the darker, she to a suite of carpets and drapes and her name on the door, giving a confusion of home. His room is as grey as mouseskin, the warped linoleum adding only a trim of blue-black flowers to the bottoms of walls; the windows are sealed yet the screens are intact in this ward for the terminally ill. Her hair has been cut to suit the fashion of the place; the clothes she came in have been washed and laid to rest on a shelf she can't quite reach; she obeys like the others and wears the pantsuits she found swaying on velveteen hangers in her closet of gold-rimmed mirrors. His wardrobe is his own: the same flannel shirt tucked in dark green trousers, the cigarette hole at the crotch still light around the rim. She eats her meals on her side of things, with plush pile chairs and tin chandeliers and fourteen plastic flowers all in a row. He dines at the end of his hall, raising his hand for service or a push to the lobby to meet her, his slippers dragging ahead of the wheels. She has permission to leave her sector to join him, and does most days, taking her place at his side, where they wait watching the door. He feels the catheter as penis, is pleased with its sudden growth, and goes to great lengths fondling what he can't raise his head to see; "Pinocchio" says I; and the urine trickles to its