1976

I couldn’t sleep. It was the lack of food, or the heat. Any sleep I had gotten that night was punctuated with gasps for air and water, and a sick dryness that the humidity wouldn’t cure. The ceiling fan spun slowly, creating a slight breeze which I clung to like so many a moth and roach to the glue paper hanging from one of the fan’s blades. The hotel bed was a foot short for me, and the single pillow I had removed because of the suspicious stains strewn across it. It was hot outside, and on the top floor above the hotel kitchen it was sweltering. When I stood to open the window wider, the carpet moved out of my way.

It was in a poor part of town. Once an aristocrat’s mansion, after centuries it leaked mold spores and, in the few places that dry wood remained, sawdust. After a day of food poisoning I had spent the last of my cash on a bottle of stomach medicine.

I laid with my feet and shins hanging from the bed, felt the cool breeze, and smelled the scent of tar. The ceiling had leaked the past years, I was informed, and I had the fortune of staying while it was repaired. Three men with reams of cloth and vats of tar labored, patching and greasing and laminating the roof. I thought the heat of the day must make them parched, and the smell of the tar must gnaw at their heads.

One walked as I lay, carrying a bucket from one end to the other. It was full, and he was already tired from carrying it up to the roof. A patch of melted asphalt caught his boot and held it while the rest of him kept moving. Yelling, he brought himself and the full vat down level right overtop of me. I could feel the thump in my bed and I saw the ceiling heave. The fan above me rocked, and hung by one screw fewer than before, and the blades wobbled and shook. With a graceful motion, one blade, heavier than the rest, came undone from its spinning arm. It scored the air meaningfully and came to rest where my pillow, and sooner my neck, had been. 

I lay with my feet and shins hanging from the bed, and my body did not feel the cool breeze. My head on the floor beside me did not smell the tar, and I did not hear the men above help their friend up, and go home for the day.