At the nursing home, a receptionist of sorts radiated through a wire-mesh frosted window. I don’t know whether there were genuine security concerns or the establishment just didn’t want anyone talking to her, but her pumpkin-pink foundation shone through the window like a low-lying sun, resisting the slow pull of winter. She’d extracted her eyebrows, penciled thin arches above the brow lumps. To her, everything appeared by surprise, no matter what she was thinking. I locked myself in the handicapped stall, arranging my implements over my thighs, and sketched an image of her face in kohl. I pictured what it was I aimed for—something barely recognizable—and went to town. When appearance means nothing, a handful of cheap make-up offers the eternal. Some days, my eyes opened into golden parachutes with extruding insect-legs. Others, they were embroidered in scarlet lace. Most of the residents of the nursing home were legally blind, so the variants were inconsequential. Except they made me a source for gossip, the object of mockery, envy burning at the corners.

Most of the shift, four employees organized each resident’s meal according to restrictions: diabetic, low salt, no salt, no fat, no lumps. Our shift culminated in wheeling a carriage of trays into a chandelier-lit dining hall that smelled like excrement. The residents slunk around, consumed by death. Only one, Florence, ever smiled. Her smile was a bouquet of poor dentistry; thick, tea-stained teeth fought for the last of her gums. Her meal card was marked with the cautionary red dot of a diabetic. I’d set napkins filled with bright refrigerator cookies beneath her tray. In exchange, she’d touch my hands with her papery fingertips and every blood vessel in my body would go still. 

It’s strange what does that. People spend their entire lives trying to figure it out, and there I was, having it in the dining hall. With Florence. It was not going to last.

One day, as I tautened the Saran Wrap over cups of Sustecal, a teenager with a paper clip penetrating her cheek flattered me by confessing her obvious pregnancy. Her idea was to drop out of high school, marry the father. She asked if I would oversee her face for the government to-do.