25.

We’ll also need a nurse so I contact Margo.

Margo was my mother’s roommate in nursing school, best friend for life after that. When I was a kid she used to sit at our kitchen table, blowing smoke out her nostrils like an angry bull. Nicest woman in the world though. A laugh that could swallow a room. I haven’t seen her since my mother passed. My mother didn’t last much longer after that incident with the tardy ambulance.

I catch a bus out to the Jersey suburbs, an hour ride to Hackensack. As the city peels away, it feels much saner. Suburban. Almost like life as it was. From the bus you can see into people’s lit-up living rooms. The houses out here aren’t full of tappers in their silver torpedoes, just people on flowered sofas, planted in front of TVs.

Yes, they still make TV shows somewhere. The rest of the country is still pretty shiny, from what I hear. Apparently the West Coast is more or less the same. Sunshine. Palm trees. Beautiful women in drop-top convertibles. Singing surfers. Moral rot. The whole enchilada, in the shape of California.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been. At one time I thought of relocating, right after Times Square. Figured they’ve got to have garbage out there too.

Very same thought made me stay in the end. A country buried in trash from coast to coast.

As for the rest of it, the in-between part, I hear it’s relatively clean and still open for business, like a plucky dollar store. No longer the land of milk and honey, maybe, but at least you can still get high-grade pharmaceuticals on every street corner on the cheap. Most places, they call it the Toothless Tap-In. A dream you huff out of a paper bag.

Really, it’s just New York that got nuked, cordoned off, shut down, shunned. Capital of the world, cut loose to drift into the sea.

The country’s soul, on a funeral pyre.

Margo’s in a low-rise. Lots of buildings out here are basically just dorms for support staff, the servant class, who ride in daily to the city to fidget with breathing tubes, feed tubes, shit tubes, piss tubes. Tubes that run in and out like highways for all the rush-hour traffic of the human body. Then all the Margos of the world ride the bus back home to catch the day’s events on the TV. Or escape the day’s events.

Thing about Margo, she’s the unhealthiest nurse ever. Chain smokes, obese, has to stop to catch her breath while she’s catching her breath.

Then again, as she likes to say, what does health have to do with being a nurse anymore?

She opens a beer for her, then one for me, puts them on the coffee table between us like we’re playing chess with only two pieces. I notice there’s already several empties standing at attention in the sink. Don’t imagine she’s had a dinner party lately either.

She follows my eyes to the empties.

So my recycling box is full. What brings you out to Hackensack?

Just wanted to check in on you.

That’s a funny sentiment to suddenly swell up after eight years.

I’m sorry. I got busy. You know the city.

Really? What are you busy with?

Just the city. It keeps me busy enough.

Well, it’s good to see you.

Margo, you ever think of moving closer? Plenty of room in Hoboken. Or Park Avenue, for that matter.

She looks at me like I just asked her if she’s ever thought of giving up plumbing and moving right into the sewer.

So I skip to the next question.

How are you keeping? I’m sorry I haven’t been out sooner to see you.

Well, if you had come out, I could have told you, I was very sorry to hear ab out your wife.

Thank you.

We clink longnecks.

She was a beautiful girl. Such a shame. What they did.

I appreciate it.

Shame what happened to this country.

With Margo, you’re never far from a tirade. She’s not quite the happy snorting bull I remember from my kitchen-table days. She’s bigger than ever, but seems deflated. I always figured that one day she’d work her way through every last person in the world to be angry at, and that would leave only her, and then that would be it.

I listen to her for a bit, let her wind down. Then I explain I need to hire a nurse for a job, and she cuts me off.

Does it involve changing a rich man’s diapers while he dreams?

No.

She swigs.

Okay then. I’m in.

Margo offers me the couch but I tell her I’ve got business to get back to in the city. I say goodnight, catch the late-night bus, bound for Port Authority.

Then, a few stops later, hop off.

Plot a detour.

Hoping to clear my head.

So the Crusade is coming in less than a week. It’s set to kick off on Sunday night. The mayor has sworn they’ll have the camps swept clean by then. Proudly points to news footage of skinny stragglers stumbling out of Central Park, begging for scraps, getting pelted by onlookers, then cuffed and carted away. No one’s sure what they’re charged with or where they end up. Some rumors say upstate. Some rumors say Fresh Kills. Some rumors say it’s best not to listen to rumors, unless you want to find out firsthand.

Second bus unloads me in Hoboken.

Certain times, times like these, I have a few rituals.

Reminders, really.

Of things I need to be reminded of. From time to time.

Not meant for anyone else. Just for me.

Unlock my apartment. Leave the lights out.

Head to the kitchen. Open the icebox.

Stand and stare into the freezer. Where I keep my parceled souvenir.

Actually, reminder’s not the right word.

Relic’s better.

Freezer’s cold curls out, licks my face.