children with their big ears were nearby. Charlotte got up and helped them into their jackets and they ran right out and started throwing the newly cut grass at each other. As Peter was talking, he realized that he'd never hid Easter eggs. If he left right now, maybe he'd still be able to buy some. But he didn't feel like it, and it really didn't matter now. Peter poured some more schnapps. He'd always been so damned impulsive. He was never in control of anything. And now his wife had had enough. Peter's eyes looked wild, he pushed his chair back, stretched his legs, and hit the table with his fist, "It's fucking bullshit that she'll only let me see the children on the weekends!" And then at last it came out that she'd already met someone else. To top it all off, it was an old geezer with a shitload of money, as he put it. Charlotte seemed like she was going to give him a lecture, then suddenly she looked bored. She went into the kitchen to make coffee. The mosquito bite was fucking painful now. He felt around and noticed a large bump. It had evidently not helped to clean it. Peter calmed down, then began to cry. Charlotte came in the door rolling her eyes and shaking her head as she was drying a green glass bowl. He promised that he would try to help Peter find a better apartment. Maybe there was someone in the office who knew of something. He'd make a few calls. Peter blew his nose in the napkin. Then the children came bursting in completely covered in wet grass and mud.

* * *

In the middle of the night he woke up feeling miserable. His buttock was throbbing. He woke up Charlotte, who reluctantly got out of bed and turned on the light. She could see that there was an infection and the bump was hard and red. "It looks like it's turning into a boil," she said, yawning. Then he made her get a pin, hold it in the flame of the gas burner, and prick a hole in it. She pressed out the puss, shouting, "Yuck, disgusting!" He clenched his jaw. She told him he could get some aspirin in the bathroom, and then she turned off the light. The next day they cleaned and locked up the house. He carried their bags out to the car and closed the trunk. A blackbird belted its song from the tall birch tree near the driveway, and he caught sight of a whole bunch of snowdrops shining white on the wet black ground. An unusual feeling of loss, emptiness, sadness — he couldn't put his finger on it — welled up in him. But there was also joy. The blackbird, the flowers, and the sun, which was already low in the gray sky, hidden behind passing clouds. Then Charlotte came out and began to talk about how he should hire a man to lay the paving stones she had ordered for him from Italy. "You'll enjoy the house more if you have a proper terrace," she said. When he got home there was a message from their mother. She really wanted to see them on Easter, but maybe next week? He erased the message and put on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, turning it up and opening the door to the roof terrace. The gold cupola atop the tower of the Church of Our Savior shone dimly in the dusk light. His buttock throbbed. It'll pass, he said to himself, it's nothing, it'll soon pass. Then he took a shower, got dressed, and went down to the local bar and got a couple of pints of draught beer, and his spirits quickly lifted talking to the bartender and some guys from a rival production company, and then he saw Heidi come in the door, loaded, accompanied by a fat girlfriend, and this suited him because the last time they were together was wonderful. So he got up from his rivals' table and shouted, "Hey gorgeous!" and she threw her arms around his neck. He could smell the liquor on her breath, an angel must've sent you.

Later they stumbled into his apartment, took off their clothes and threw them on the floor. He turned his back to her to turn on the light and she bent over to wrestle her feet out of her tights, then she got up and caught sight of his butt. Terrified, she let out a scream. He turned toward her. "Turn around again. What the hell is that?" He had almost forgotten about it. She walked over to him. "Turn around," he just stood there shushing her, grabbing her and kissing her throat, and she searched with her hand for what she had seen and then froze and pulled back, "Have you gotten the bubonic plague? No, stop it! Stop it! There's no fucking way I'm having sex with you when you've got that. . what is it, it must hurt like hell!" He persisted. "It's nothing, come on, Heidi." But Heidi wanted to wash her hands. And she wanted to go home. She forgot her tights. He was pissed. He wanted to screw her so badly, he really needed it.

* * *

A few days later, while he was in a meeting with a Swedish colleague and his partner Stig, it began to hurt so badly that he couldn't concentrate. He squirmed uneasily around in his chair. As the day went on the entire cheek swelled up more and more. In the evening he had a fever. He called Charlotte. He lay on his stomach freezing, and Charlotte said, "Christ, you should see yourself, you look like a baboon." She sighed deeply and carefully laid her hand on his lower back. She said it looked like there was a whole bunch of small boils around the large one. She called their uncle, who was a doctor, and he laughed, joking that he always knew he was a bit of a pain in the ass. Their uncle called the doctor from the emergency room, and when the doctor came at 10:30 and took one look at him, he asked why in the world he hadn't gone to his own doctor a long time ago, and sent him to the emergency room. The boils needed to be cut away.

* * *

And they were. He threw up into a paper bag. The pain was beyond words. Afterwards the nurse put a compress of gauze on it and told him that a home-care nurse would come and change the bandage once he got home. He thought about old people needing to be washed and their diapers changed. They kept him in the hospital for two days, and gave him a round of antibiotics. He lay on his side in the bed, tried to work, dozed, and watched TV. The fever subsided a bit. He insisted on going home. His mother picked him up and he lay in the backseat, quiet and drained. "You just need to concentrate on getting better, honey," his mother said. "Will you please stop it. I'm not SICK," he said. "It's just a mosquito bite for Christ's sake."

He called Stig and told him that he'd be out the next couple of days. He took his pills. Every morning the nurse came, a meticulous, straight-backed woman who looked like she'd been very beautiful once; she pulled the bloody gauze off, washed out the wound, and put on a new bandage. But then the fever went up. He called her Gorgeous. She smiled and shook her head shyly as she took his temperature. He had no appetite, only a constant headache, and in time, pain in his sinuses. After he'd been home eight days, the nurse arranged to have an ambulance bring him back to the hospital for new blood tests. It turned out that he had contracted a staph infection while he was in the hospital. More antibiotics. Then home again. Charlotte came over with soup and red wine. But in the middle of the night he woke up because he couldn't breathe. He roused Charlotte, who had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room with all her clothes on as she usually did. She got up, dazed, and turned on the light. Then she screamed, clapping her hand over her mouth. He was swollen up beyond recognition, his torso, his throat, his face — red, thick, and deformed. Charlotte ran to the phone to call an ambulance, whimpering, hysterical. He tried to get up, but she yelled, "Don't move! Don't move!" In the ambulance they immediately gave him an injection. They took his vitals. Then put on the sirens. He could hardly see out of his eyes. They raced him down the long corridors, and at last they arrived, a sea of anxious faces gathered around him, becoming one gray, blurry mass.

* * *

It was the penicillin. He was allergic to it. The doctor explained to him, "You had a violent allergic reaction. You got here just in time. We have your sister to thank for wasting no time in making that call!" The doctor smiled and patted his shoulder. But the next morning the results of the new blood test arrived, showing that it was clearly a case of resistant bacteria. He yelled at the staff and refused to wear the ridiculous robe, not to mention the underwear. He didn't like the food, he didn't like the smell, everything was disgusting. This place makes you sick, he raged. His room had small low windows. The hospital was built at a time when they all economized on glass. He couldn't stop thinking about this as he lay there. Every time he looked over at the small peepholes and out to the world, he thought about it. 1973. Maybe '75. The oil crisis. All they could think about was saving money on expensive materials like glass. It drove him crazy.

APRIL

He was sick. They sent him home. He came back. Very sick. New medicine. Home. Gorgeous let herself in and rustled about somewhere near him. Her cool hand against his warm skin. Back to the hospital. More tests, a biopsy, blood tests, urine tests. Pus began flowing from his ears, his eyes and nose were clogged and sticky with green gook, he felt nauseous all the time, and eventually got diarrhea, later, blood in the diarrhea. He watched the transparent tube where the sulfa drug went through in drips to his vein at the back of his hand three times a day. His uncle called and demanded to talk to the head doctor. This can't be true. There must be something you can do. There wasn't. "Yes, there is," said Charlotte. "We can hope and pray that you get better." He had no strength to either hope or pray. By this time, he felt like a slab of meat rapidly decaying. But also: It's not true. Denial. Aggression. Later, panic attacks and difficulty breathing. He changed from one medicine to another. And to different types of medicine. The infection spread. He was moved to his own room. He was delirious. Peter visited and took one look at him and cracked up laughing. And he laughed with him, as best as he could, almost grateful for his brother's laughter, his completely ordinary reaction, "Holy shit, you look awful!" But it got worse. And it went quickly. No strength left to sit up, push the call button, scratch his leg, hold a glass of water.

The doctor repeated what was already known,"Unfortunately the bacteria are in theory multi-resistant," and he sat down on the edge of the bed. "We've decided to move you to the General Hospital. I've already talked with them and they can take you as early as this evening." The doctor leaned forward and said confidentially, "I have to be honest with you. We can only hope for the best."

JUNE

Isn't it summer? He tries to wave hello. Charlotte smiles, but she doesn't know how to comfort him. She calls their mother even though that's the last thing he needs. Their mother is shocked by how much weight he's lost. She brings roast chicken and mashed potatoes and feeds him with a teaspoon. He throws it all up. He wants her to go. That anxious old mourner's mug. She cries into the mashed potatoes. He feels guilty. He closes his eyes and pretends to sleep. He opens them a little, and now she's eating what's left of the food with the teaspoon right from the Tupperware thingy. Later, he actually does fall asleep. And there's a waterfall tumbling over rocks and a sound that's about to burst his head open. Isn't it summer now? Then he's on his knees on the floor in the little bathroom throwing up. He's in the infectious disease ward at the General Hospital. "This time you're staying," said the doctor. "Your immune system is burned out, you might say, and we'll do all we can, but no promises." He has fungus growing in his mouth, in his intestines, on his hands. He's lost almost all of his hair, and, in three months, he's lost fifty-five pounds. When Charlotte calls Stig, thinking he's asleep, he overhears her saying, "When I was here yesterday, two nurses helped him to the bathroom, they wanted to give him a bath. I'm standing in the doorway and he vomits this thin green fluid into the sink. Then I see diarrhea running down one of his thighs, and he passes out. Oh my god, Stig, I thought he'd fucking died, just like that, collapsed. But there was a pulse. They asked me to get help, and then three people lifted him up and carried him back to bed. It's so humiliating. You can smell him from far away. You've got to visit him."

He thinks about what he's touched. Did he touch the toilet? Did he touch the chair? Did he lean on the chair on his way to the sink? Did he touch some bacteria, perhaps some bacteria found its way into his body? He doesn't want Charlotte to get too close to him. He keeps asking her to wash her hands. She stops coming by so often, she has to take care of her shop, get ready for the sale, it's a busy time with the big summer sale. And, as she says, crying hysterically, "I've got to live my own life, don't I? I've got to look out for myself." It's something she's realized, she says, after thinking long and hard about it for almost three months. She gets loaded at Stine and Jakob's garden party. She sits on the lap of a young man and sings.

He doesn't notice that she stays away for long periods of time. There are visions and shadows and faces that come close and then disappear. There's nausea like a snarling dog pressing its wet fur against the inside of his esophagus. There's a constant whistling in the pipes or maybe from his body. They have grafted skin from his thigh to his buttock. He doesn't remember. Charlotte says, "They've done an excellent job," but he doesn't believe her. His mother talks to him with the same consoling, loving voice she had when he was a child. She keeps talking to him until he calms down, and he does calm down, listening to her voice, as if it came from above, as if it were flowing into the room like liquid or gas.

Finally, Stig comes to see him. He pushes the door open, and puts his hand to his mouth in shock, as if he's seen a ghost. Then he backs out. The door closes quietly. A little later he comes into the room and sits on the edge of a chair. He has a big bouquet of dark purple flowers on his lap. He whispers, "What have they done to you?" The bedsores hurt. He doesn't have the strength, for conversing, for holding up his head so that he can look at Stig. And Stig says, almost angrily, "For Christ's sake man, how long have we known each other? A long time. Right?" He looks down, "I never thought that. . " And Stig puts the flowers on the nightstand, lays his hand on the blanket, and squeezes it, swallowing hard. Get those flowers out of here. He can't think about anything else. Stig had touched them and then the blanket, for God's sake, don't touch me. Stig gives him a pleading look. But he closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, Stig's gone. At night he asks for a mirror. The nurse holds it in front of him: His cheeks are sunken, his skin hangs in large gray folds, his eyes are yellow, he looks like someone about to die. A corpse. He turns his head and looks at his inflamed ears. He'd already seen his hollowed out ribs and sunken stomach. His arms and legs that have transformed into bones covered with skin. He has felt the top of his head. But the face. He wants to scream, he has no strength. "Sleep well." The nurse is standing in the doorway and has turned off the light. She leaves. And he cries.

JULY

To see your own face. Now he's tormented by violent panic attacks, they give him medicine for this as well, and it helps: he sleeps better and more, it's as though his thoughts were padded with wool, no longer knocking hard against each other; he receives intravenous feeding, oxygen, morphine, he calls for a bed pan, he asks for music, and they bring it, he listens to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the edge of pain is taken off.

* * *

Charlotte sits in the window seat swinging her legs. Smiling, she hesitates to tell him that she's now seeing Stig, and that they're in fact in a relationship. "Isn't that great?" He grumbles. "Aren't you going to congratulate me?" You've betrayed me. She, in the sunlight with the blue sky behind her, his rage reduced to sniveling, no strength. Charlotte says, "It's funny, isn't it? If you weren't here, I would never have noticed him, NEVER!" She giggles. "He's not exactly a hunk, is he?" And then, dreamily, "But we understand each other, I've talked a lot lately — about you — and your illness, you know, that's how we got to know each other. Are you sleeping?" She hops down and comes closer. He swipes at her with his limp hand. She looks troubled, "I thought you'd be happy." He tries to smile. All is lost, he's given everything he has, he can't do any more. And the days run together with the light nights, suddenly he comes down with pneumonia, high fever, he has a nightmare about the hamster cages, dreaming that he's trapped with the scratching animals; everything is going downhill, they can't stabilize him.

One day the head doctor sits on the edge of his bed and says that he has to give it to him straight: it'd be a good idea if his family from Jutland, his sisters and father, visit him now. The doctor keeps looking him straight in the eye with a serious and compassionate expression, but he fails to understand even this hint. "Why in the world should your so-called father come now? What business does he have here? He's never once bothered to send you so much as flowers!" The mother is beside herself, her voice rises. Charlotte gives her a beseeching look. The mother sniffles, squeezing his hand. He pinches her as hard as he can, and she pulls away frightened; he asks Charlotte to wash his hands with soap and water. "And rubbing alcohol! Put gloves on. Put rubber gloves on before you wash me." He shakes his contaminated hand in the air. "For Christ's sake, go get a washcloth, NOW!"

Then his father and half-sisters arrive. And his mother and Peter, Peter, pale and shy this time. They say good-bye. Yes, that's what they're doing. They sit at his deathbed holding back their tears. Then Charlotte says, "That's enough. He's tired out." They back out of the room with dark eyes. She pulls the blanket up around him. "Don't die. You're not going to die. Just you wait and see." And he thinks she smiles. But she winces when she gets out into the hallway. Because she knows she's losing him, but she doesn't know if it's her fault. She runs a little, desperate to get out into the cool summer night.

* * *

When they detect meningitis, he's given a new kind of medicine that's hard on the kidneys. He turns yellow. They're afraid his muscle mass will be permanently damaged. They say that the medicine is working. But the blood tests still show an infection. Then it looks like it's beginning to have an effect. And he, he has no suspicion about the threat of death. He has no intention of dying. He puts on the headphones: "Give it away, give it away, give it away now. . " The bass pumps, he rocks his head from side to side on the pillow, and looks out at the evening turning blue, the moon half hidden behind the drifting clouds. Did I have sex with her or not? And then suddenly he remembers. He didn't. He couldn't get it up! He smiles to himself, it's so funny, imagine that, he couldn't do it, he was healthy and strong, but he couldn't get his dick to cooperate, and now he also remembers that they shared a joint afterwards, when he'd given up, and she had been so shit-faced that her eyes rolled around in their sockets, then she fell asleep with her head in his lap; that's how it was.

MARCH

He opens the main door and falls onto the street. It's raining. He can't get up. He tries to get up on all fours, but his body refuses. He simply lies flat on his stomach on the dirty wet sidewalk. There are a few people at the bus stop watching. Then, at last, an older couple comes over to him. They could be his grandparents. He takes their hands and with great difficulty, he hoists himself up. A couple of teenagers hide their laughter. A young woman turns her back. He thanks the old people, and leans against the wall of the building with one hand. Then he starts to move up the street with small steps. As usual, he feels pins and needles in his feet. They say there's chronic nerve damage. Charlotte is furious at him. In a way, that makes it easier. He'd rather not be bothered. His clothes hang on him. He lives on pork chops with gravy, but he only gets fat around the waist, it doesn't distribute evenly, so he still has toothpick arms and toothpick legs, but he doesn't have the energy to use the exercise bike, he can't be bothered; it takes him at least ten minutes to crawl up to his apartment on the third floor; he smokes a lot of dope, that helps, he sleeps better, it dulls the anxiety — his fears, simply. There's so much he understands now, which he can't bear to understand: he is terrified to die, he's afraid of being sick—cancer, heart attack, a boil on the ass—there's so much he's come to realize, the underlying frailty, how close he was to kicking the bucket, and then the fact that his life has broken into a thousand small discordant pieces, it can never again be as it was, he's not the same person anymore, no pride, no joy, no recognition: THIS IS ME, but whatever he is, he doesn't know, he has no idea how he'll move on with his life, as Charlotte put it, when she also told him it's sink or swim and slammed the door, he could hear her shouting something else on her way down the stairs.

He smokes, turns up the music. And suddenly starts laughing, loud and heartfelt: Shit, when he was at Peter's and his new girlfriend's wedding last week, he threw up and got such a pain in his stomach that his mother had to drive him home; shit, there wasn't anything fucking wrong with him, it was just stress, all those people, no, nothing was wrong, it was just that he was suffering from an imaginary sickness, that's so fucking funny and so to hell with everything, he's sold the summer house, he will sell his share in the company to Stig, he's staying here, ordering pork chops from the take-out place across the street — they're so kind to deliver it to him — dragging himself down the stairs to buy dope, and then: ah, sweet sleep, sweet refreshing rest, thank the Lord; he sits down and cracks opens his long-anticipated beer, suddenly feeling like a newborn with everything to look forward to.