of the other dead man’s room? Is this death—the loosening of one’s muscles until they pool against the plush fabric surrounding them? Is it death when her large arms hang from her sides, not for support, but simply because there is nothing for them to do? She decides it is death when, with eyes closed and sunk into her tilted head, she imagines her hairy arms falling off, dragging themselves clumsily away from her like black, broken snakes. She imagines this, and she doesn’t even mind, and then she stands, rolls her head in a small circle, and steps into another chair to die all over again.
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the gun until it finds the trigger, then it waits. His eyes open slowly into the stinging air. He feels the tears drooping down his cheeks. Specks of moisture have collected against the outside of his glass. “I tell myself that every angry driver yells only mispronounced statements of immense love which are then misinterpreted by other drivers embarrassed by their own immense love.” Hector takes the gun out of his pocket and turns around to face Antonia. She wraps a blue bandana around her eyes, hangs by her legs out of the window with the camera held in her outstretched hands. All the way down, he hears her click click.
Hector walks into the living room. Antonia doesn’t seem to notice. She blinks suspiciously at the ceiling fan, spinning. He takes a sip of orange juice and begins. “Sometimes I stare out at the ground and try to convince myself that it's farther away.” She crooks her head up at him. He’s staring at the window behind her, but he can feel her eyes. Orange juice spins out of the cup in his shaking hand. He walks to the mantle place across the room. With his back to Antonia, he sets his drink down and wipes the sweat from his forehead. “I tell myself that what I see is..." His voice shrinks in the space between them. He closes his eyes, drapes his fingers across the cold metal in his pocket. “I tell myself that what I see is the ground projected across a series of mirrors.” He winces, waits for her to throw something at him. But everything is still. All he can hear is the ceiling fan, creaking at every rotation. He concentrates on the blackness of his eyelids and starts again, louder than before. “I imagine that the sludge and blood staining the streets are just magnified reflections of squashed mosquitoes.” His voice steadies. “That the smog hanging in the air is a layer of dust suspended along the invisible face of the glass.” His finger gropes along 76
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