Babylon and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

table, folded.
    “Do you want something to eat?”
    “No. “ Walter looked at his watch and his features brightened. “Time for my beauty routine.”
    Carl fetched the towel and the electric razor. Walter took offthe oxygen and offered his face, eyes closed. He didn't have much facial hair, but he always insisted on being shaved before a visit from his girlfriend, Marguerite. His skin was cool and pale and evenly colored, like clay or a smooth beach stone. While shaving him, Carl thought about how Walter's face had looked when he was a kid—swarthy and stubbled, deeply tanned by cigarette smoke—and how different it was now, the skin so papery and light, as if in transition to becoming some entirely different substance. The bedroom was quiet except for the mosquito buzz of the razor and the hiss and pump of the oxygen machine. Every once in a while Walter drew a labored breath. When he was done, Carl dabbed Aqua Velva on his face; Walter was, and always would be, an Aqua Velva man.
    Walter ran his right hand over his cheeks and down under his chin, then frowned. “You missed a spot,” he said.
    He reinserted the oxygen in his nostrils and walked downstairs slowly and purposefully, carrying the oxygen line raised behind him like a king with his robe. Adding to this effect, his wispy hair stood up and waved, crownlike, above his balding head. By the time Marguerite showed up he was installed in the living room in his favorite armchair, his thick, veiny ankles visible between the cuffs of his brown pants and his brown socks.
    “Hi, handsome,” Marguerite said.
    She was wearing a flowing green pantsuit with gold buttons and smelled like roses. She and Walter had been dating for years. They'd met in the home, and Walter's moving back into his house, when Carl came to live with him, had given him the reputation among the residents there as a heartbreaker. But Marguerite came to see him faithfully—taking a taxi—every Tuesday and Thursday, and they drank weak coffee that Carl made, and played gin. Marguerite looked better than Walter did, in spite ofbeing older, but she was delicate and getting a bit, as Walter put it, soft in the head. Sometimes she'd smile at Carl and say, “Oh, dear, my mind is going. If you see it anywhere, could you tell it to come back?” Other times she'd forget words and Carl, walking past the living room, would see her sitting on the couch with her hands up in the air like an agitated bird, saying, “I'm so stupid— what's the word I want?” Walter could never guess.
    Carl put out the coffee, went downstairs to his office, turned on the computer, put on the headset, and listened.
    GENERAL APPEARANCE : patient exhibits pedal edema. Earlier this evening patient was found by a relative who brought him in for examination.
    He had started working from home a year ago, when he moved back in with Walter, in this house where he'd grown up. Walter didn't say anything to him about the first heart attack, just checked in to the convalescent home and then called to announce the change of address. Carl understood that this was Walter's dignity in action: the refusal, at all costs, to be a burden. But when he went and saw the place he felt sick. The fecal smell, the dim light, the wan, shrunken people like some alien and unfortunate race, all this had frightened Carl and pissed him off. He resolved to do whatever was required—including quitting his job, moving back home, and taking care of Walter himself—to get Walter free of it. While he was sitting in Walter's room, a man passed by the open door in a wheelchair, then back in the other direction, then again, and again. When he noticed Carl watching him, the man bared his gums and laughed.
    “Walter,” Carl said, “we're getting out of here.”
    “Don't trouble yourself, son,” Walter said, but he was clearly pleased.
    Before setting up his own business, Carl was employed by atranscription service at a hospital, and he didn't realize how much he