Nude Men

want to sue me; you may hate me for having known and not told you about this symptom: for having known and not told you that it was the last symptom she was going to have and the one that would kill her. I decided to withhold this information from you for your own good.”
    “Then why are you telling us now, for God’s sake? Why not just let us believe she died of a real, down-to-earth accident?”
    “I’m not sure why. I suppose it’s because I love watching people’s surprise. Anyway, honesty is the best policy. Is that a famous quote, or did I just invent it? Even if it comes late. Better late than never. Better safe than sorry.”
    “So you invented all those lies about her lying down on the sidewalk and closing her eyes?”
    “Well, I did tell you she would die suddenly, didn’t I? And she was lying in the street, though I suppose her eyes weren’t closed if she was hit by a car. Anyway, I wasn’t so far off.” Anger is rising very quickly, to a dangerous, boiling level within me. “I would have prevented the accident!” I cry.
    “No,” says the doctor. “Only delayed it, which is why I didn’t tell you about it. The knowledge would have made your lives hell.”
    “You murdered her by not telling us!” we scream, with all the rage of our lives.
    “You would have kept Sara locked in a little white disinfected room with no furniture, only a floor made of mattress and walls made of mattress. And even then the fatal accident would have occurred eventually.”
    Brimming with disdain, I spit: “As far as I can remember, there are only four types of deaths in life: disease, accident, murder, and suicide. So far, the only one Sara did not die of is the last, but I’m sure that with your help we can squeeze it in somewhere. After all, you’ve already been so kind as to provide us with murder.”
    Lady Henrietta and I are able to contain ourselves no longer. We attack the doctor, throwing ourselves at him. We beat him and make him bleed. I knock on his head like a woodpecker. Henrietta punches his chest. “Death and dying,” I feel, for some reason, I should say. And then I wake up.
    What an asshole of a doctor. I am still full of anger, even though I am relieved that it was just a dream. Sara did, truly, die of an accident, not a “cancer of her place” or “space” or “air.” Her accident was not preventable, not foreseeable, not to be expected, and some stupid little doctor in his stupid little office did not know it would happen.
     
    I continue taking the parrot’s excrement to that street and dropping it there.
     
    I visit my friend Tommy. I tell him about the accident, I cry, and he tries to be supportive.
    He says, “Manhattan is such an unhealthy and repulsive city, not a place for people to live, especially children. There are barely any trees, no animals except pet dogs and pigeons that shit you on the head. Though actually that’s not quite true. A few days ago, I was at my girlfriend’s apartment, doing my male courtship dance, which she always demands of me before we have sex. The music was blasting, and I was stark naked, when lo and behold, I see a blue bird outside the window. So maybe there is hope left for this mean, repulsive city.”
    “Was it a parrot?”
    “A parrot?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t know. It wasn’t close enough for me to tell.”
    “I could have you arrested for indecent exposure.”
    He looks at me a moment, to see if I’m laughing, to see if I’m joking.
    Finally, he says, “Hey, lighten up.”
    “No. It was you that woman was looking at when she ran over Sara. Why the fuck did you have to stand in the window naked? Don’t you know that’s illegal, and for good reason?”
    “What are you talking about? How would you know what she was looking at?”
    “Because she told me. What address were you at?” I ask, to make sure he was the naked man the woman had seen.
    He tells me, and I nod.
    He sits down, perfectly white and silent. After a while, he softly says, “Pardon the banality at a time like this, but... it’s a small world.”
    “A small circus.”
     
    P eople start to clap at her life.
     

chapter ten
     
     
     
    S ara’s funeral is attended by dozens of male models.
     
    L ady Henrietta has stopped painting.
    “I want to leave,” she tells me. “Take me somewhere, Jeremy.”
    “Where do you want to go?”
    “Anywhere. Just away.”
    “The only place I can think of is my mother’s house. Unless you want to spend