The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony Page A

threatening hand over the billy club. “
Drop him
,” he says.
    “Who are you?” says the general.
    “I’m a security guard,” he says, and taps his baseball cap.
    The general laughs out loud. He lifts me a little higher. “The Big M supermarket? You’re a security guard for a supermarket?”
    The fat man moves his arms away from his considerable stomach. He places a threatening hand over the billy club. “So what?”
    I look back and forth between them. They don’t move. So I open my mouth and gargle, “
Bawr
.”
    This is good enough for the retired general.
    “See?” he says happily. “The boy’s no mute.” He drops me back into my chair.
    The security guard watches him leave, and then turns to me. “You okay?” he says.
    I nod.
    “You ever need anything, just come by the Big M and ask for Herman. I mean that,” he says.
    I give the billy club a nervous look.
    He holds it up. “This? Don’t worry about this,” he says. “It’s a fake. Made of polymer or something.” He snaps a finger against the club. It makes a stubborn, plastic sound. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone,” he says. “But only the police get the real ones. Not too many people know that. Security Guards don’t get the real ones.” Then his mood abruptly changes. A troubled look consumes him. “Baseball caps and plastic,” he says. “I was in Desert Storm, for Chrissakes.”
    A soft breeze passes through us. Next to his leg, the billy club lifts like a feather.
    “You got any hamburger?”
    I point to the chalkboard.
    “A dollar a pound?” he says. “Is that right?” He fidgets with the rim of the baseball cap as if he can’t believe it. “This place is cheap,” he says. “Cheaper than the Big M supermarket, even with my employee discount.” Herman removes a wallet from the nether regions of his gigantic pants. “Gimme two pounds,” he says, and flakes out the dollars.
    Dr. Monica would be proud. She wants me meet people. “It’s important to try to interact, Mr. Pfliegman,” she tells me. “Look for opportunities to have social encounters. After all, look how much you’ve improved just meeting with me. You don’t cough as much, and your lungs are clearer. If you can communicate with me, then I’m sure you can communicate with other people.”
    “But Darling,” I want to say, “you are not ‘people.’” And I’ve had encounters. Just the other day, a meat customer was so pleased with the weight and texture of his top round that he held out his hand, intimating that he wanted me shake it. He beamed at me in a friendly manner, so I reached out to him, but as soon as he saw my tiny hand, bony, quivering, skin flaking off like grated cheese, he quickly withdrew the offer. The truth is, most Virginians aren’t looking for encounters with hairy little men who do not speak, who wear bristling, cakey beards and Disneyland sweatshirts. Men who cough greedily at the slightest cross-wind.
    Most Virginians buy their meat from me and then return to their cars and drive back to wherever they came from. They don’t talk to me or about me. They pretend I don’t exist. Which is fine.
    I just read the books that I keep in the bus.
    Take
Madame Chafouin’s French Dictionary
.
    A few weeks ago, on my way out of town from Dr. Monica’s office, I happened upon a carton of eggs at the bottom of a garbage can in the Village Square. I cracked one of the eggs and it didn’t smell terrible, so I was planning on bringing the carton home for Mrs. Kipner, and that’s when I noticed the dictionary. It was heavy, bound in fake brown leather. It looked like a present no one wanted. So I took the book along with the eggs, but when I brought it back to the bus, I realized that it was not an ordinary dictionary at all, that the word
chafouin
in French means “weasel-faced,” and every word in the dictionary is something unpleasant. So now I’m learning Unpleasant French. I’m up to the D’s. Today’s word was
la