14 Stories by Stephen Dixon Page B

now.”
    Laslo holds the two-way in front of my mouth. “Hello,” I say.
    â€œThe papers to donate your wife’s body to the hospital for research and possible transplants are ready now, sir, so could you return with Officer Laslo?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIf you think it’ll be too trying an emotional experience to return here, could we meet someplace else where you could sign?”
    â€œDo what you want with her body. There’s nothing I ever want to have to do with her again. I’ll never speak her name. Never go back to our apartment. Our car I’m going to let rot in the street till it’s towed away. This wristwatch. She bought it for me and wore it a few times herself.” I throw it out the window.
    â€œWhy didn’t you just pass it on back here?” the man behind me says.
    â€œThese clothes. She bought some of them, mended them all.” I take off my jacket, tie, shirt and pants and toss them out the window.
    â€œLookit,” Laslo says, “I’m just a hospital security guard with a pair of handcuffs I’m not going to use on you because we’re in a public bus and all you’ve just gone through, but please calm down.”
    â€œThis underwear I bought myself yesterday,” I say to him. “I needed a new pair. She never touched or saw them, so I don’t mind still wearing them. The shoes go, though. She even put on these heels with a shoe-repair kit she bought at the five-and-dime.” I take off my shoes and drop them out the window.
    The bus has stopped. All the other passengers have left except Laslo. The driver is on the street looking for what I’m sure is a patrolman or police car.
    I look at my socks. “I’m not sure about the socks.”
    â€œLeave them on,” Laslo says. “They look good, and I like brown.”
    â€œBut did she buy them?” I think they were a gift from her two birthdays ago when she gave me a cane picnic basket with a dozen­and-a-half pairs of different-colored socks inside. Yes, this is one of them,” and I take them off and throw them out the window. “That’s why I tried and still have to get out of this city fast as I can.”
    â€œYou hear that?” Laslo says into the two-way radio, and the man on the other end says “I still don’t understand.”
    â€œYou see,” I say into it, “we spent too many years here together, my beloved and I—all our adult lives. These streets. That bridge. Those buildings.” I spit out the window.” Perhaps even this bus. We took so many rides up and down this line.” I try to uproot the seat in front of me but it won’t budge. Laslo claps the cuffs on my wrists. “This life,” I say and I smash my head through the window.
    An ambulance comes and takes me back to the same hospital. I’m brought to Emergency and put on a cot in the same examining room she was taken to this last time before they moved her to a semiprivate room. A hospital official comes in while the doctors and nurses are tweezing the remaining glass splinters out of my head and stitching me up. “If you’re still interested in donating your wife’s body,” he says, “then we’d like to get the matter out of the way while some of her organs can still be reused by several of the patients upstairs.”
    I say “No, I don’t want anyone walking around with my wife’s parts where I can bump into him and maybe recognize them any day of the year,” but he takes my writing hand and guides it till I’ve signed.

THE SECURITY GUARD
    I’ve been looking for a job for a long time, can’t find one, when I see a help-wanted ad for a security guard. I apply, the interviewer for the security company says “You’re really too old for the job but look young and limber enough and we need men badly these days, especially of your color and build. It’s a booming