Burden by Michael Marano Page A

surgical gloves. She looks at your forearm, not your face, as she tells you, “You might want to look away if you’re squeamish.”
    (“
Bashful?
”)
    You don’t look away as the needle goes in and blood arcs into the test tube. Someone once told you that blood is truly blue, and only turns red when exposed to air.
    (
A clatter as jeans with a heavy belt buckle fall to the floor. “C’mon. Don’t be shy.
”)
    The test tube fills. The blood looks black.
    (
The Boy had been like Tony. A cocky, muscular, Italian kid who knew he was beautiful. You once knew the Boy’s name, but you cannot, or choose not, to remember it now.
)
    The woman whispers, “Okay,” and pulls the needle out.
    (
You had met The Boy in the park, which that night was so very much like the park in The City where men would walk together in pairs and threes to hidden places behind trees and bushes. Summer heat, summer sweat, summer air combining into an intoxicating liquor periodically spiked with amyl nitrate.
)
    A warm red drop on your forearm, wiped away with cotton and cool alcohol. Rubber-gloved hands apply a bandage.
    (
You had felt a longing when you saw The Boy, beyond the sexual. You had wanted to be near The Boy so that you could say good-bye to Tony through him. For Tony had simply left . . . gone back to his family in Buffalo to die among people he could not stand to be near while in the prime of his life.
)
    The woman labels the test tube with a number and puts it in a rack of others like it. She takes off her gloves and puts them in a red plastic container marked “BIOHAZARD.”
    (
At least you tell yourself that is why you let things go so fast with The Boy.
)
    “We should have the results of your test in about six weeks,” she says. A testimonial to the shittiness of this town, that all such blood-work must be sent out-of-state in monthly batches.
    (
Dangerously fast.
)
    “And even if the initial results are positive, there is a possibility it could be a false positive.”
    (
Foolishly fast.
)
    She hands you a slip of piss-yellow paper. It is a carbon copy of the label on your sample. “This is your test number. Call at the end of next month and give the receptionist the number. He’ll tell you if the results are in, and you can come in for consultation.”
    (
Had you wanted this?
)
    You walk the ugly green tiles of the Health Department toward the faint daylight at the end of the hall. You are nameless here, a number. It is for your own protection, to be nameless. Your anonymity is a shield. You leave the Health Department through a soot-covered glass door.
    (
Had you wanted to be reckless? Had you wanted this worry gnawing inside you?
)
    The river, such as it is, flows by in an eroding canal of poured concrete. It is only a few feet deep, and you think of the college kid last year who had tried to commit suicide by jumping off the bridge you are now passing. He had landed in silt up to his knees, trapped, his upper chest and head above the water.
    You hate this small and ugly city full of small and ugly-minded people. You hate the shitty suburb where your cheap apartment is. You came here to live this life because you were afraid to live a life that would kill you. You fled The City when you crossed off your fifth friend in as many weeks from your address book . . . when you looked through that cheap booklet of grey vinyl and saw listing after listing that you had blotted out with marker . . . when you realized that an inky smear in someone else’s address book could be your only epitaph.
    You fled, because you knew the temptation to continue the life The City offered you would be too great if you had stayed.
    (
Was The Boy an atonement? A punishment you inflicted on yourself so you could make amends for the life and the people you abandoned?
)
    Faceless pedestrians shuffle past.
    Part of you is aroused by memories of The Boy. Even now, as your arm throbs where your blood has been drawn, you long for that moment when,