B: Para Kay

A nurse came out. She didn’t smile. She looked at B like he was already a sentence in a story she had read a hundred times.

His editor laughed at him. “Love isn’t a cause of death, B. It’s a cause of stupidity.” para kay b

Ester was inside. The machine was humming. A nurse came out

Thursday came. B sat in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by fluorescent lights and the smell of isopropyl alcohol. He had brought his corkboard with him—all the obituaries, all the footnotes, all the women he had almost loved. all the footnotes