Scale

Two weeks in the same hotel room, the same small town. I apply the pain scale to myself and can't come up with a number. I start out thinking maybe I'm unwell, but there's no acute sadness, physical pain, happiness or anything really. A day and then another day. Riding the elevator down to the lobby, I guess I'm lucky to have these days free of anguish. They are not to be taken for granted.

You don't have to look far to understand that. The hotel bartender mops when it's slow. She's got to clean the area herself. She works another job at the state hospital during the day. She tells me about her son's friend, a kid who hung himself behind the church, over a slight from a girl he loved they suppose. The girl cried at his funeral - probably what the dead boy hoped he'd see - but in a month she had a new boyfriend, and the dead boy didn't see that either. She tells her son this story so he understands that dead is for keeps.