Orientation Read Online Free PDF

cook his meals and wipe his ass and offer the only companionship he had. So when he ran out of food, he did not want to give them a jingle. He tried to manage on his own, asking various transient tenants in the building to buy things for him.
    He was surrounded by empty tortilla-chip bags, the partial remains of yesterday’s dinner—the last time he ate. Hunger cut into his guts like a razor. He sat with his head thrown back, panting through his open mouth, waiting for another breeze. His thoughts drifted to a memory of the last time he used a bathtub as a bathtub instead of as a toilet. He thought about the last shower he ever took, and the needle-spray of water on his skin. He thought about other things he missed. Driving, with the window down. Sex. Friends. His feet. His dick. He thought about the last beach he ever saw—the smell of the ocean, its tug and surge around his calves, and the suck of wet sand under his heels. He loved the beach. He thought about his dick again. He had neither seen nor been able to touch his penis in over ten years, and he missed that.
    A breeze came. He heaved the caftan roll aloft, against his face. It was a good breeze, a sudden gusty one that sent empty chip bags fluttering and was cool against his damp skin. His skin was always damp. He never stopped sweating. He lifted one tit, then the other, then let the caftan drop about him. He halfheartedly reached for an empty tortilla-chip bag, sighed, and looked from the TV screen to the clock in the kitchenette, then back to the TV. The inside of his head beat like a heart. He would have to call the church people.
    He turned to look out the window. From where he sat, he could see the tops of the trees of a downtown plaza that he used to walk to and sit in, years ago. He could see the skeleton of a skyscraper that was going up. He could see the sun reflecting from an apartment tower in the distance, its light flaring in the westerly windows, then winking out as the sun moved on.
    He threw the remote at the TV. A blizzard of white erupted on the screen. He reached frantically for empty tortilla-chip bags. He ripped two bags flat, licked them clean, and tossed them aside. He rocked to get at more bags. The room groaned and creaked. The love seat lurched to the left and slipped off its four-by-sixes, and he fell. Pots and plates in the kitchenette clattered. The windows shuddered in their casements when he hit the floor. He was stranded on his back. Another bag was within reach. He tore it open and licked off the oil and salt. He tossed it aside, made fists of his hands, and hit himself in the face five times.
    There was activity in the apartment below, movement in the corridor outside, pounding on the door. He lay still. He did not answer. The footsteps retreated. They would be calling 911.
    He sighed, wiped the blood from his face. He looked up at the window. From the floor he could see no buildings at all, only a rectangle of sky. It was cloudless and intensely blue, and he stared up into it for a long while. Emergency personnel were soon crawling over him, cutting his caftan off, lifting and pushing at his naked body, rocking it into position over their slings. It is always the same engine company that comes to his rescue, the firefighters all chatty and familiar. “How you doing, Hector?” He ignores them. He keeps his rectangle of sky in view. He sees a man on a beach ambling barefoot along the surf’s edge. When the TV people arrive, with their spotlights and their boom mikes, the man on the beach breaks into a trot, angling up toward hard-packed sand. And then he turns, jogs backward for a moment, and waves goodbye—an insolent waggle of his fingers—to the people lurching through the surf behind him. He turns again without breaking stride, and he runs. He laughs. The firemen lift on three. A reporter asks why he’s laughing. He doesn’t hear the question. There is only the wind whistling in his ears and the sting of grit on his face