choice

Eli could see the woman's mania in her movements and her speech, but he couldn't decide what exactly had brought her to it. There hadn't been that many people back where he came from – those that did raised hard, happy with a day of work and a bit of money to show for it. He saw this old woman had something once. Had a lot of things her husband probably couldn't really afford. He saw it in the clothes on her back, the way she carried herself, always expecting the girl to take her bag or hold the cane she used.

The clerk had bunks in the back office that were actually hospital beds he'd clearly stolen from somewhere and rolled out to the store. There were only two, and so the clerk let the women have them, he and Eli abiding beneath the collapsed overhang.

The whole time, the girl was silent. If Eli got too close to her she would scurry away, never looking either of them in the eye. Her face hidden behind the cascading veil of dirty brown hair. Her figure as delicate as a dancer's, fingers long and clumsy, wrists awkward. Maybe a twelve-year-old of freakish height. Maybe a sickly twenty. She seemed to be trembling, and the clerk saw she had a cough but didn't offer her anything.

When he had them settled in the office and laid the two plates of hot snake meat in front of them, the old woman threw it into the computer monitor. The plastic clattered impotently against the long-dark and dusty screen. Tough, nearly burnt flesh falling to the tiled floor.

I am NOT eating this! I am a SHAREHOLDER and you won't treat me like this.

The girl touching the woman's arm. The voice raspy and thin, just above a whisper, and the clerk for an unreal moment thought her lips were not moving. Gramma it's all right, he worked hard to get that now... She reached over and took a piece of her own, holding it to the woman's mouth like a mother a petulant child unwilling to be weaned.

Fanny, you will NOT eat this. You'll get all thin and sick eating trash like this. He's probably spit in it. You throw it away.

Gramma I ain't...

YOU WILL THROW THAT AWAY! She moved with surprising speed for an old crone, the clerk thought, as she snatched away the girl's plate and threw it uneaten into the trash. And YOU! She rounded on the clerk again and found herself staring at empty air.

He'd taken a large step to the right for no reason other than to confuse her, and when she finally turned to him again he was standing there patiently, thumb hooked in his pocket, and those fingers drumming along. Ma'am, I feel if I'm dishonest with you at this juncture it'd ruin the rapport we've built, so in that spirit I feel you should know that it's been several months since I last needed to calculate whether thawing something out of the freezer or killing someone and stripping their corpse of all valuables was more of a hassle.

The girl inhaled deeply and shook. In his periphery, he could see her eyes finally. A crisp blue. Round, bloodshot. Something there he had not seen in so long. The desperation to live – to survive somehow, even if another minute of life meant another minute of pain. As primal and thoughtless as the eyes of a snared rabbit.

The woman looked away from him and said nothing. When he'd let the moment pass, he spoke again.

Well, I'm too tired for that kind of macroeconomic utilitarian calculation anyhow. Do let me know if you need anything else.

He heard the girl start to weep as he shut off the light and walked out.

---

Eli looked back into the center of their fire, watching as the sparks billowed up out of it, searing the sharpness of the light into his vision when his eyes were closed.

What you think they're doin' out here?

The clerk took another slug of Everclear. Same thing you probably were doing. I assume you got the flyer.

No... we'd just heard.

Doesn't seem like word would travel to whereverat you're from, no offense meant, of course.

Sometimes it'd be on the radio. The District. I thought, you know.

I know. Nothing wrong with thinking.

Lord... I fucked everything up. The tears fought with him, and closing his eyes only filled his vision with redness. I thought it was the only way, was to move along ahead of the bad people, the thieves and rapists.

The clerk nodded as if this were a novel idea. A man can't be blamed for what sounded like a good idea at the time. He passed over another bit of snake meat – the last bit of it – and with it dropped the blue and white pills onto the man's plate.

The sight of them put an end to his tears. He felt anger for a second at the abruptness and cynicism of it, but it stopped by the time he looked up and saw the clerk looking back at him without a hint of pressure or judgment. Watching him, somehow hopefully, for the same reaction he'd given each and every other time.

Why you keep giving me those if you said yourself you don't want me to take 'em?

The clerk shrugged. Same reason the Almighty lets you do evil – if there's no choice, being good really isn't all that special, is it?

---

When Eli had drifted into sleep, the clerk tossed another armload of unsold romance novels on the fire and stoked it, then ventured out into the sharp, liberating chill of the night. Through the window, he could hear the woman screaming and going on about the girl's coughing and you stupid ungrateful little cunt I am TRYING TO SLEEP. He heard the girl get up and leave, no protest on her lips. She did not see him, standing there in the wide shadow of the hunched building.

In the moonlight, the edge of the canyon was easy for her to see even through her tears and the coughs that racked her body like blows from an assailant.

She sat near the edge but not on it. Tears pooling beside her. She did not sense him there until he spoke, and then she started as if stung. He sighed – the first bit of impatience he'd yet betrayed to her.

Look, I'm the sort of crazy you don't need to worry about for the most part. How long you been sick?

Please... please I jes... I jes wawnt be lef alone. Please...

When you talk, she doesn't hear you. That voice that used to know just how everything should be, that told you stories and taught you how to knit... there isn't any Gramma behind it any more. When she cusses you and she tells you to do things or ignore things - ignore what feels wrong or unwise - that isn't her saying it. She's already off somewhere.

The girl heard that his voice was kind and quiet when he said it. In the pale late of the moon he was a phantom, voicing the doubt and dread she had long known but couldn't bear to form into words. It had stayed there inside, deeper than lust. Deeper than prayer. She wrapped her arms around his pant leg and wept into his shin. He stood still. She'd had no comfort, and so the slightest bit of it from him was enough. At length she let his leg go and looked up to him. So grateful he could not bear to meet her gaze.

That parta her... is it in heaven, you think?

If you prefer. Come on inside. You're dying.

---

They tread carefully so as not to wake the old woman. The girl's head lowered, submissive now to this new elder. Back in the pharmacy he had her sit on the counter. He covered the drive-thru window with the large comforter so the light wouldn't awaken Eli. She squinted in the flood of fluorescence. He saw the sweat on her face, saw, in the clarity of the light, the crust forming on her left eye. He reached under the counter and brought out a black bag, opening it and removing the implements within. Her jaw dropped as she saw them. Memories flooding back to her. Stethoscope. Otoscope. Thermometer. Tongue depressor. Sterile syringe.

Tell me everything that's wrong with you.

She was still fascinated with the tools. I... I dunno. I gotta cough.

Is your throat sore? You can barely speak.

Gramma says it'll --

That's not what I say. Look up.

She met his gaze.

I mean look at the ceiling, miss.

She did. He reached up to sweep her hair out of the way and she flinched. He lowered his hands to his sides. You can trust me. I'm only going to touch you to help you. Now relax, or I'll rape you blind. For fuck's sake, that was a joke, settle down. He felt for the lymph nodes at her neck – found them swollen and nodded. Open your mouth, hold this under your tongue.

She was running a hundred and one. He shook his head. Open up, say ah. She did – and after that she was under his instruction. The reassurance of somebody who knew what he was doing took weight off of her she hadn't even realized she'd been carrying. He felt her body relax as he looked in her ears with the otoscope, listened to her rattling lungs with the stethoscope. When he'd finished, he nodded.

My diagnosis is that you're a complete mess. Eye infection, ear infection, throat infection, what sounds like bronchitis. Have you been having headaches?

She nodded. I... I think I have. The heat... our air don't work. In the car. Sometimes it's like a hammer in my head.

You feel pain in your face? Here? He touched her jaw firmly.

She inhaled sharply.

Tsk tsk tsk. Sinuses, too. All right. From a coat hanger set in the wall he took off a white pharmacist's smock and draped it over her shoulders, picking up one of the plastic baskets and placing it in her clammy hand. Take that and come with me.

The rows of shelves sprawled out beyond the view of the counter. When he threw the switches, the light that fell upon them flickered, revealing bank by bank the long-shadowed treasures that were useless to all but the initiates whose footfalls had long ago been lost in the cloying silence. Bins sat piled high with white bags, instructions in print too small for her to read, and words she could never begin to understand. Some of the shelves had the new prices on them, but most still had the old $ symbol.

He laid a finger on the sloped metal rim of one shelf, running it along as he walked, his eyes fixed and on the fingertip as it wandered over the alien descriptions. Behind him, the girl with her hair down about her face like a veil and the basket held before her like a bride's bouquet. He stopped with such abruptness she nearly ran into him.

He was muttering in some other language, the utterances seeming to form words but falling meaningless to her ears. Levofloxacin to start – probably go with five hundred milligrams – two weeks to be safe. You will take one of these every day until there are none left. The large orange bottle went into the basket, the large pills rattling inside it. He looked at a small box with a nasal spray printed on the front and took that as well, his mouth forming more bizarre constructions. Mometasone furoate. You shove this up your prim little nose and squirt twice in each nostril, and then you breathe in deep as you can – ought to loosen things up a little bit. He laid hands on another nose spray. Zinc gluconate ought to kill the little fuckers dead... no. He tapped on it with his index finger, then returned it to the shelf. No. Too much risk of friendly fire – might counteract the antibiotics. This on the other hand. He took hold of a tiny eye drop bottle and put that in the basket to join the others. Moxifloxacin. As murderous to conjunctivitis as it is fun to say five times fast. A veritable war criminal in the microbiotic theater of engagement. You just need to drip one tiny little drop in your eye three times a day – and don't touch the tip of the bottle to your eye or you'll spoil it. Something for your lungs. Hm. The antibiotics will probably do enough on their own, but we can do something about the cough. He snatched up a small box and tore it open to reveal an inhaler. Nothing amazing here. Some albuterol. You just put this is in your mouth and you push down and breath in nice and deep, and your lungs will open right up. You can do that whenever you feel the coughing is too bad for you to handle.

He nodded. That should settle you up.

She looked down at the meds, then back at him. I ent got a bit of money.

Nor I, miss. Devaluation being what it is, I haven't had any around in some time.

She stared.

It's on me, if you see what it is that I am saying to you. Let's dose you up now and get you to bed.

With a single skeletal hand she swept the hair from her face and tried to look him in the eyes, but could not. The kindness she saw there was detached, clinical, paper-thin. As if he only waited to see something in her he'd been looking for over a great deal of time. He was probing her with his eyes. Not in the way some of the other men had back east. She knew what they did. Remembered what they'd done to Momma, though it had been years. Her recollection had somehow spared her the burden of remembering that day had been the first one Gramma had started insisting the power would come back on and the roads would be fixed and President Bush would come back on TV.

Thank you, she said. You... didn hafta.

I know. I think that's why I did it.