|
||||
sallow, his eyes unrelenting. They are afraid of this man, because he is not like a man but a ghost. The men remove their helmets and hold them at their chests, as they are all struck with the same thought: such a force must be feared and paid respect to. Someone is yelling over loudspeakers: The day is ours! The battle is ours! The warrior looks upon the other soldiers incuriously, sword gripped tightly to hand, so tight that to separate hand from sword would result in the ripping of skin from hand. Tears stream down his face in a delayed reaction to the chemical gas, and he can feel them as the wind blasts him, like needles. ***  |
For each new client there is a change of dress, a change of mood, a bending of character and even one's unspoken thoughts. Even the smallest gesture must be adapted. Tonight it is the doctor who brings in the precious vaccines, and this man who graduated with top honors from a national university can think of nothing but the high school in the distant town where he grew up, and a girl he admired from far, a thin young thing with the regulation school T-shirt and sweatpants for physical education class, her hair arranged in two symmetrical pigtails on either side of her head, her face immortalized with a photographed dimple. So with the thorough- ness of a student preparing for an exam, she has researched this school, this town, this era, and fashioned herself an outfit that matches the doctor's old love's in almost every detail, save  |
|||
