13thWR

FEVER / by Laura Migdal

Although the woman can make it to work on time she will inevitably fuck something up, some detail that will require her supervisor's intervention. And she is sick, legitimately, today. She bums with fever in the damp clammy sheets. At times, especially when ill, she can find nothing internal to rely on. Even taking a shower becomes burdensome; she wishes someone else could do it for her.

She reaches into the well of her past. She conjures up Nancy, born in Santo Domingo, her best friend from childhood. Nancy was plump and good-natured. Her family's apartment on 108th Street was filled with vinyl-covered sofas and chairs, Jesus icons on all surfaces, and smelled of old socks. She stole a small plastic doll from Nancy once and felt terrible about it, although she didn't give it back.

Lying in bed, her husband gone to work, the snow ploughs reassuringly growling toward Rutland, the woman imagines Nancy sitting at the foot of her bed, Nancy the way she was when they last saw each other, girls, Nancy wearing a blue dress, her hair held placidly in place by two ponytail elastics with white knobs. She was leaving; her family was moving back to the Dominican Republic. Nancy gave her a photograph, a studio portrait, Nancy wide-eyed and sincere against a pale-sky background.

Nancy vanishes. Here comes the woman's step-sister in bleached jeans and a white tank top. She tosses a pack of cigarettes onto the bed. "Here," she says. "Smoke these. It will wake you up." The woman obliges. She smokes. "Now take three of these," her step-sister says, opening a pharmacy bottle and giving her three red pills. "Drink," she commands, and hands her a fifth of bourbon. The woman drinks, swallows. Her step-sister takes out a plastic dildo. "Suck," she says.

She follows her step-sister's orders. She does it all. It does not occur to her to say no. "No" is an option that does not exist. "Yes" is survival, "no" is death.

Her step-sister leaves. The woman is alone, again, covered with cool green leaves in the shape of almonds. It is late spring and the lilacs have already bloomed. To sink into the earth, to let it absorb her fears - she would gladly give away all of her memories for this moment of perfect quiet