Black Tickets Read Online Free

his shirt on.
    I was loading them on copters, he told me. The last one was dead anyway; he was already dead. But I went after him, dragged him in the wind of the blades. Shrapnel and napalm caught my arms, my back. Until I fell, I thought it was the other man’s blood in my hands.
    They removed most of the shrapnel, did skin grafts for the burns. In three years since, Daniel made love five times; always in the dark. In San Francisco he must take off his shirt for a doctor; tumors have grown in his scars. They bleed through his shirt, round rust-colored spots.
    Face-to-face in bed, I tell him I can feel the scars with my fingers. They are small knots on his skin. Not large, not ugly. But he can’t let me, he can’t let anyone, look: he says he feels wild, like raging, and then he vomits. But maybe, after they remove the tumors—Each time they operate, they reduce the scars.
    We spend hours at the veterans’ hospital waiting for appointments. Finally they schedule the operation. I watch the black-ringed wall clock, the amputees gliding by in chairs that tick on the linoleum floor. Daniel’s doctors curse about lack of supplies; they bandage him with gauze and layers of Band-Aids. But it is all right. I buy some real bandages. Every night I cleanse his back with a sponge and change them.
    In my mother’s house, Daniel seems different. He has shaved his beard and his face is too young for him. I can only grip his hands.
    I show him the house, the antiques, the photographs on the walls. I tell him none of the objects move; they are all cemented in place. Now the bedrooms, my room.
    This is it, I say. This is where I kept my Villager sweaters when I was seventeen, and my dried corsages. My cups from the Tastee-Freez labeled with dates and boys’ names.
    The room is large, blue. Baseboards and wood trim are painted a spotless white. Ruffled curtains, ruffled bedspread. The bed itself is so high one must climb into it. Daniel looks at the walls, their perfect blue and white.
    It’s a piece of candy, he says.
    Yes, I say, hugging him, wanting him.
    What about your mother?
    She’s gone to meet friends for dinner. I don’t think she believes what she says, she’s only being my mother. It’s all right.
    We take off our clothes and press close together. But something is wrong. We keep trying. Daniel stays soft in my hands. His mouth is nervous; he seems to gasp at my lips.
    He says his lover’s name. He says they aren’t seeing other people.
    But I’m not other people. And I want you to be happy with her.
    I know. She knew … I’d want to see you.
    Then what?
    This room, he says. This house. I can’t breathe in here.
    I tell him we have tomorrow. He’ll relax. And it is so good just to see him, a person from my life.
    So we only hold each other, rocking.
    Later, Daniel asks about my father.
    I don’t see him, I say. He told me to choose.
    Choose what?
    Between them.
    My father. When he lived in this house, he stayed in the dark with his cigarette. He sat in his blue chair with the lights and television off, smoking. He made little money; he said he was self-employed. He was sick. He grew dizzy when he looked up suddenly. He slept in the basement. All night he sat reading in the bathroom. I’d hear him walking up and down the dark steps at night. I lay in the dark and listened. I believed he would strangle my mother, then walk upstairs and strangle me. I believed we were guilty; we had done something terrible to him.
    Daniel wants me to talk.
    How could she live with him, I ask. She came home from work and got supper. He ate it, got up and left to sit in his chair. He watched the news. We were always sitting there, looking at his dirty plates. And I wouldn’t help her. She should wash them, not me. She should make the money we lived on. I didn’t want her house and his ghost with its cigarette burning in the dark like a sore. I didn’t want to be guilty. So she did it. She sent me to college; she paid for my safe