With the key in one hand and the small book in the other he located room 411, southeast corner of the building. He closed the door behind him. He didn’t lock it.

The only light was from beyond the window; its glass grime stained beyond redemption. With difficulty he pried the lasp free dragging the window open as much as possible. The over-heated breeze carrying the scent of fried foods, bad traffic and a hint of things worse to come barely ruffled the yellowed curtain.

The aged bed with its metal rail head board smoothed and polished at either end from the grip of working women and desperate men riding, grunting, sweat streaked and desperate to nowhere filled the room, gave it meaning. The bed was within arms reach of everything, the window the most promising of destinations. He was content with the arrangement.

He pulled a wooden chair from next to the closet without a door setting it at the foot of the bed. He took care that it face toward the window and he sat with the book in his lap and waited.

The knock on the door was soft, tentative. He shifted in the chair, opening the door.

The woman who stepped into the doorway was exactly as he had envisaged, thin, dark close cropped hair with a hint of grey. She wore a dress of burgundy, offset with hundreds of faded yellow petals. He thought of the lifeless curtains, limp by the window. She wore aged sandals and her feet needed care.

She hesitated standing there in the hall as she enquired with her dark eyes if this was the place she was expected.

Without standing, without speaking he waved her with a slow deliberate gesture into the room.

The smile she attempted accentuated the crows feet about her eyes and the sallow texture of the skin. The tiniest of liver spots dark against pale flesh were enhanced by the blue vein highlights which did not escape his attention.

She closed the door behind her and looked at the man in the chair.

"You were expecting someone else?" She said quietly not wanting to strain her voice. She coughed quickly, glancing away from the man. She was in pain.

"No." He replied his left hand covering his right, the book beneath the latter on his lap. "Are you unwell?"

She straightened suddenly, head back, shoulders tight, eyes forward. "No. God, I haven’t felt better." She stepped past him tossing her wooden beaded purse onto the floor beneath the window next to the bed. She stepped into the light of the window, back to him and exhaled. Another couple of coughs escaped before she stifled the third.

Turning she began unbuttoning her dress with her left hand as she produced a handful of condoms from her pocket with her right.

"So what’s your pleasure?" she began in her best business like tone, "I…"

"Put those away," he said sternly, the book still beneath both hands, "and do up your dress. You know what I expect, don’t you?"

She did as instructed, silently and wary.

"You and I," he began, "are about the same age wouldn’t you say?"

She fastened the last button and catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the closet without a door, nodded.

"You’re not well," he continued indifferent to his words "and the people you work for have no more interest in you, isn’t that right?"

The woman seemed to sag under the truth. She was not well, she was too old, she had no future. A tremor coursed through her not imperceptibly.

"Listen mister," her voice was crushed in defeat and muffled with desperation from the tumours growing inside her wasting body. "I got a call and…" she begins to move from near the window toward the end of the bed, "I’m ok, you’ll see, I’m really good and…"

The man in the chair holds up his left hand stopping her. "I requested you because of the malady that is consuming you. I…"

She reaches over, grabbing her purse off the floor, coughing into the sleeve on her left arm as she moves toward the door.

"Fuck you!" She coughs again, her pace uncertain. "Fuck you!"

The man is out of the chair and in front of the door.

"We are, you and I, in the same precarious situation. And neither of us can do anything about it. We are facing similar fates. We are both dying in front of everything that ever had any meaning."

She stops by the foot of the bed. He notices the spittle on her sleeve is tinged with blood. She seems to have weakened with the confrontation.

"What I want only you can give me." He has not moved from the door. "Explaining myself is of no importance. There are things I want you to do."

She waits, leaning against the bed. A thread from the hem of her dress drifts in the flaccid breeze wafting hopelessly from the window. He notices this loose thread straggling embarrassingly and feels more certain she is whom he desires at this moment. "This is the only day I have in which it can be done."

With a gesture of his arm he invites her to stay. She sits on the side of the bed, her purse dropping to the place it had been beneath the window. The man wipes the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief and sits again in the chair. He tosses the book onto the bed next to the woman. The pocket into which he thrusts his handkerchief is filled with vials of several medications.

"Have you done what was requested?" His tone is anxious.

She says nothing as she picks up the book of poetry. For a moment she looks at the cover of the small paperback; PAROLES at the top PREVERT at the bottom.

"Oui." She hands the book back to the man in the chair and stands up. Facing the window for a moment her left hand reaches up and touches the top button on her dress.

"Je suis comme juis suis," she turns toward the man sitting in the chair, book opened in front of him.

"Je suis faite comme ca" Her dress unbuttoned, falls open as she stands, hands clasped behind her. Beneath the open dress is a slip of a bygone age.

Reciting the poem she lets the dress fall from her shoulders onto the floor. She turns from the man in the chair, her voice sure and steady, the lines of the poem delivered with slow precision, her voice caressing every word.

"Que jaime chaque fois."

Barefoot by the window, her slip drifts from her body. Naked standing into the open space over the city she lets the filthy breeze from the overheated world beyond the room caress her emaciated body as her recitation continues. The man in the chair, eyes no longer on the page, listens, held, enraptured. The realization returning to him; his lifeless prick is beyond lusts most fevered effort.

"Mes seins," she turns toward him, breasts cupped in each hand, "beaucoup trop durs". She leans into the window frame, hands fall to her sides.

He studies her, seeing the ravage of disease, the slow grip of death tightening, squeezing into her.

For a moment she pauses, considering and begins anew, "Rappelle-toi Barbara."

The words of Prevert for a moment dissolve into the cacaphony of troubled sounds and sirens from four floors below. This woman standing amidst her tired and tattered clothes with sandals beneath the bed has taken hold of the man in the chair.

Her body was wasteland itself; breasts small and lifeless, nipples dark and irregular in form, her belly near concave, ribs too easily accounted for beneath weak pale skin. Her hips protruded, not fleshy and tactile, but bone hard, sharp and uninviting. She’d shaved her pubis clean, a tribute to her trade and to the desire of men who once clawed and mouthed their way into her lying and cheating their way to cheap ecstasy. Gangly she now is, unsteady, unbeautiful and vulnerably lovely beyond expectation as she spoke to the man in the chair.

"Et tu as coru vers lui sous la pluie."

She shifted onto the bed, sitting so as to face the man.

"Je dis tu a tois ceux que j’aime."

With one hand she pulled the sheet from the bed drawing it over her shoulder, covering her back, covering her breasts.

A shadow passes over the window and she flinched ever so slightly continuing her recitation, never slowing, never hesitating.

And then she stops, the poem ending.

"I only know those two," she seems shamed by her lack of knowing more. "I have nothing more to say." She lets the sheet fall from her shoulder and sits exposed to him.

The man closes the small book holding it again on his lap.

"Would you dress and begin again?" He looks directly at her for a moment as if committing her to memory. He bends and picks up her slip and runs the material between his fingers. She watches as he holds the frayed garment to his face, reacting to the sour scent of her unwashed body.

"Only this time don’t turn away from the window."

She takes the slip from him and pulls it on and lets him watch as she pulls her dress on, slipping first one and then the other arm through the sleeves. She buttons her dress.

The sunlight from beyond the window was fading in the soiled air evening. No breeze caught the curtain, the room was close and hot.

Standing into the window she began reciting the poems again as she undid the buttons of her dress. The thread which had been noticed was again obvious, speaking to poverty and loss.

"J’aime celui qui maime."

She hesitated for a moment as she pulled her arms free of the sleeves, the dress hanging down her back.

In the window before her, from the shadows that gained over light, she could see in its reflection the empty chair behind her, the door slowly swinging lose on its hinges, the envelope on the bed.

She leaned against the warmed plate glass searching the street below her nipples hardening slowly against the pane and she knew her time was passing.

The light in the world dies without effort at resistance. She feels beneath her the slip piled upon dress and she sighs, naked into the hopelessness, "I love the one who loves me."

Michael O'Neil writes: "In terms of bio, I have published several short stories (although not for a considerable period of time) in RAW FICTION and NEW MARITIMES. I have also written a treatment for a film based upon the poetry of the late Al Purdy."

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada.