Tension rifled the dining room, while the long-legged male kitchen helper collected our dirty plates, as the demanding man realized his surroundings, rudely shaken awake, when he saw what occurred when the tall man had risen; also that Contesa was again ignoring his many silent entreaties for counsel and sympathy, and that across the room a moderately attractive woman was being courted and responding to another man, and that she was already involved with the other, when he hadn't even guessed at their mutual interest, but he was always loved by his mother. His oily skin darkened, further stained by the stress of feeling, acutely, the poignant aggravation of being unchosen, his jacketed eyes became crevasses for seeing. He was blind, not literally sightless, as an actual sightless man here once exhorted was the correct language, his guide dog by his side, his bravado a daily comfort and whip to me, but like him the demanding man never saw what was in front of him, as his sense of himself demanded another picture or scene, one in alignment with the elevated treatment and position his mother had given him the right to expect, so the demanding man reminded me not only of the sightless man with the seeing-eye dog he treated better than a lover, but another who was faraway, out of sight for years, dead to me though not literally dead, with whom I had sat, on other occasions, and to whose stories I was attuned as to a radio whose frequency I alone heard. He had been severely nearsighted, with a tendency to squint even when it wasn't sunny, an effect or affectation that painted his face with the gravity and concentration it otherwise lacked, since he was perennially, genetically boyish, even with gray skin that erupted in rosy florets and brown, puffy circles under his jet-black eyes. He needed to be regarded as serious, he taught 19th century European history, and he wanted to have been born at an earlier time-the Enlightenment-because he believed he knew how people thought and felt then, a mistaken notion much loved by people who can't stomach their present and whose fantasies of the past won't indict them, never make them accountable, or guilty. He was phlegmatic, relatively thick-skinned but he bruised easily, since he suffered from a blood deficiency, and often there were purple welts on his legs and arms, which, though I knew he was susceptible to bruising, shocked me, since violence appeared to have been done to his body. In some ways he longed to be physically hurt or in pain, since he never felt alive, a feeling I understood when I listened to him. Other things, like his sly treacheries and useless manipulations, I didn't perceive. The demanding man lacks perceptiveness, for he expects and wants our attention, but paradoxically, fearing he won't get it, he installs his computer on the breakfast table, in front of his plate, partially obscuring his face as he sends and receives messages or watches news on it. All the while he is waiting and hoping for attention from us, who, seeing him behind his computer, are even less likely to show it; but still he waits for the moment when he might narrate the events of his beleaguered life.
I hope, after breakfast, to leave the dining room quickly, even invisibly, regularly planning my getaway, deliberating when is the right time, though the right time for me isn't for another resident, and sometimes I have become invisible, on occasions when it appeared risky to be present, for a number of reasons, not only because of the arrival of police, although that has occurred, the police have arrived and I have vanished, brushing past them as if I were a spirit, but I don't yet have a criminal record. I leave fast especially if there is peace and contentment, when nothing aberrant has happened, believing superstitiously that malingering might provoke the furies, or I leave fast if the conversation has upset or altered my mood, affected my humor, especially in a direction I didn't want it changed, though I anticipate alteration around people, which is why I malinger in bed, switching on and off the radio, not sanguine about being subjected to what is uncontrollable, which may he the reason some claim the table's attention and don't allow others to speak, since any control might protect them. If in a discussion about history or politics, the residents parrot TV and radio commentators, or an argument ensues that is older than its speakers and as intransigent, I'm disheartened or discouraged, and all at the table might leave it disgruntled, whether they ate cereal, eggs, or blueberry pancakes. If a newcomer who, just the night before, told a beguiling tale that entranced me, but then the stranger proclaims a dim conviction at breakfast, what he or she said previously is revamped by this dimness and I lose interest. If I have recently enjoyed a stranger's tales, because the narration was vivid, delivered with an awareness of its listeners, though the stranger may have told the story many times before, I can prefer that person's company to that of longstanding friends, since I am curious about how people live and why, and, in some respects, I'm a xenophile, but in order for my love of a stranger to sustain itself, strangeness must be sustained, and the foreign body mustn't reveal too much. I want the stranger to remain untouched, which contradicts my other desire to know more than I should, yet some things I never want to know, fearing disillusionment, while a friend, someone I have known for a long time or who knows me, may be excused or rather understood for the same opinion. This is unfair, but that doesn't matter, because to achieve fairness requires work, equanimity requires effort, a position comes from a sense of place, and if you lose yours, you also can't maintain a position and continue to believe in it, you can't be fair. I don't want to exert myself, especially in the mornings, which is usually why I don't want to go to breakfast, except that I'm hungry. More and more, I want the freedom to be arbitrary.
After a discussion in which righteousness of every stripe has been broadcast, during which, against my better judgment, I might voice my own, I might dejectedly return to my bedroom, whose bed has already been made by d housekeeper, who has also placed my nightgown on the pillow, folded just so, fluffed the three pillows to their fullest, screwed on the tops of plastic bottles, and stacked the books and drawing pads I threw by the side of my bed into a neat pile, and then, entering the room, which is now without some of my traces, I immediately lie on the neatened bed, with hospital corners that invariably and nauseatingly remind me of camp, the gray hunk, and the six other little faceless girls. Again my head is a mob of arguments, a clutter of loose phrases and ill-conceived ideas, so then my skin starts to burn, and I know that the small veins on my nose and chin have become irritated by the exchanges to which I was subjected and engaged in, to my regret. On some mornings, the residents' table talk ropes me insidiously to my plain wooden chair, simply because I hope that something might happen that affects, in a positive direction, the course of the conversation so that I won't leave it disgruntled, but this rarely happens, since the longer I stay the worse it is, and then I flee, feeling worse than I might have had I not hoped for something better. Hope is necessary, but it is the cause of many dilemmas, and sometimes my day is ruined, its promise assassinated, and then I wish I were in any other place, or alone, or with any other persons, especially the Polish woman, who is an efficacious stranger, whose deft strokes on my forehead might remove more than dead skin, though I know that isn't likely. My organs won't be healed of a mysterious ailment that thrives undetected, but the alleviation of worry, the elimination of dead skin from the body, has a placebo effect, the truth of which can disconcert some. Placebos often help as much as medicines, and to some it begs credulity that the mind can affect the course of an illness or cure the body of physical suffering, but it can, since the mind is part of the body, or the mind is also the body, and mental illness is also physical illness and vice versa. The actions the Polish woman performs on my face, or the massages she gives me, calm me, her indifferent strokes placate me, and sometimes I imagine her powerful hands and arms kneading away the impurities that threaten to overwhelm my system, and in its anonymity having a facial restores me to myself and contradictorily encourages a sense of dissolution into a larger humanity, since all have faces that could be steamed and cleaned, if they had the desire, inclination, or money, though even if they could afford it, some might not want a facial, thinking it wasteful and without redeeming value. I could defend a facial's worth, were I forced, and if I were tortured, I would tell everything I knew.