19
Crusty
I stared at Farnsworth and he stared back at me. Whether his watery gaze was directed at me or at a spot on my shirt, or whether his mind was totally elsewhere, I could not say. We sat in the solarium of the home, which was nice enough as such places go, he in a wheelchair with me pulled up facing it so our knees practically touched. He wore an old sweatsuit, the front of which was decorated with various dried bodily fluids and the crusty evidence of breakfast.
"Used to have a French girlfriend," he said conspiratorially, although among the few other people in the room, no one seemed to care. One man sat in front of a television but wasn't watching it. A lady in a bathrobe was rocking back and forth — perhaps kvelling or keening, or just jiving to the beat of an unseen iPod. T
