To her he is Tut, burnished in ambergris, a royal, perfumed marvel, so when he nicks his fingertip, when he whispers he is dying, of AIDS, when he twines the bandage around the cut, the intense crinkle of it buries her alive. Each of them, alone.
Backs bend under invisible slabs of disease, fingers excavate pills from papyrus cups.
There is glyphic laughter, crying, coughing. No dangle of grapes, no palm fans, no solar bursts or baptismal floods, no garden vines snaked around ankles, only the dressing of his insignificant wound. Please be there, he says, at the end. She offers a platter laden with late-season figs, pomegranates, mint. Stuff your skull with sweetmeats, she thinks, measuring him like a tailor, her fingers massaging the thin selvage from the roll of gauze.