=Room Service=

I stand barefoot in the hotel bathroom combing the sleep out of my hair. "The skeletal remains," I think, squinting at the reflection in the mirror. A half-remembered dream floats passed because now the mirror is a window: I can't find my cell phone, then I find it but can't remember the number I want to call, then I find it, remember the number, but can't get a signal. You can water a dead stick for a thousand years and it won't put forth roses, Jesus says. Or maybe it will. Have you ever tried? The problem is you don't have a thousand years. Hence, the need for resurrection. Please send matches. There's a knock on the door. "Room service." Funny, I didn't order— "Sorry, wrong room." Am I in the wrong room? That would explain an awful lot. A lot of awful. Jesus doesn't think so. He motions me to get back on the unmade bed, already cold. He lifts my nightie. Then he takes a long silver pin from inside his robes. He wets the pin in his mouth, working  it all the way down his throat, like a sword-swallower. Having lubricated the pin with his spittle, he pushes it into my belly. He repeats this process with six pins. Or maybe it's sixteen? After a while, it's only natural to stop counting. When the procedure, or baptism, or whatever it is has been completed, he extracts all the pins and leaves the room without a word. I get up, finish dressing, and then go downstairs to the hotel lobby for the free breakfast as if nothing at all were out of the ordinary. What else can you do? I have a large melty-warm cinnamon bun. There is a lot of road still to cover. I thought I recognized where I was going but the destination turns away from me like a once friendly acquaintance and begins walking briskly in the opposite direction the moment I smile. Home, I think, is the feeling of a telescopic sight over your heart through which an unseen assassin stares, unblinking, waiting for the right moment, the "money-shot." He could be Cupid. I put my hands flat on the table, close my eyes, and open up my chest. I have not yet looked at the headlines on the complimentary copy of USA Today. I take a deep breath like I'm diving into the deepest part of the pool. What the hell is he waiting for?