the floor: a jock-strap designed to protect some delicateorgan of flat, fan-shape; multi-levelled trusses, supports and bandages; a large U-shaped yoke of porous pink
stone; little lead tubes cut open at one end.
Currents of movement from the two bodies stirredstagnant odor pools; atrophied boy-smell of dusty locker rooms, swimming pool chlorine, dried semen. Other smells curled through pink convolutions, touching unknown doors.
The Sailor reached under the wash-stand and extracted a package in wrapping paper that shredded and fell from his fingers in yellow dust. He laid out dropper,
needle and spoon on a table covered with dirty dishes.
But no roach antennae felt for the crumbs of darkness.
“The Exterminator does a good job,” said the Sailor.
“Almost too good, sometimes.”
He dipped into a square tin of yellow pyretheum powder and pulled out a flat package covered in red and gold Chinese paper.
“Like a firecracker package,” the boy thought. At fourteen lost two fingers. . . . Fourth of July fireworks accident. . . later, in the hospital, first silent proprietary touch of junk.
“They go off, here, kid.” The Sailor put a hand to the back of his head. He camped obscenely as he opened the package, a complex arrangement of slots and overlays.
“Pure, one hundred per cent H. Scarcely a man is now alive . . . and it’s all yours.”
“So what you want off me?”
“Time.”
“I don’t dig.