and my friend kept screaming none of the needles
were clean. He was drunk, had a bad toothache
and in general it had been one of those evenings.
Novocaine would soothe him but he wanted
to see the doctor's credentials. I pretended
not to know him. Then a woman took my arm,
asked me if I would help her. She was an American
living in Málaga who had come over to Morocco
for the day with a friend, a man in his fifties,
whom she had known just a short time. Although
attractive, she must have been fifty herself.
They had been in a hotel room making love
when suddenly the man lifted his head and died,
right there on top of her, still inside her.
She had lain quietly for a moment before heaving
him off, lain half in passion, half in horror.
Now there was a question of passports and identity;
she needed to get home, had to be in Geneva
on Wednesday, hardly knew this man who had
died on top of her, wouldn't be able to stay
for the funeral, had no idea about next of kin
or if the man had a family, friends who would
claim him, bury him in a way that was proper.
My friend kept shouting at the Moroccan doctors,
shouting in a German accent so they wouldn't know
he was American—not because he thought himself
a discredit to his country, but just the opposite.
The Vietnam War was still dragging on
and he thought his country a discredit to him.
As for the woman, I called the consulate, then
sat with her until someone came. She had been
all prepared for a little holiday, a little
diversion from her expatriate's life in Málaga.
If asked, she could describe the exact curve
of her life with the luncheons marked out in advance,
the trips to Paris, the wrinkles all ironed out.
As when you are driving along a winter road
and your car hits some ice, slides out of control—
so had this woman's life taken such a turn.
As for the man, I found myself speculating
what he had thought or if he had time to
think at all, if his death had appeared first
as orgasm, beauty become terror, as Rilke says.
Anyway, I chose to stay with my friend whose comedy
unwound itself out of the hospital to a Moroccan
dentist, whom our cabdriver coaxed from bed
at three in the morning. Strapped to a barber chair,
my friend shouted, Fuck Nixon, fuck Nixon, to wipe out
the pain as his wife and the dentist, as even
the cabdriver and myself stared into his mouth.
Oh, what a pink mouth it was and think of the pain
it held there. We leaned over his chair, almost
pushing each other out of the way to see into
that quivering pinkness, like an animal turned
inside out, or a rabbit once it's been skinned.
We stood looking into that scream as if looking
into the world where everything goes wrong,
where suddenly you are making love to a corpse,
where your car plunges into a ditch, where
the hippie vacation breaks apart on rotten teeth;
looking into that pink hole as if looking
for some way to do it differently or for some
early warning, but there is nothing, nothing at all.
And later, back at our dingy hotel, and my friend
knocked out on pills, and me sleeping, suddenly
I'm waked up by his wife screaming in the hall.
I hit the floor, flick on the light and all around
the gallery, people are poking their heads
from their rooms or peeking over the balcony
or looking up from the downstairs hall at this
pretty American girl in her nightgown screaming.
What is it? What did she see? Nothing, nothing.
For a second the world snapped up her attention
before rolling off in one more awful black circle.
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