The veins in my head were knocking. My mouth tasted like vinegar. Each leg weighed ten thousand pounds. And there was the fan above, set to high, spinning into a blur, swinging and rocking, like it was tired of the ceiling and maybe it was time to end the party.

I closed my eyes. My boss, Manny, was gone, on a plane to the DR for a good week of whoring. I was in charge—that’s what Manny said. After he gave me the keys, I put out my hand, like we’re two professionals, like there’s trust, but he laid his palm on my face—and his wet gorilla hand stretched from my forehead to my chin. He shoved my head back and said, “Carlos, don’t fuck this up. I got them watching.”

The sun shone through my eyelids. 8:39. I pushed myself up, then fell on the floor. I stumbled to the bathroom. My eyes were sunken in, ringed with a tired shadow. And there was a cut above my right eyebrow, half scabbed, half raw. The cops would have arrested my reflection. I blew my nose. Cleaned my ears. Sprayed deodorant right on the suit jacket. And then I split—8:41—making it halfway across the Willis Avenue Bridge before I released the emergency brake.

Why does every Puerto Rican have the same haircut? Do they point at the same picture in the barbershop—the ten dollar fade, clippers set to four? But it wasn’t just the haircut: these three had the same suit, death-black with shoulder pads, like bouncers at a strip club. Manny’s team. My team.

They sweated under the Zzzz’s sign and glared at the locked door. My stomach started coming up, and I held onto a parking meter even though it was summer-burning. Breathe. Swallow. Breathe.

“Come on, guys!” I called out. “Let’s get to work.”

They turned around and looked at me like I denied them parole.

Juan: “Five after nine.”

Willie: “Looking sharp.”

And Hector: “Let’s see what Manny hears later.”

You get into these jams, these situations, where it’s your fault, and you want to lay it down, to drop your trump card. But you can’t. No cheating in life. I kept quiet and unlocked the door. We walked in, and I flicked the switch with my pinky. The A/C growled and blasted, and we huddled under the vent until the store started to feel alright.

I’m not good at anything, but I’m good at selling mattresses.

Like this white woman last year. Rich and lost and alone in Zzzz’s. Umbrella and pearls and her gold bracelets and those six rings. Her hair was rich too, gray and short, curving around both sides of her face, almost Chinese. She wandered, and she’d touch each mattress with her fingertips, like she was testing a peach.

Ten minutes I watched her do this—then I went up to talk. But not about beds: What’s your name? Carla? Carla! Well, I’m Carlos, Carla, isn’t that funny? And you’re from Long Island originally? Tell me. What’s your favorite cocktail, Carla, because don’t we all need a drink in this world? She said Perfect Manhattan, and I even wrote it down. After fifteen minutes of all that, I let her ask me for a bed. But I said I won’t sell you a bed unless you need one. Like that. She needed one alright, she truly did, and I showed her our SleepSafe Queen. Bed-bug resistant. Made in Egypt. I drew a pyramid on my hand. She even bought the mattress warranty.

Zzzz’s is long and narrow, the size of a good liquor store, and I was in the back, at the supervisor station, sitting on Manny’s high chair. The chair was hot plastic, searing me through that black suit. There wasn’t any air in the back. The only vent was in front, right above Hector.

Listen. When I was twelve, biking home after shoplifting, I got hit by a van. I’ve stepped on a nail. Been mugged by a woman. Frostbite. Ringworm. The dentist botched a root canal. My first time—fifteen, brother—the condom popped. Middle school, they sent me home with lice—the teacher said it in front of class—lice. Or my mother telling me to fill out the life insurance form, because she couldn’t even write his name—the letters wouldn’t come out—and you know mi hijo that her English was bad, and mine was good, and I was smart, and if I couldn’t get her the money she wouldn’t have any at all. And then of course there was yesterday.

But nothing feels worse than this. You can’t close your eyes. You better not keep them open. Don’t stand. Don’t sit. Don’t think about it. Think of nothing else. You’ll laugh in a week, say it doesn’t matter. But it’s right now, and it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter.

It was hard to stay steady on the high chair. The more I balanced, the sicker I felt. A drunk king. Still, I was sitting up higher than Hector, Juan, and Willie. And from up there you could see what it was—a river of mattresses, with three Puerto Ricans swimming in it, and God flooding Zzzz’s with heat and light through the front door. I couldn’t feel the A/C, but could I hear it, that loose belt smacking metal every cycle, like a kid beating a snare drum with his hand. I couldn’t blink. I didn’t want to blink. Sweat slid into my eyes. The salt stung, and tears blurred these two cheap Twin beds into a Queen, but I kept my eyes open, and the A/C got even louder, like the kid banging that drum was getting madder, and the fluorescent lights above got brighter and the beds in Zzzz’s all glowed.

The sun pulsed with every beat, and I saw my ancestors, staring up from hell, hundreds of Cubans—bakers and thieves and bus drivers and galley slaves—watching me totter on the boss’s high chair, ready to let it all spill. I bet they saw me that one Easter, back before Claudia got sick—me dead on the sofa, with my bucket and paper towels. I couldn’t even eat crackers. I watched The Hunt for Red October. Then this show about Nazis came on. They’re on trial, killers, ruined everything—but they looked good: hair combed, backs straight—sober. I blinked. My eyelids crept back up, the thump went soft, and the only thing moving was the snake in my belly trying to get out.

Willie lay flat on a Full in Luxury Spring. Juan sat on an Economy, picking his nose. And Hector stood in front, manning Memory Foam—my section.

9:35. I blew Manny’s whistle.

“Willie, up! Juan, finger out. Professionals! Hector, where’s your Zzzz’s pin?”

Six eyes, three smiles.

“Nigga, your eye is bleeding,” Hector said.

I clapped my hand to my eyebrow. Blood on my palm. I ran to the bathroom, one hand on my right eye, the other balled in a fist, ran like an ogre, big fat steps on big fat feet, and my stomach thwumped with each hop. It was a tiny bathroom, a stall with a sink, and blood dripped onto the wooden toilet seat. I wiped the seat, but that only spread the blood, like guava on bread. My eyebrow leaked, and the blood turned into strings that slinked out in the clear of the bowl. I shoved my hand hard into my eyebrow, trying to push the blood back in. I held my breath and counted in my head: 66, 67, 68 . . . And the bleeding stopped. The few red drops in the water stretched into pink rings, and then they were gone.

I let my breath go. And there it was. Bleach. Like Manny poured it out of the jug for me. You smelled it in your eyes, it clawed your throat, it was sandpaper on your face. I choked down a cough, swallowed the poison swilling up. I pinched my nose, but it slid in anyway, stinking like a pool, like yesterday’s booze, and in my mind I saw a bum, old, white, with a red beard, a camouflage jacket—he poured a bottle of stolen Listerine into a wine glass, poured until that yellow hospital mouthwash spilled over. He slammed it in one gulp. The vomit rose in me, a sour soup leaking out, then a rush of beans, chicken, rice prying my mouth open, exploding into the bowl, splashing back onto me. I wiped the slime from my eyes and the water was stained like rust, that broken color between orange-orange and wine-red, the color of a getaway car abandoned to the sun for fifty years.

I bargained last night. That’s why I go to Estrella Liquor. She bargains with drunks.

“You’re looking very pretty, Miss Estrella.”

I held up two jugs of red wine.

“Where have you been, mi amor?” she asked, scanning my suit, baring a half-smile, that hint of gold tooth. You never see a gold incisor, never on a woman. But there it was. She owned the place.

“What about a discount,” I said, plopping the jugs by the register. “For your best-looking customer.”

She ran a finger along the price tag. Nine dollars a jug.

“They’re discounted already,” she said. “Estrella’s got a store to run.”

“Two for twelve? Package deal. Tell me yes.”

“I never see you no more. Discounts are for regulars.”

“I’ll be a regular again.”

“How’s Claudia?” she asked. “She staying with you?”

“Fifteen dollars, then,” I said. “That ain’t even a discount.”

“I bet she’s gotten big, a little gorda,” she said, then paused. “She’s with her mother now?”

“She’s not with me.”

“Fifteen dollars,” and she rang me up, and gave the change I was due. Round two was an exorcism, a burn that bolted out of my gut up to my lungs, into my throat, hammering the back of my teeth. There was no rice, no chicken, no garbage water sloshing up, just a heave that wouldn’t let up, me moaning “Ahhh!” out and huffing Clorox in. Then—it stopped. I pressed a roll of toilet paper against my eyebrow. I flushed three times. I washed my face, slapped both of my cheeks, then walked back out. I stole a Band-Aid from Manny’s desk, slumped on his high chair, and looked at my crew doing nothing.

This fat lady opened the door. She filled the entrance, and was ringed with a halo of orange and white light, like the world was going to end. She pulled in a little man behind her, a third her size, their hands held, fingers locked. She wore a bright red T-shirt, looking like Kool-Aid, and he was in a Hanes wife-beater. He had a beard but no moustache, his lips were tight, his loose hand balled into a small fist. He was this angry little rag doll, dragged in from the street by a big girl.

Everyone stared. I stared, and I know how to act. But you can’t gawk, you can’t even be eager. That’s the fuck with selling mattresses—you lock the deal by keeping back.

They had the same beady eyes, the same nothing eyebrows. They scanned the store and sized us up—Hector up front, Juan, then Willie, and last me on the high chair. She wore jean shorts, beige Keds, and her skin was pure pale—no bruises, no varicose veins, no bullshit, just the even white perfect paint of a new apartment. Her little man moved in front of her, standing guard. But not standing. Fidgeting. Shaking. Even vibrating, so you got almost sick looking at him buzz like that. He’d turn back and they’d lock eyes and she’d transmit that he was doing alright. He was dark. Not dark like a Puerto Rican, but darker than an Italian for sure. You know how they dry an apricot or beef, and it’s the same apricot or beef, but tighter and more intense? That was him, this twitching, dehydrated little man, her number two until he died, and don’t you get in her way.

Hector smiled.

A perfect smile, perfect teeth. A smile that could be on a subway ad. I could picture it—the number 3 line—Hector Ruiz, Sleep Associate—a big boricua grin, a stack of mattresses behind him.

“Welcome to Z!” he said, extending a hand to the fat lady. The little man squeezed in front of Hector.

“Don’t think you’ll sell us anything!”

“Mister—”

“Good people never need selling.”

“Yeah, welcome to Z, too.”

Hector bit his lip. His hair shined, gel in the sun.

“Miss?” he said. “You want a bed? I got you a bed.”

The fat lady looked down at the little man, the little man looked up. Light shone through the silence between them.

“It’s the right bed,” Hector said to her. He stretched out his hands. “It’s cheap, too. On sale. Floor model. Not Queen, not King.”

She put her mouth by the little man’s ear, but spoke loud. “Why don’t you engage the salesman?”

“California King,” Hector said. “Lots of space.”

“Your pride is my pride,” the little man said to the fat lady.

“And the bed is clean,” Hector said. “Five point inspection.”

“Why don’t you engage the salesman?” the fat lady asked again.

Hector looked at her, but she didn’t look back.

“Why don’t you engage the salesman?”

“Lady, I am right here,” Hector said.

“Please engage him,” she said.

“Him, him is talking to you right now.”

The little man turned his back to Hector.

“He’s in our way,” the little man said. “He is our way,” she said.

Hector reached out, past the little man, and tapped the fat lady’s shoulder. The little man snapped like a mousetrap—he swiveled around—stuck his finger into Hector’s chest—and yelled, “Back!”

“Hey listen—”

“Fetch your supervisor,” the little man demanded.

I was sipping from Manny’s mug when Hector called back, “Supervisor! Yo, supervisor!” The water went down the wrong pipe. I coughed a dozen times. I jumped off the high chair, and blood rushed to my head. Like my brain was a bag of cement. I walked up, slow, touching the beds on the way, to steady myself, just in case.

“What the plan, supervisor?” Hector asked. “What do you want to do, boss?”

Manny always said, if you don’t know what to do, eat shit. I smiled.

“Madam, Sir—Welcome to Zzzz’s.”

“He needs to go,” the little man said, pointing to Hector.

“Everyone—look—it’s a hot day, but Zzzz’s is a place of comfort.”

“It’s alright, Carlos, ” Hector said. “You got the floor. I can run the supervisor station.” He grinned—a small grin, not even a grin—and patted my shoulder. Then he ripped the Band-Aid off my eyebrow, and walked back to the high chair.

“Sir, Madam,” I said, “You have my apology. Everything has been my fault.”

The fat lady gave the little man a nod.

“We are very busy,” he said.

“We have wasted your time. I have wasted your time. Zzzz’s has wasted your time.”

The light between them caught my eyes, and I had to squint it out.

“All we want,” he said, “is a soft bed.”

His arms were hairless. He was wearing a calculator watch.

“Sir, may I ask what kind of engineer you are.”

He stopped fidgeting, a hummingbird on pause. The fat lady arched an eyebrow.

“Network engineer,” he said.

“Nothing’s harder than networks,” I said.

“Because everything connects to everything.”

“Like a spider’s web.”

“Spiders have it easy,” he said, and the fat lady laughed.

“Sir, as an engineer, you’ll appreciate this,” and I walked them to the center of the store.

The diagnostic bed is a killer. People like anything complicated. Seven thousand sensing probes. Dynamic body mapping. Contour detection. Ridge compensation. Pressure points. Do you sleep on your side? Have a big head? Missing an arm? The diagnostic bed detects it all, integrates your data, computes your composite rest profile, matches it against stock in the Secaucus warehouse, and produces your Ideal Sleep System.

But of course all that shit is fake. The diagnostic bed is just a scale. Fat people get hard beds, skinny people get soft ones, and that’s how life works—you never see a fat angel lying on a cloud.

I pointed to the diagnostic bed, which had a hooker-red slip on it. Manny bought the slip. I sat on the bed, and looked up at the little man. I gave it a bounce. My stomach was a milk jug, curdle sloshing around inside. My neck was hot, my palms were cold.

“Let me ask you,” I said. “What is a bed?”

“A bed,” he started. “A bed is a problem to solve.”

The fat lady and little man drew closer together so that the valley of light between them went dark, and they now shared a single shadow. I preached a sermon on the diagnostic bed. Testified. Nerded it up. Pre-processor. Variable sensors. Feedback networks. A new era of sleep. They nodded in beat. Another bounce, and I stood up, making way for the fat lady.

She walked around the bed twice, clock-wise, swiping her palms across the sheets. She knelt down, looked under. Dust bunnies and wires. She sat on the edge, slowly stretched herself out, lying the wrong way, her Keds on the pillow, her head on the foot cover, and she herself, right in the middle, taking up both sides.

“Alright,” she said. “Diagnose me, Mr. Hector.”

“Carlos, miss.”

“Diagnose me.”

I pushed the gray button. The screen above read ten percent, twenty. Tweeters whirred Star Trek noises. The fat lady’s hands gripped the sides of the bed. Her back arched. Sixty percent, seventy percent, then a voice. English lady. “Analysis complete. Your Ideal Sleep System has been optimized for your perfect sleep. Thank you for choosing Zed’s.”

She stood and took the slip of paper from the micro-printer.

“Your bed is broken,” the little man said.

I hiccupped. Vinegar and bleach.

“What is this?” she asked the little man. “The Levitz Plank? Why is he selling us a Plank?”

We’d only had the Plank in stock for a month. They say it’s modeled on ancient Oriental tatami mats. It’s a one-piece, this big hard box with a thick layer of hard foam snapped around it. It was invented by a chiropractor in Israel.

“I own four stores,” the fat lady told me.

“She’s an entrepreneur,” the little man said. “She expects the best.”

“I saw you two were special,” I said. “You know that Zzzz’s is a franchise, owner-operated.”

“So you’re the boss?” she asked.

“I’m the boss.”

“Sell me a soft bed.”

You got to believe. You got to see them in ten dollar pajamas, crawling under the covers, passing out into a ten hour dream, sleeping past the sunrise, waking up fresh for the first time in eternity.

Or back when I bought that red Afro, that clown nose, and painted my face white. The nurse said, sure, I could be alone with her. It was visitor’s hours. I juggled oranges. I taught her a card trick. I pointed at her tube, at her wires, and said next week, I’ll unplug all this, no more machines, no more beeps, and then I’m going to take you to McDonald’s! And I believed it.

I looked the fat lady in the eye. “You’re making a mistake.”

“You don’t know who she is,” the little man said. They had this seminar. Three hours, at Zzzz’s University. The teacher stacked ten Oreos into a tower. That’s your spine. All day it’s pressing, squeezing down, so that you go to bed a half-inch shorter than when you woke up. But with the wrong mattress, the spine can’t recover. The back needs a break.

But Manny hated the Plank. Wasting space. We ain’t chiropractors. He said do like me, sell the Nippon SuperFeather. Which isn’t even a bed. No springs, no resistance, it’s an oversized pillow, a nothing. He doesn’t even display it on a box-spring. It’s stacked on another SuperFeather. Lie down, you’ll feel great—for two minutes. Manny can close a sale in two minutes. I need more.

I bent over, hunched my back, and groaned: “Oooooh!”

“You alright?” the fat lady asked, alarmed.

I belted out another “Oooooh!” and looped around both of them, my knuckles scraping the floor. “It is the hour!” I bellowed, in a deep, creaky voice, a monster in a haunted house. “I must do my duty!”

I swung myself up, then bent back down, howling “Ding!” when rising, moaning “Dong!” when falling.

The little man stared. The fat lady gaped.

“Ding! Dong!” I said. “My bell! I am ringing my bell!”

Up. Then down. I saw I had only one sock on.

“I know what you’re doing!” the fat lady laughed.

“Oooooh!” I wailed.

“Phantom of the Opera,” the little man piped in.

“Nooooo!”

“Quasimodo!” the fat lady said, beaming like she won Jeopardy.

“Nooooo!” I said, first to the little man. “I am you!” Then I turned to the fat lady, and glowered at her, holding my scowl afloat, and slowly boomed—“And I am you! A hunchback, wrecked by the wrong bed!” I shot up, spine ramrod, looking ready to pledge allegiance. A crescent of sun sliced across my face.

That’s how you sell a mattress.

I introduced the Plank. A Queen. Slate sheets. Gray skirt. Eggshell-white comforter. The pillows were cobalt blue, which is the best blue. It looked sharp. And it was the right one. Make them try, make them buy.

The fat lady pinched a corner of the sheet, and folded it diagonally to the middle of the Plank, leaving a pocket, a dumpling ready to be filled.

“Lie down,” she said.

I looked at the little man.

“Lie down.” She was talking to me.

There are these two hours every summer day, just after dawn, or right before dusk, where there’s no hiding from the sun. She’ll blind your eyes wherever you look, she’ll scald all the air you breathe, and you feel like you could suffocate or vomit all the same.

I unbuttoned my jacket, but kept my tie—Manny says a tie is the minimum—and lay down. The Plank was warm, like an electric blanket. The fat lady leaned over me. She squinted. I forced myself still.

“How do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s good for the back. My back. Your back.”

“Do you own one yourself?”

“Not yet.”

She drew her face closer down, a few inches away, so she was all I saw.

“And how do you feel, Carlos?”

“Feeling healthy,” I said. “Never felt healthier.”

“But do you feel good?”

“I will,” I said, my voice cracking. She smacked the Plank, which gave the thud of a Bible falling on the floor.

“This can’t feel good,” she said.

“The right thing today always feels good tomorrow.”

The fat lady stopped squinting. Her eyes were green, big, and she seemed kind now, like a teacher who realizes her students are too dumb to be mad at.

“I’m too old to live for tomorrow. Where is that soft bed today?”

She was set. The little man wasn’t going to help. I’d lost. I walked them back, and presented the SuperFeather. King size. The sheets were Irish linen, ghost-white. But no spring, no bounce. It was a marshmallow, a circus peanut. Back pain, scoliosis.

The fat lady climbed on, crawling up from the foot of the bed, on hands-and-knees, doggy-style, until her face was over the pillow. She let her arms go and plopped down. She flipped herself face-up, and her arms and her legs made these little ditches in the mattress. A smile broke out. Big gleaming bleached teeth.

“This is it!” she said.

The little man gave her two thumbs up. She crossed her arms like a mummy, and her body dipped in a little more. My brain pounded, and the light didn’t help. There was so much light, light everywhere, not a shadow in the store, you’d think the sun was parked right outside on Columbus.

The phone rang. A principal’s office phone, beige, with a bell: dring-dring-dring.

“How are you finding it?” I asked.

“It’s diviiiiiine,” she said.

Dring-dring-dring.

I snapped my neck around. I looked firm.

“Juan! Willie! Hector!”

Juan and Willie were reading a tattoo magazine. They stood beside Hector, who swiveled on Manny’s high chair, looking down on me.

“Talk to me, boss,” he said.

Dring-dring-dring.

“You going to get that?” I asked.

“That’s your job,” Juan said, not looking up.

“Can you get that?”

“Boss gets the phone,” Hector said. “Manny’s rule.”

“Could you please get that, Hector?”

Dring-dring-dring.

“You’re manning the supervisor’s station,” I said.

“I guess I am,” he said, and picked up.

The fat lady had spread her arms and legs to the corners of the bed, and looked like a starfish sinking into the sand. That face spoke bliss, that face said peace. My stomach knotted up and the store blurred. Manny would cut me that commission, but she’d break her back by Christmas.

“Carlos Lopez!” Hector yelled. “There is a call for a Carlos Lopez!”

He pointed the handset at me, plucking the knotted-up cord behind it.

“Pardon me,” I told the fat lady, and walked to the supervisor station. Hector held out the phone, just out of my reach, and laid it on the desk.

“Guess who,” Hector said, smiling.

My lungs went empty. The store took a half-spin.

“What’d you tell him?”

“Just what you’re doing, and what you ain’t doing.” I talked to myself.

I always talk to myself. No sound, but my lips move. I said there’s no problem. No one is angry. It’s all good. It’s early. Too early for him to be drunk. I land the sales. Who else can run the place? Who else can be in charge?

I grabbed the phone and inhaled. The phone felt warm, baked.

“This is Carlos at Zzzz’s.”

“Am I speaking to Mr. Lopez?”

A woman.

I glanced up. Juan and Willie laughed and clapped, and Hector crossed his arms, smirking. I turned back to see my customers.

“Is this Mr. Lopez?” “This is Carlos Lopez,” I said. A truck drove by and its shadow scanned the store, gliding over the fat lady on the bed.

“Mr. Lopez, my name is Audrey. I’m calling from your Nexus Visa card.”

“Can this wait, Audrey?”

“It’s for your protection. Just a few questions.”

My wallet was a mess. A knot of receipts, a two-dollar bill, her kindergarten picture. My credit card was upside down.

Audrey had to make sure I was me.

“Birthday?” March 4, 1979.

“Address?” 1359 Jerome Avenue, Bronx.

“Passphrase?” The fat lady looked at peace, her eyes closed, her body drooping an inch, then another, into the void of the bed.

“Passphrase, Mr. Lopez?” she repeated.

“I can’t remember.”

“Seven letters, no spaces.”

The sun was a spotlight, so that her skin and the sheets both shone the same bleached, blinding white, and there was no line between where she ended and that bed of rest began.

“Claudia?” I said.

“Perfect. Now we can confirm a few unusual charges.”

“How long will this take? Is something wrong?”

“It’ll be over soon,” she said. “Once we review your history, you’ll be okay.”

I held the phone hard. But when you hold on too hard, you can sweat, and then it can slip, and then you got to hold on even harder.

“Go,” I told her.

“First charge. Ortiz Memorial Transport. Yesterday. 4:43 p.m. $673.”

I peeled apart the wad of receipts with my free hand, fanning them out in the bed in front of me. All the receipts were on yellow paper. They take the real one and leave you a copy.

“We needed a car,” I said. “That’s right.”

“Very good.”

She had a nice voice, a nurse’s voice. But my heartbeat was everywhere. The veins of my thigh, that artery in my neck, the million capillaries spiderwebbing my hand, they thudded and glugged together, like my blood was clumping up and couldn’t get through.

“Next charge,” she said.

The fat lady was on her lousy mattress, satisfied and still. Her bed was trimmed with this shadow now, this dark loop, more black than gray, that encircled her and stretched away from her. I knew the shadow was real because I saw it, and she gleamed all the more in its contrast.

“You still doing alright?” I called out. No answer.

“Mr. Lopez,” the phone lady said. “The next charge.”

“I’m ready.”

“Corona Family Floral,” she said. “Also yesterday. 5:10 p.m. $706.”

The little man shuffled nearer the fat lady, and made his own shadow, casting a shroud on her face.

“How much again?” I asked.

“$706.”

They had a form. I checked every box. Gardenias. Roses. Even a tree. They said they would plant a tree. I didn’t bother finding the receipt.

“That’s right, too,” I told her.

I held the phone with my shoulder, rubbed my hands together. My palms were frozen. I couldn’t remember when I last ate.

“We have more charges,” she said, quietly, almost whispering. “The next one is $2,600.”

“Two thousand six hundred,” I repeated.

“And seventy cents,” she continued. “5:35 p.m. Ridgewood Family Chapel. Do you approve, Mr. Lopez?”

“No.”

“No? Mr. Lopez?”

“I need to hear it again.”

Ridgewood. There was a big sign. The R was in cursive.

“Do you approve the charge?”

I looked at the fat lady. The bed pulled her in. She sank. She was gone. The mattress glowed like a floodlight, and everything else was shining too.

“It’s a lot,” I said.

“The charge?” she asked.

“The whole thing.”

“Do you dispute the transaction?”

“I can’t.”

How could she fall in? I wasn’t crazy. Everything falls in. Maybe she was still there. The bed was bright. Then it was dark. Or maybe it wasn’t dark. I don’t know. I saw her go. I remember that.

The woman on the phone was calling me. Mr. Lopez. Mr. Lopez. Mr. Lopez.

I closed my eyes, hoping for something.

“Carlos?”

I tasted it all on my breath, the store, the bleach, the after-wine. We weren’t done apparently. We had more charges to go.