Two Stories — At the same Time!
“Liberal Economics”
The illegal had no money at all for gas to drive her son to the prescribed hospital–what else could she do but demand her clinic fee back? The nurse told her she didn’t have permission and sent her to beg at the gas station–how could she risk the only job that put a roof over her kids’ heads? The gas station owner couldn’t ask for yet another extension, so he braced himself and crusted over with reptilian hardness in front of the illegals–how else could he resist helping such a tragic family? The illegal left her son lying on the polyester and rubber mat in front of double glass doors–how could she risk being deported? Breaking a heart striated with hard labor nicks and timeless misery is like squeezing juice from the sun–it takes the magic of a child. With the non-insured life of a little illegal boy on the line, the hospital director couldn’t give his authorization in time because he was out playing golf with the boys–how else could he enjoy a lifetime of dedicated medicine?
“Joie de Vivre”
Je suis totalement obsédée–it’s the fifth time he’s fallen in love. This time his foot is ready for amputation and his ring finger has barely begun to curl back to a more average length, though it is unmistakably deformed. She is half-vietnamese and half-laos and like Central American sugar cane, she has been cultivated by the hard labor of a friendly, neighboring caretaker (his brother, in fact) before she reaches our hero. To let the gravity of his heart plunge him towards her open fields would be to lose a brother, a good man, but to stand his ground would be to lose something altogether unimaginable. She is carnally sexy and our boy would die inside the space between her thighs—which he would, because he cannot live without her sad eyes. He stays away from the femme de vivre, no death call she, because he is scared that his life begins only if he can give her his heart without letting it bleed.
