Lucky Man

I am an unlucky man. Even though I was born Norman Joseph Lucky on St. Patrick's Day of 1982. When I came into the world, people were blowing kazoos, drinking green beer, and pinching asses in the snow of green and gold confetti. Leprechauns were getting laid, blow jobs were being blown, and pots of fool's gold were endless and aplenty.

Presumably, when I die, "Lucky" will be on my headstone. But nothing could be further from the truth. And although surely there are others who have it worse than me, which is what I've told myself to get me through this wicked life, I am the unluckiest man to ever live because it is all a matter of perception and that is frankly how I perceive it.

I never had a day of luck in my life. What's more, I was born a doofus and I will die a doofus. Very few doofuses realize they are a doofus, though. They go on and on thinking they are perfectly normal—that the world is crazy, not them. But not me. For better or worse, I know what I am. I am an unattractive doofus cursed with terrible bad luck.

I never won anything. I never had something good happen to me for no reason. I was born with no great athletic prowess. I have not the splendid physique of an Adonis. No big brain. I am ordinary all over, though I've been told I have very attractive knees and that I could be a knee model. I was married twice, but my first wife was a man. Imagine my embarrassment going to court explaining the reason for my divorce.

"Your honor, my wife, as it turns out, is a man."

My wife called me a bigot in court and sobbed inconsolably. We never consummated the marriage because I had a fear of sexual intercourse, and Marlene, as he called himself, was asexual, which is part of the LGBTQAI+ community. It was the A part. I never got to take a trip down the tunnel of love to poundtown, so to speak.

I didn't really know what the female anatomy looked like because I had never been with a woman before and I had never looked at dirty magazines or watched any pornography. I was born and raised a strict Mormon. Afterwards, I did, of course because I had to know. And in comparison to those intimate female parts I later saw, so delicate and smooth as they were, so perfectly sculpted, works of splendid art, Marlene appeared to have what can only be described as the anatomy of a raw Thanksgiving turkey waiting to be stuffed. His vagina looked like the exit wound of a twelve-gauge shotgun. Or the dumpster of Arby's.

It was a gaping meat hole that looked more like a tunnel than a vagina. I saw it once when he was passed out drunk on the Fourth of July—when he was wearing a skirt with no panties. I was curious and got a sneak peak when I still thought he was a she. It stared me in the face like the creature from the Black Lagoon. Marlene was a splendid alcoholic and a hell of a poker player, but he was a lousy woman.

And so after one year of marriage, Marlene and I divorced for "irreconcilable differences." His attorney called me a bigot in court and said it was shameful that in this day and age a man can be so small-minded as myself. And Marlene cried into a silk handkerchief, saying he lost the only man he ever loved, referring to me as his "coppertop" and "gingerbread man."

To make matters worse, it was all over the news—local man divorces wife after finding out she was a biological male at birth. Heartbroken wife sues for alimony. On and on. For the first time in my life, I was a villain. I was already a homely, unlucky doofus—but now I was a villain.

The judge, who was also unfuckable like me, must have felt a kinship towards me as I was nearly crushed under the weight of a social media firestorm and mobs of angry lunatics outside of the courtroom wielding enormous hot-pink dildos, hanging me in effigy. He ruled that I would not have to pay alimony because Marlene never depended upon me for income, we shared no children, and our marriage was never consummated. I was never lost in my he-wife's terrible manhole, so to speak. Marlene went on to write a book about our marriage and his struggles as a woman. He went on to teach gender studies at some queer university and to play professional poker. His book was titled, Poker Face.

But my luck soon changed with my next wife—who was all female—and beautiful to boot. She looked like Sydney Sweeney. We met on website that matches kidney donors to prospective recipients. She had a rare and fatal kidney disease. Her name was Aubrey and she was way out of my league, but I guess she was in some sort of bargain bin because of her bum kidney. I didn't sign up with the intention to fall in love. I just wanted to do something good, so I became an organ donor. I thought it would go to a little kid or something, but then they said I matched with a 24-year-old woman in Plano, Texas. So I got on a plane to Plano with two good kidneys. My kidney had no idea what it had coming—that it was about to be surgically birthed and implanted into someone else like Frankenstein.

I met Aubrey and the surgery went well. She recovered and we fell in love in the hospital cafeteria, which was much more pleasing than it sounds. There were marble pillars, fountains, koi ponds, plants, and a skylight for natural light. And the two of us, with just two kidneys between us, attached to IV bags which hung on the backs of our wheelchairs, rolled down to the cafeteria to talk. It turned out we had a lot in common, including a love for Nabokov and the New York Yankees. We were also both ex-Mormons.

So after we healed up, I took out my life's savings and I bought an engagement ring, a room at the Waldorf Astoria, and two tickets to a Yankees game where I proposed on the jumbotron. And, of course, she said yes, and finally, in that moment, I felt that my life might have changed for the better. All that bad luck before had been exorcised and the law of averages took over and gave me a surge of incredibly good luck to balance everything out. She was the love of my life, I had no doubt about it.

We married at Niagara Falls two days later, but on the first night of our honeymoon, she got sick again. She didn't want to go to the hospital because she was sick of hospitals and she was afraid of what the doctors would tell her. So I held her in bed until the morning. The kidney I had given her failed and she went septic.

The next day, I drove her to the nearest hospital and in less than twelve hours she was dead. Her mother tried to console me. She said I made her daughter's last days the happiest of all her days and that mattered for something. Maybe that was true. But my bad luck had killed her because of my cursed kidney. I was infectious. And so I thought I ought to isolate myself on some island like a leper, or call it quits—maybe in one of those government suicide clinics they advertise on TV all the time along with words like dignity and autonomy.

The only good luck I experienced in life is that which makes life semi-tolerable so to keep me living or else I would have ended it all by now. I went back to Niagara Falls where Aubrey and I married and nearly threw myself from the ledge, but figured I'd probably only paralyze myself. And in some paraplegic hospital slurping applesauce through a straw, I would have to sit and watch The View or something like that every day because I couldn't tell anyone to change the channel. And I couldn't jerk off, either, because Joy Behar was enough to suppress the most raging of hard-ons. She is unfuckable and a natural-born killer of fecundity.

Sometime after Aubrey died, instead of committing suicide, I began to have sex with myself thinking of her. Essentially, I donated another organ to her memory. As a Mormon, masturbation was expressly forbidden, but I wasn't a mormon anymore, though its dark tendrils still sprawled over my mind. What a bunch of hooey that was. I couldn't understand it. Blessed is the man with twenty five wives, but condemned is he who jerks off thinking of one. I jerked off like there was no tomorrow, like I was trying to start a fire in my crotch. If I was Pinnochio, it might have worked. I was done with Joseph Smith, the magic glasses—Urim and Thummim—the angel Moroni, and those gold plates.

I was thinking of what it would have been like to be with Aubrey. I was guilty only of morbid self-curiosity, and for a while I thought I'd spend the rest of my life jerking off to my dead wife's ghost, but then it got old, and I realized it was only my palm, fingers, and thumb all rolled up, and I struggled to excite myself to the point of ejaculation. I could have written a book called The Joy of Masturbation, or maybe The Rise and Fall of a The Masturbator, or maybe, The Art of Self-Service. But it seemed so damn pretentious to write a book.

I met Marlene at a bar on Halloween. In retrospect, he wasn't the most feminine of creatures, I don't suppose. He was dressed up as the Statue of Liberty with his face and body painted green. I think his torch might have been a twelve inch sea-green dildo. I often think of killing myself, but I never follow through. It seems very dramatic for a perfectly healthy man to kill himself. The government agency dedicated to suicide is called DOE, which is an acronym for something—more on them later.

It isn't that anyone would care if I killed myself, or that anyone would miss me. I am a nobody, after all. A perfectly good and honest nobody. It just seems dramatic, is all. Besides, I would probably botch it as I said when I contemplated throwing myself over Niagara Falls. Peace of mind, DOE promises. I could have them do the job and bill my insurance. It would be neat and clean. No hassle.

I was born with red hair and freckles. I've got a red bushy crotch that looks like a burning bird's nest. But what am I complaining about? I see those kids on TV on the Shriner's commercials and feel bad. I could have been a conjoined twin that shared an ass with a gay nymphomaniac brother. I could have been born with a micropenis. Or a hermaphrodite with a constant menstrual cycle that bleeds like a leaky faucet. On and on. But the consolation of the fact that a lot of people have it worse than me doesn't much help me feel better. A lot of people do have it far worse than me. But a lot of people have it far better. And fuck those people.

How ironic that a man born with the name Lucky is as unlucky as me. It is almost like I have a perpetual black cat crossing my path. Maybe I broke a mirror in anothe life. Killed a thousand ladybugs. Spilled a vat of salt. Walked under a forest of ladders. Opened a thousand umbrellas indoors. Left my chopsticks upright in my rice bowl. Viewed my own doppelganger. What a sight that would have been. I ain't the worst-looking person in the world, but I am nothing to write home about. And to imagine that there are two of me in the world gives me the heebeejeebees.

Besides being unlucky, my life is dreadfully boring, which might be the worst part of it all. I work at the city zoo as a zookeeper. It's a terrible job. I don't know how I got into it. I used to love animals before I worked with them. I suppose, that's how. I suppose I watched too much Animal Kingdom as a kid and David Attenborough's silky voice coaxed me into a career in animals. But now I hate them, for the most part. Especially, the monkeys, which is usually where I am assigned. The word "monkey" makes my stomach turn. And the only baby picture that exists of me in this world, is me in monkey pajamas.

"Norm," they say. "You're in Africa."

So I go to Africa about as uneventfully as a person can—on a little golf cart that I have driven a million times over what feels like a million miles. The song "Africa" by Toto drives me bananas. It wakes me from a dead sleep.

The zoo is seperated into continents. Why can't I ever get Asia? Or Australia? Or America? They are all smaller and easier to maintain. I have been here longer than anyone else and have seniority. Why can't I chose my own adventure. I have worked at the zoo for 25 years—right out of college. I shouldn't be here still. Most people don't make a career out of zookeeping, but I am not lucky enough to get a good job or to get another good girl. So I go on and on. A 43-year-old virgin who has been married twice. A coppertop gingerbread man with one kidney, a wealth of freckles, and a fire-crotch.

I suppose in 25 years, I am lucky that I've not been eaten by a lion. Or stomped to death by an elephant. I beat the odds of most encounters with lions and cheetahs without being eaten. Maybe that would be a lucky way to go. I'd be out of my misery then. But I am, I have resolved, born to suffer. They might put a plaque up for me in these hallowed halls one day commemorating my life and service to the city zoo.

Norman Lucky—Zookeeper.

I smoke like a chimney. I don't care about getting lung cancer or emphysema. Sometimes I smoke with Geronimo, a silverback gorilla. He weighs 450 pounds of pure muscle. He is okay for an ape. I smoke with him, not because I enjoy his company, but because I offered him a cigarette once, we smoked, and now he expects it all the time. He makes the hand gesture and loses his shit if I don't share a cigarette with him. Some wiseass taught him sign language. So that hairy sonofabitch has blackmailed me. And everyday Geronimo and I smoke at least one pack of Pall Mall cigarettes like a couple hoods in a high school bathroom—not saying a word. Just watching everyone else through mesmeric orbs of smoke.

They could fire me for smoking—even more so for smoking with the animals. Corruption, they might call it. Though it is they who corrupt the animals by putting them in a zoo for profit. Years earlier, a female zookeeper named Miranda was fired for fucking a zebra named Frank. But they didn't fire me because smoking wasn't all that bad and they coddle the animals. If Geronimo wants to smoke, well, he is allowed to smoke. They didn't know that I was the one who gave him his first cigarette. They figured he picked up a burning cigarette that someone threw into his enclosure and just started puffing. So they tell me if he wants to smoke to oblige him. It keeps him calm and docile.

They are hoping Geronimo has sex with Juno, the female silverback gorilla of the same approximate age, and makes a baby gorilla. But I don't think he is into her like that. He doesn't find her attractive and doesn't want the commitment. He tells me that without saying anything at all. He tells me in how he smokes his cigarette and stares blankly off into the distance much like my father used to. Fuck my luck, he says.

Was born in captivity.
Will die in captivity.

Although we don't talk when we smoke, I pretend that we do. I talk to him, but he doesn't say anything back. But in my mind he does and we are old friends. We graduated high school together. He knows way too much for a gorilla. He loves football and he is a Republican. His favorite president is Teddy Roosevelt. His favorite novel is Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. If he could be anything in the world, if all jobs paid the same, he said he would paint houses. He loves the smell of paint and finds painting to be cathartic. He said he would wear the white coveralls and everything. The whole nine. And he doesn't find Gorilla Glue commercials to be amusing.

Geronimo has a large penis. It practically drags on the ground and on occasion he twirls it like a helicopter propeller. He beats off sometimes like he is disgusted with himself. I don't know why he does it if he isn't interested in screwing Juno or any of the other available gorilla girls. I suppose he does it just to remind everyone that it is there. That show of male dominance is important in the gorilla world. I don't think he is asexual at all. I just think he hasn't met the right girl for him.

I really hate Africa. The size of elephant shit is absolutely outrageous. You have to scoop it with a snow shovel and put it in a wheel barrow, and even then, you seldom get it all. It practically breaks the back. People don't like to see shit, my boss reminds me. She says corny things like "Be the zoo, Norm." Or, "You are the zoo." She tries to be inspirational, but all she is is an unfuckable ass.

The lions are the easiest to manage. You just can't get too close or turn your back on them. I launch cow heads, horse legs, or dead rabbits over the enclosure and watch them go nuts. They run off with them in their jaws like idiots. Thank God we don't have hyenas or jackals. I'd probably quit if they got them, or so I told myself. But I said that when they got the hippos and here I am still, like an unfuckable doofus, shoveling their shit.

The reason I am here is Dr. Julie Olivette. She is 31 years-old and is a veterinarian. She is one of six doctors at the zoo, but she is by far the hottest. You can tell she does it out of love rather than for the money because she drives a beat-up Jeep and never seems to have a bad day. She is always smiling and baby talks the animals. "Who's a good boy?" she will say.  Or, "Who's been a bad, bad boy?"

I've been a bad, bad boy.

She is the only reason I am alive at this point. She has been here for three years and I was ready to kill myself when she walked in and changed my life. Just to see her keeps me alive. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and the only person who could make me forget Aubrey for a while. And so, as long as she works at the zoo, I will work at the zoo, as well.

I have no chance with Dr. Julie, I know. I am not delusional. It would take an act of God, such as her going blind. I had a better chance with Augustine the hippo, or Tootie the walrus. Geronimo and his enormous dick has a better chance with Dr. Julie than me. But it wasn't about the reality of satisfying the fantasy, it was the fantasy itself that kept me afloat. Being near her keeps me alive and that was good enough for now. She breathed life into me, of which I was otherwise woefully depleted, puttering along on fumes. 

I was raped by a mandrill named Harvey. The other zookeepers call him Harvey Crimes because he has committed all sorts of acts that would be misdemeanors or felonies if he was a human-being—burglary, theft, assault—you name it. But no one thought him capable of rape. Me and my rotten luck—raped by a monkey. I googled why would a monkey rape me and it suggested that I had a scent he found appealing or it was territorial.

Mandrills look like baboons, but they are not baboons. They're both of the monkey family, but they are not otherwise related according to the vets who educate us. Mandrills have colorful faces—baboons do not. I want to call Harvey Crimes a baboon because it seemed insulting, but I don't. I don't want to be zoologically inaccurate, nor to further instigate the wicked sonofabitch. 

I went to a support group for rape victims and I was the only male there. They encouraged us to talk about our experience so that we could heal. They served fruit punch and powdered donuts and there was a sign above the refreshment table that said "Welcome Survivors!" I suppose that I was a survivor because there I was. Still kicking. I gave them an account of what happened.

"Harvey Crimes took me from behind at work. I didn't realize how strong he was or how quickly he could rip off my pants. You never think its going to happen to you. But there I was, bent over a crate and helpless. I felt him push inside of me and that's when he let out this godawful howl. Yeowwwwwwwwwwwahhhhhhhhhhhhweeeeeeeee!"

"I can never forget that scream. Nor the site of his red pecker after it was all done. Spasming. It wasn't very big, thank God. But he left scratches on my haunches from his claws. I was lucky he didn't bite me. He has three-inch, razor-sharp canines, and a powerful 800lb bite force. He could split a melon with one bite if he wanted to."

"Norman, was—was Harvey a coworker or a client of yours?" Naomi asked, timidly as though she was trespassing. She spoke like she was walking on eggshells.

It was Naomi's group. She had been raped in 1988 at a Michael Dukakis rally and this support group was her way of giving back. Her way of fighting back. Her rapist was a man named Clarence Carter. She described him in great detail only once. She said she hasn't been able to listen to the song "Strokin'" since, and whenever it plays at weddings or at clubs and everyone else laughs and dances, she goes ape.

"Clarence Carter! Clarence Carter! Clarence Carter!" I could hear it in my head. "Clarence Carter! Clarence Carter!"

"No. Harvey wasn't a coworker. Nor a client. I'm a zookeeper. He is a mandrill. A 'man-drill.' I never even thought of that. They look like baboons, only more colorful. Colorful faces. He is a nasty sonofabitch. Everybody thinks they are so pretty. So regal. But if they only knew. He is a seedy sonofabitch, I'll tell you."

There was a collective gasp.

I was asked very politely to leave and to not come back. As politely as one could be asked such a thing. Naomi asked me in her best librarian voice. So I did.

There was nothing I could do about it. I had to move on. By move on, I mean to say I had to keep doing the exact same thing I do everyday. Go to work. Be cordial. Be reasonably sociable. Get along. Smoke Pall Malls with Geronimo. Take it in the ass whenever Harvey Crimes was in the mood, I suppose, or lose my job for being cruel to the animals—depriving them of their "reasonable pleasures."

But Harvey would never touch me again. I told him I would cut off his red crayon dick if he even thought about it, and he understood. He laughed hysterically the way monkeys do. Like insane people laugh about shitting their pants. Of course, he understood, though he doesn't speak English. They understand more than they lead on. They know all about you. They have nothing better to do than to know all about you. They laugh at you. You pay good money to come see them beat off or pick their noses. They think we are a bunch of ugly hairless apes in goofy clothes.

For protection, I packed a Taser 7 CQ in my fanny pack with my mandatory First Aid kit and breathing apparatus. No one ever checked it. I could have put a .357 in there and blown a gopher hole in Harvey Crimes' fucking head. I thought about it. But if Harvey came near me again in such a way I'd light his blue mandrill ass up with 50,000 fucking volts of E-lectricity. That, he would understand.

I've always pronounced it like so.

E-lectricity.

If not for Dr. Julie, I would have quit—even though I knew I had no chance with her. To date her or to go spelunking in her most intimate lovehole. She was hope, nonetheless, in an otherwise weary and hopeless world. I would probably have killed myself. People were going to those government clinics in record numbers to die because they were bored with life. It was all over TV. Anytime a loved one died, or they lost their job, or went through a bad break-up. Or when someone they didn't like was elected president. You didn't have to take it lying down anymore. You could say, goodbye, cruel world and they'd put out your light. You could just dip the fuck out.

Julie almost always worked in North America. But sometimes she was in Asia tending to the pandas and tigers with all her goo-goo baby talk. Sometimes I got jealous. I bet she jerked them off. The tigers were the biggest danger of all the animals. It never makes the papers, but occasionally they'll eat a zookeeper or some other staff member. On occassions, she assists Dr. Willy, who works with the African animals. He does so because he is from Kenya and so the African animals are like family, or his "brethren," as he calls them. I don't like Dr. Willy. He smiles too much.

Julie and I barely saw each other through the course of the day, except on lunch. She was a vegetarian and so I started bringing in black bean burgers and tofu so that she might notice and we might strike up a conversation about having that in common. In my mind, I imagined us trading recipes and making guacamole. Mostly, I imagined her in her underwear. I imagined tonguing her honeyhole as she mixed something in a bowl.

But she rarely said anything. She would set all by herself in the corner of the breakroom and read a book. After I found out what she was reading, I'd order the book from Amazon and I'd bring it to work in hopes that she would notice and we could discuss it. But she never did notice despite all my best efforts. All I got was a smile, and maybe a hi.

Horatio, the Nigerian, was my only friend in the world and I confided in him about Julie. He was a zookeeper, too. He was also unlucky. He said his bad luck started off by being born black.

Julie never seemed to notice anyone other than the animals. She never had a ring on her finger, nor was there any semblance of a significant other in her life. She would say hi or bye in passing with a smile and, for a long time, that was enough for me. I'd put all those brief interactions into my pocket along with her smiles. She was, in every way, a heavenly woman. The sort of woman that you feel greedy for asking for and undeserving to even think to have. I prayed for her. Lord, how I prayed for her. Not ever to possess her, or unfairly win her love and affection. My prayers were not meant to serve as rohypnol. I prayed for her to see some worth in me, perhaps, that I didn't see myself. Or to save her life. To save her from an attacker, from choking, or an inferno. Maybe we could get stuck in an elevator together someday. Maybe she could have a flat tire and I would be her rescuer. And if ever I am deserted on a desert island, maybe she would be my sole companion. But such luck has never favored me and I held out no hope.

Horatio and I were having beers after work and, with the false courage of the alcohol, I confessed to him that I was hopelessly in love Dr. Julie and that there was no one else in the world for me, which left me in a hopeless state of unresolvable despair. He tried to convince me to settle for someone more like me, but I wouldn't have it. Why spend your life with someone so not to spend it alone? We live in a world of settlers. But of all the terrible mundane and unlucky things that I might be, a settler is not among them. 

He then advised me to tell her, but I couldn't tell her. You can't tell someone you love them without knowing them at least, I explained. Or without dating them X amount of weeks or months, and having a suitable amount of time pass so it isn't creepy.

"Who says?" he replied. He then prefaced his response with "In my country..." proceeding to tell me that in Nigeria, pretty much, anything goes.

He told me he was in love with a woman in Nigeria and they agreed to be married someday when he returned home. I asked him if he worried about her being unfaithful in the meantime being that he was so far away. He laughed. His white ivory teeth so bright in contrast to his dark coffee bean-colored skin.

"Why worry about that? If I fill my life with worries about woman, worries that I cannot control, I will drown on worry."

And he was right as he normally was. Why would I worry about what anyone thinks? What Dr. Julie, a brilliant and beautiful woman, a doctor of virology and animal science and behavior, would think of me? Of course, I was attracted to her. And maybe she had a secret desire for pale virgin gingers. I have a handsome penis, I'd say—not huge like Geronimo's—or not as handsome as my knees—but what did it matter when there was so much ick to get through to get there.

Sure, one could say I was lucky to have a handsome penis. But it was cruel to be born into the body that it was attached to. I was an unfuckable, only fuckable to other unfuckables—which includes, I suppose, Harvey Fucking Crimes. 

Julie was much younger than me—thirteen years or so. But maybe we had things in common that would offset such an age discrepancy. Things we could talk about once the ball got rolling. Oh, the wonderful things that played in my mind. My mind was a stage and Julie and I were the only actors in a sophisticated love story that was forever developing.

"Nothing to fear besides fear itself," Horatio grinned. He could have advertisements on his teeth. Sprawling ads for new and used cars and fast food restaurants. For jewelry and real estate. This space for rent—the emptiness of his pearly-white grin cried out. He had a great smile of which I was envious. With that smile, I could have gone a long way. I might have been a congressman.

Oh, God, help me. Dear Lord, hear my prayer! Make me easier on the eyes, if only for tomorrow. Rid me of my ugly face, dear Lord. Make me attractive for 24 hours. But God doesn't grant those types of prayers. He grants selfless prayers, not selfish ones. If only someone would pray for me.

And so I wondered if I was doomed to the life of an unlucky man who suffers the dreadful curse of homeliness, and to live an ordinary life of utter invisibility. I thought that I should be content in my misery and my unanswered prayers. I should give up my longing and desire for Julie, for it was merely a pipe dream and there is only so long a man can live on dreams. She was gold in a canyon I'd never pan. Diamonds in a quarry I'd never mine. Oil in a well I'd never strike. Woe is me. Sweet Jesus. Woe is me!

But had I no right to ask God for more than what He gave me? To petition Him? He could, if He wanted, turn me into something more than an unfuckable ugly dope. With God, I am told, all things are possible. There are no asterisks. But no one would look at me and marvel that I was created in the image of God. I was tall, pale, skinny, and awkward, and there was no plastic surgeon in the world who could fix me up to look like Tom Cruise. I grew from a sickly bean sprout, unwanted by my own mother, to a ginger-headed Ichabod Crane.

And just like that, at 44-years-old, on my birthday of all things, which I celebrated alone with a cake I bought for myself and one single burning candle to signify the death of all my miserable years—as I blew out that candle—I began to spit up blood. Then I was out of breath and needed to lie down. And when I lied down, I fell asleep and I must have slept for two days.

It was the first day of work I missed in 25 years, which is why Dr. Julie called me. Otherwise, she wouldn't have ever called. No one ever calls me. Not even Horatio calls me, or my own mother, who seems to want to forget she ever had me.

"Norman," she said. "Hi. It's Julie. Are you okay?"

I thought I was dreaming. It was the most words she had ever said to me at one time. I lied there with the phone in my hand and that acrid taste of blood in my mouth. It was Tuesday morning, I realized. I had no recollection of the entire weekend. It was Friday that I had bought myself the cake and blew out the candle and made one single wish—a wish to be a lucky man.  

"I am okay," I replied. "How are you?"

"I am fine," she answered. "But you missed work yesterday. You didn't call in or show up. So, as your zoo family, we were all worried about you. You have had an impressive 25 year perfect attendance record."

My "zoo family," she said. And so it played in my head over and over. My zoo family. Zoo family. Zoo family. And all of their faces floated through my mind like balloons or credits to a movie I wasn't in until the face of Harvey Crimes appeared and it popped. I was sick and I knew I might have something no doctor could ever cure. It was like nothing I had ever felt. Maybe it was AIDS. Harvey Crimes gave me AIDS. Suddenly, it didn't seem to matter to me that I was talking with Julie. Nothing seemed to matter. Not living or dying. Nothing in this world at all mattered.

"I am sick," I explained to Julie. "Harvey Crimes raped me a while back, and now I am sick. I think I got some sort of monkey disease."

"I will be there as soon as I can. Where do you live, Norm?"

I gave her my address and she arrived in twenty five minutes. I was in bed, almost completely unable to move. I couldn't get up to let her in, but the door was unlocked and she ventured in with much trepidation. Hello, she called from downstairs. Hello. Hello. Hello. Her voice coursing through the hallway and finally reaching my disbelieving ears.

She climbed the stairs to my room. I could hear her feet on every step. As exciting as it was that Dr. Julie was there, I didn't feel excited. The sickness forbade it. The stairs creaked and croaked with each of her footsteps. My house was old and her voice echoed.

My house was the only good thing I had going. It was a historic house and once belonged to a doctor during the Civil War, whose imaginary ghost I often talk to, referring to him as Dr. Hiram Sawbones. It was haunted, they said, but I suppose the ghost thought me to be dull and ordinary because I hadn't actually seen him. Maybe he stays in the attic. Maybe he knows I am unlucky and avoids me like a black cat. 

Thank God, I was dressed in my pajama pants. Thank God, I had showered before I laid down. I said another prayer. This time praying for good health. For my breath not to stink. For her to help me recover and for me not to die or shit the bed. That didn't seem like too much to ask for. Then I thought of all those people who died young and I figured I didn't have any right to ask for my own life to be spared by fate. I thought of all those people in Gaza murdered by the residuals of Auschwitz. This was just another example of me being born to suffer.

She came into the room with a strong aroma of violets and the color purple. Maybe it was lilac and the color lavender. Whatever it was, in that moment, seemingly every pleasing scent I'd ever smelled in my life tickled my nose and made its way through my body. Then it invaded me aggressive as the Nazis into Poland, fisting me, and she came with it in a Panzer tank of desire, assaulting my weak defiance and making me realize that I was entirely and completely overwhelmed and fucked in that whatever happened as a result of this engagement would be the death of who I was and the birth of a new and uncomfortable being that was strange to me. And I would become whatever was to wiggle out into the world, for better or worse, out of the pupa of what I had been. I had no cocoon or chrysalis to protect me and I was like a grub in her golden palm—a complete and utterly vulnerable little grub.

In a short while, Julie diagnosed me with a rare disease that might be something the world has never seen before. She said it in such a way that I felt I ought to admire it more than I should fear it despite having it. She said it was once thought to be exclusive to baboons and mandrills and possibly some other sorts of monkeys of Western Africa. She sat at my bedside for hours and wrote notes in a journal and treated me as though I was the only thing in the world that mattered at all. What a sad Heaven this was. I finally got her attention only to die.

She took my temprature every hour, anally, of course, dabbed my forehead with a cool damp cloth, and gave me drinks of fresh cold water. She made me broth. She bathed me. She even took books off my shelf and read them aloud to me—impressed that my collection mirrored her own. She fingered the spines of the books lasciviously as readers do. To hear her orate The Great Gatsby as I lied there with my eyes closed, gave me an incredible hard-on. Just the way she enunciated each and every syllable of Fitzgerald's beautiful words, which paraded in my ears, invigorated me. I was on cloud nine, despite my impending death.

My soul was slowly dissipating, and again, as I had been before I was born, I was of the ether, the stardust, pollen in the wind, reduced to a dandelion spore, and I was blissfully happy despite knocking on death's door, completing my inevitable life cycle. It would have been fine to die then. But just as I was about to bow out, she undressed me until I was completely naked and she massaged my body, her fingers caressing my chest and between each rib with a sensuality of which I was foreign. Not even the sluts of my wildest imagination could rub a body like that. She had the hands of a hundred starving Asian women.

The symptoms of my disease subsided for a while and I felt healthy as though nothing was wrong, but I was far from healthy. It was only a temporary reprieve—the pain and agony came in brutal and relentless waves. She said she needed to do a full examination. And piece by piece my clothes came off until I was entirely naked and I lay there before her completely vulnerable. More vulnerable than I had ever been since I was a newly born baby unwanted by my own mother and in the hands of the good doctor that delivered me to this cruel world only out of duty. He would have aborted me just the same if my mother had asked him to. He would have ripped me limb from limb in the womb and crushed my skull like a walnut.

She fed me. She bathed me. She sculpted my penis as though it was her own 8th grade art project and I got erect in her perfect hands. More erect than I had ever been in this lifetime, as though I was prepared to joust. Raging erect as though my penis would at any moment burst through its own skin and reveal its villainous self. I was certainly more erect than I had ever made myself in all my introspective onanism.

But she did so not in a romantic way at all, but as a doctor studying the physical reaction of her subject to a normal stimuli. It was as though I was a lab specimen. But after she did, she let go and notated it onto her tablet and my penis fell limp again with neglect, every bit as defeated as the poor Hindenburg.

Then she was on to my knees and my ankles. Mhm-ing and okay-ing each and every part of me as though I satisfied every little bit of her examination that was usually reserved for lions, gorillas, and bears. Not once until she got to the lymph nodes in my neck did she seem at all discouraged and outwardly express the faintest grunts of concern.

"It is what I feared," she concluded.

"What is it?!" I expected her to say I had AIDS because I had heard long ago that is how AIDS began—in a jungle with someone fucking a monkey—or a monkey fucking someone. But she didn't say AIDS, much to my relief. 

"Western Africa Monkey Infection."

"What?" my voice cracked.

"You've been infected by a rare condition that some doctors and scientists have doubted the existence of. And no one, that I am aware of, knew it to be zoonotic. This is incredible. Mandrills have been known to pass it in the wild of Western Africa, but Harvey Crimes passed it to you. This is a major breakthrough, Norm! You're going to be on the cover of every science journal out there."

"I'd prefer not to be. You know?" All I could think in my head is that I'd be the man known for being raped by a monkey. By Harvey Crimes, the mandrill. Like Evil Knievel is known for jumping burning school busses, and Abraham Lincoln is known for freeing the slaves, and Jonah is known for being swallowed by a whale—I'd be know for being raped by a colorful monkey. Some might even dare say that I was asking for it.

And there was no recourse for me. Harvey wasn't going to be held accountable for his actions. He wouldn't be charged and arrested. There'd be no trial. He was already in prison, for godsakes. There was no punishment he'd ever face. What could they do to him? Deprive him of bananas? He wouldn't even get a harsh scolding. The simple fact is that he didn't give a shit.

"Is there a cure?" I asked.

"There is, sort of. You see, the disease gets passed through sexual intercourse. It only becomes lethal when it remains in someone's system for too long. How long has it been since Harvey raped you, Norm?"

"About a month."

"Have you had sex with anyone since then?"

"No," I whimpered. I didn't want to tell her that I never had sex before. It was a long story. Norman Lucky had never gotten lucky, as they say. But no one I ever could have sex with seemed worth the effort, other than Aubrey who died before we could fuck.

I was an unfuckable, who was not attracted to other unfuckables. The doohickey in humans that makes them attracted to other humans of like-attractiveness and appeal didn't exist in me. I was born without it, or with a faulty one. And so I turned down every chance I ever had and then I felt bad about it because I felt like I was too good, though I knew I was not. Maybe it was a natural selection sort of thing. I couldn't breed because I shouldn't breed. And if all of us unfuckables didn't breed, society might get somewhere. It was natural eugenics. I was Hitler's wet dream.

"Hmm," she expressed. "That's why you are experiencing the severe symptoms that you are. You are beginning to suffer through the early stages of stage 3 WAMI, which leads to death if not properly treated."

"Treated? How?"

"You must pass it on to someone else," she explained.

"I can't do that."

"You don't understand," she went on. "It doesn't stay with you or whoever you end up having sex with. It gets passed on every time the person carrying it has sex. So, for lack of better terms, we must get you laid, Norm. Have you got anyone in mind?"

"Then the other person will have it until they have sex with—someone else?"

"Exactly," she smiled. "It's like an erotic game of tag. Think of it that way. Sex is perfectly normal behavior. Two people can pass it back and forth and be perfectly fine. Or, I guess, you could give it back to Harvey..."

"I can't fuck a monkey."

"I wouldn't expect you to," she replied.

"West African Monkey Infection," I sighed. This is the worst luck of all. "That means that sonofabitch Harvey Crimes gave it to me on purpose."

"He may have. Or maybe not. We can't say what's in the head of a monkey, Norm."

Then with one effortless swipe, she slid her dress off as I lied there happily and helplessly in her shadow. She was wearing nothing underneath and in what was a quick and simple move, the dress fell from her shoulders and puddled at her feet. She stepped out of it and put her hair back in a ponytail and climbed onto the foot of the bed like some kind of animal. 

"What are you doing?" I asked. What a dumb thing to ask. What a dumb time to talk. I sounded as though I was going to try to talk her out of it.

"I am giving my body to science," she responded.

It was like a dream come true. It was like one of those stories in Penthouse or Playboy. I know that what I am about to write sounds too impossible to believe, but I swear that every word of it is true.

I could have considered myself lucky then—just to get a glimpse of her naked. But what followed in the ensuing hours was enough to make up for every unlucky thing that ever happened to me. She grabbed me and stroked me into her mouth without saying a word and choked herself repeatedly. And I lied there and looked at the ceiling, which I never fully appreciated for all its splendid blankness, the abstract and ornate designs of the stucco in which I could see frogs and lions and ice cream cones and wizards or ku klux klan hoods and playful poodles.

As she worked me over, slowly and deliberately, my body revived and it felt as though I was possessed and an electric current coursed through me. It was a side of her I never saw before—only in my wildest of dreams—a side I never expected to see. But she was on full display in her purest and most natural form.

"We might as well enjoy it," she said between moans, remarking that I had a handsome penis. I said nothing at all. I just lied there and took it, absorbed every vibration of her mouth and hardened until I could harden no more. And despite the disease inside of me, I took over and gave it to her. Back and forth we went, a war in the sheets, on a bed that had never known such a pleasurable struggle.

The sheets and mattress were soaked when we were done, and she sighed and said she needed that. We lied there, body parts strewn across the quiet bed, catching our breath. But in all that time, though, I couldn't help but to think she was pretending we were some sort of zoo animals she had observed a hundred times and what we had done was purely scientific.

In the aftermath, as I got dressed feeling much better than before, I realized that she now had the West African Monkey Infection, or WAMI. She smiled at me from bed and said she never thought of me sexually at all before today and she asked if I had thought of her in that way.

"No. I'm no sort of pervert." I lied. I was, in truth, a raging pervert for her. I thought of her sexually for as long as I knew her, nearly incessantly, reflexively. It was like breathing or swallowing to me. In fact, I don't think I thought of anything else more. Not eating. Or sleeping. So I sheepishly admitted that I did, and she smiled and lied in bed catching her breath as I caught mine. Our heads flooded with aftersex dopamine, perfectly content. 44 years of virginity slayed like an unsuspecting indomitable dragon on the altar of humanity and science.

I was a lucky man. Over the course of the next year, Julie and I passed the WAMI back and forth to each other almost daily while she sought a cure I hoped she would never find. She told me that despite her attractiveness, she was socially awkward and wasn't comfortable dating before me, but I had accidentally made her realize that she was a sexual being. She said she hoped it never ended and I bought an engagement ring so to propose to her which I kept in my pocket for the right occasion.

She had a wonderful sense of humor and we laughed and made love often. I learned quickly the art of pleasing a woman, which is to listen to them, even if you don't want to, compliment them every now and then, and wear them on your face like a Halloween mask while you're bobbing for their uterus with your tongue.

Everywhere we went people looked at the incongruity of us, wondering if we were somehow related, or if we were simply colleagues. We were an absolute absurdity. Women looked at me as though I must possess some sort of magic while men looked at me as though I was the luckiest man in the world—and that I was, basking in all my luck and glory. We were truly the beauty and the beast. What was once impossible, even in the deepest most hopeful recesses of the jungle of my imagination, my wildest of dreams, my sincerest of wishes, had at last come to fruition.

Julie confided in me before but mostly after sex, about all of her insecurities and her hopes and dreams. She said she wanted a baby, who would be named George or Jane depending upon their sex, and she wanted to be married. She wanted a farm. An animal rescue. And I said I wanted those things to, biding my time before I proposed. I was sure that she would say yes. I knew she would by the way she looked at me with genuine love and admiration, despite my homeliness. She even baby talked me like I was one of her animals.

Naturally, part of me was afraid that my bad luck would rear its ugly head and I would be left devastated even more so than ever before. But infused by such good spirits of late, I believed this time was different. I believed that I wasn't unlucky at all. That I could go to Vegas and play the slots and win just like anyone else. I believed in myself. In the fairness of life. In no bad luck or good luck. In no curses, hexes, or juju. I believed that God had intervened in my life and was at last giving me a fair shake. And I owed it all to Harvey Crimes.

I got a phone call from Julie on Sunday that she was at the zoo running some tests on Harvey Crimes and she felt she was on the verge of something big. She felt she had a cure for WAMI. She was going to test it on herself since she was the current carrier of the disease and then she would let me know the result. I had the engagement ring in my pocket and knew it was time to propose. But I suddenly doubted my fate. Would it ever be on her finger? Or once she discovered the cure, would she end our affair that she began in the name of science? The law of averages, after all, could only propel me so high before I naturally came back down.

I tried calling her later that night, but it went to voicemail. The next day I was told that Julie was dead and Harvey was her killer. He struck her with some sort of heavy object and beat her to death. It was a terribly gruesome crime scene, I was told. She was unrecognizable. Security found her late last night. Quite unusual behavior for a mandrill, another doctor said. Mandrills are not typically aggressive. Harvey was euthanized. The zoo would release a statement the next day mourning both Dr. Julie Olivette and Harvey, the mandrill, omitting "Crimes" from his name. They would call his death "an unfortunate and unrelated accident."

I felt all life drain from me. Horatio asked me if I was okay and I said no. So I went to the strip club and titties were all over the place. Each nipple was like an eyeball watching me. Making sure I wasn't having too much fun or else they may drop a piano on my head. Or give me the Bubonic Plague.

It was Easter and the strippers were dressed up as Easter bunnies. Horatio was trying to cheer me up, telling me Nigerian jokes. But despite it all, nothing helped. Not even Midge Monroe, who was three foot tall and looked just like Marilyn Monroe.

"I never had what I had with Julie," I cried. "And I'll never have it again."

Horatio, whose face I could hardly see through the darkenss of the stripclub—all but for his giant white deviled-egg eyes and those billboard teeth—said this, "It was Harvey who caused your relationship with Julie. And it was Harvey who ended it. The alpha and the omega. Without Harvey, you never would have known her. You never would have known love at all. But it was God who moved that monkey like the pawn on a chessboard. It was God who made him sick. Who made him make you sick. And it was God who brought you and I here and to wherever we shall go tomorrow."

Horatio was a smart man. He was a philosopher who would never be recognized as such, but who didn't care to be. He would likely be a zookeeper his whole life as I would mine.

We drank several drinks and my broken heart wasn't going to heal. Sorrow and self-pity poured through the cracks of my heart, welled in my gut, and poisoned me. There was no one at the stripclub who provided any sort of comfort, naturally or otherwise, so I left and Horatio left me with a smile, a warm hug, and some parting words of wisdom.

"Go where you intend to go," he said. "That is to where God moves you."

I was depressed. The depression was too much to bear. So I signed up to commit suicide at one of those government suicide offices. I took off work on a Thursday for the initial assessment. You are required to see a counselor and a doctor who must sign off on your suicide—a mere formality, really. What a job that would be, I thought driving over there. There was a checklist of things to do before you go. You must have a will. There was paperwork and such. Of course, you could do it yourself the old-fashioned way, but I was intent on doing it the proper way—the responsible and legal way. I guess it didn't really matter how I did it. The end result would be the same.

I met the counselor and I felt it went well. She crossed off things on a list and yawned a lot and apologized for yawning, saying she was up late the night before with a kid with the flu. She asked me to give her an account of my life.

"Raped by a baboon," she repeated as she wrote it down.

In death, Harvey Crimes became a baboon for the sake that I no longer felt like explaining what a mandrill is anymore. 

"First wife was a—transgender woman. Second wife—died of kidney failure. And third relationship—ended in—murder," she murmured as she wrote.

"That's correct," I affirmed.

"Please have a seat in the lobby and the doctor will be right with you."

She smiled at me in a strange way. I cannot explain the complexity of the strangeness of that smile.

The lobby had the warmth of a womb. I expected something much more sterile. More white. The walls were sea-green. They bill your insurance for all of this. They want you to do it. They're not trying to talk you out of it, although there are a few people out front who try to hand you pamphlets and tell you that life is worth living and you are worth it. That Jesus loves you.

I was looking around the room at all the encouraging posters when I saw her. An elegant young woman with short brown wavy hair. We were the only two in the reception area. By coincedence, an elevator music rendition of "Two of Us" by the Beatles played on the sound system. I tapped my foot.

She smiled at me and I smiled back. Neither of us wanted to smile. We were all done with smiling. But the courtesy was conditioned so deeply in us that our faces acted on their own intuition without the consent of our heart. My heart ached. It felt like an empty can that was crushed under the foot of the world. My mind felt as though it were wood that had been eaten through by termites.

They told me to take FMLA from work and to come back when I was ready to come back. But I wasn't coming back. It would only remind me of Julie. I knew of no way to exist in this world any longer and I wanted out. I wasn't healthy, despite no longer being infected by the WAMI. I was chronically sick. Sick in my mind. Sick in my soul. I was an unlucky man, and I refused to live a life of bad luck any longer.

"True body autonomy. You decide," a poster encouraged. There was a woman on it who was sitting on a park bench haloed in sunshine and staring at flowers as though she was deep in thought. Not happy, nor sad. Pensive, perhaps. Contemplative. She wasn't a client, of course. Just an actor. A model who was paid to look neither happy nor glum. I wonder if she knew that the Department of Euthanasia would use her image for promotional art.

DOE was the widely-used acronym of the agency. And there were pictures of what appeared to be Bambi's mom all over the place as though she was their mascot. Maybe Disney didn't care, but it was a clear rip-off and copyright infringement. Surely, Walt was rolling over in his grave. Bambi's mom was on pamphlets and fliers and department merchandise which included—pens, pads, coffee mugs, t-shirts, on and on. They were shameless. They even offered their services to those without insurance.

Die today for just 3995!

There was an animated commercial that ran on the TV in the lobby that showed Bambi's mom walking through the woods alone and into a cloud. She paused right before the cloud, thought about it for a long second, walked in, and then disappeared. She looked morose, but at peace. I think it was her spirit walking after being shot by the hunter. After leaving Bambi behind. In a way, she was saying, "Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?"

"Who knows what's next, but it's got to be better than here," another poster read. This one with a middle-aged man who was in a canoe in the middle of a lake. He was overweight and going bald. It was cloudy and he was all alone. He was catching no fish. He had the same look as the woman on the park bench and as Bambi's mom. After I went to the bathroom and was washing my hands, I looked up and noticed that I had the same look upon my face. We all looked tired. 

It was silly, really—to wash my hands. What did it matter what germs I was exposed to at this point? I would not get sick again. I would never be hungry. Never be lonely. And once and for all, I would be rid of all my bad luck. I would either go to Heaven or to Hell, or to nowhere at all. Who can really say?

It's time to find out what's behind door number two.

I was writing new posters in my head. They ought to hang pictures of great human tragedies. Nine eleven. Hiroshima. Pearl Harbor. The fire-bombing of Dresden. The Hindenburg. The Titanic sinking. On and on.

It is not suicide, all the pamplets explain. It is doctor-assisted euthenasia. Catholics, rest assured, you can still go to Heaven. You're not technically killing yourself. It is a medical procedure as simple and routine as having your gallbladder removed, or a tooth pulled. Only you don't ever wake up. No more pain. No more suffering. No bills. No worries. No taxes. No waiting for them to drop the bomb. This is your stop. Your chance to get off before the world really fucks you over.

Paradise—it is billed. And a DOE companion of your choice will hold your hand through it all until the end. Your body will be cremated and your ashes given to a loved one in an urn of your choice or spread at one of twelve beautiful locations. Choose from twenty-four more if you buy the premium package.

I looked up from the pamphlet, sure of what I must do, and there she was still. She was carrying a black cat that was tucked in her camel-colored trench coat. The cat was old. She looked like she was from another time. A painting that had come to life. Something out of a bad dream. Out of a good dream. She was wearing a long black dress under the trench coat and plain black flats. Her hair was short and pinned back on the side and she had green eyes. Her lips red as an apple. She appeared elegant and graceful. Pale and simple. Sophisticated yet neurotic. She looked like 1952.

She smiled and nodded at me as she sat in the lobby. She appeared nervous and dreadfully out of place. Her smile was faked. Or was it? Might it be a sliver of hope or joy through the cracks of overwhelming despair. The agitation was real. The cat purred and she cradled him closer to comfort him.

"Are we supposed to take a number or something," she asked, clearing her throat.

"I'm not sure. I have an appointment," I whispered as though we were in a library. As though I didn't want to frighten Bambi's mom on the TV. 

"Oh. But don't they do walk-ins on Thursdays? Is it Thursday?"

I shrugged.

"Are you allergic to cats?" she asked.

"No," I smiled.

"Then you wouldn't mind if I let Jinx down, would you?"

She looked at me. Jinx looked at me. He had eyes that looked like perfect green marbles.

"No. I'm actually a zookeeper," I said. "So if they take you back for your consult, I am sure that I can keep my eye on him."

"A zookeeper? Wow!"

"Well, I was a zookeeper, I guess I should say. I'm out—on FMLA."

"So you haven't quit, yet?"

"No. Not yet," I replied. "But this ought to suffice for a resignation."

"But you're not for sure about this?"

I didn't respond.

"You must be sure." She said she would check with the lady about getting an appointment, hoping it was walk-in day. She had been here twice before so she might be able to skip the counselor and go straight to the doctor. She said they were all females and gave me the rundown on the whole staff—the counselors and the doctors, anyway. She said the receptionist was new. She asked who I had and when I said who she smiled and told me what she knew about her. She said after the doctor saw me today and signed off, they would allow me to pick a date on the calendar, or I could do it today. if I wanted. That is, if I satisfied all my prerequisites.

I hadn't ever talked to someone so easily before in my life. And we talked about everything under the sun besides why we were there other than the glaring and obvious fact that we felt that life wasn't worth living anymore. We both loved Bob Dylan and talked about our favorite songs.

She talked to the receptionist and I watched after the cat who was well-behaved. He was content to walk around and sniff and to explore the room as though he was an astronaut on Mars. When she came back, she said she was able to get in and thanked me for looking after Jinx.

"I am Everli, " she said. "Everli Grey."

Everli Grey. She was someone pulled off one of those promotional wall posters and given Prozac. A fifties debutante who never met the right boy and never successfully transitioned from a young adult to independent living. Who got lost in college and forgotten in an apartment and occupation. Who never knew where she belonged. She was about 5'5" and a hundred and twenty five pounds, and I would say, if I was one of those carnival guessers, 31‐years-old.

She was approved for her final appointment, but she didn't know what to do with Jinx. She asked me if I would take him and I said I was going the same place that she was. Then she asked the receptionist if she could take him with her, but the receptionist said that was not legally allowed and pointed to a sign on the wall that said, "No pets." There were animal welfare laws that prevented the euthanasia of pets without sound medical justification. She was frantic. She didn't want to just let him go because he was 14-years-old. He was a senior citizen.

She was beautiful in all her chaos. In all her bad luck. She was weird and she was beautiful. Like some sort of irreversable accident. She must have been conceived in some sort of fantastic and tragic way. Like two beautiful people crashing into each other at an insersection. A forbidden love affair between a professor and a student in a purple motel room, perhaps. Or married roamers. Maybe a botched abortion.

She looked like someone who was at a train station and didn't have the fare for her ticket. Who didn't know what to do, or where to go now. She wasn't suicidal—she was lost. I wanted to help her, but what could I do? She looked at me for an answer, but I looked at Bambi's mom in the cloud on the TV, which was playing on a loop. I didn't have any answers for her, so I just shrugged.

"Well, goodbye then," she muttered.

She left with Jinx, and the doctor called me in and I told her about my life and my crippling depression and horrible, no-good, bad luck.The grief of losing my Aubrey and then Julie. Of being raped by a fucking monkey. The embarrassment of marrying a man. I went on and on like it was a job interview and I was applying for the occupation of death and I had to be as pitiful as possible to get hired. But through all my tears and sniveling, all I could think of was Everli and her cat. So I got up and raced out of the room to try to find her, hoping she hadn't gone far. And as soon as I burst through the door to the lobby, there she was, waiting for me with tears in her big emerald eyes.

"I wanted to be here for you in case you decided to go. In case you need someone to sit with you—someone who wants to sit with you rather than someone who is paid to. To hold your hand. I don't know."

"I don't want to go," I said.

"I don't want to go, either," she smiled. Jinx meowed.

We left the office and had coffee at a cat café and told each other of all our bad luck. She had it worse than me, I can say. But we compared stories and laughed and cried, pitiful as we were. Then we went back to her apartment where we made love before our bad luck had a chance to kill us. No one, I knew, was more perfect for me than her. And all of my bad luck and misfortune was all that I had to suffer to find her.