Arthur believed the forgetting started in his thumbs.
Every morning, he would wake up and assemble his world from scratch. The bed was a raft. The floor was a cold river. The nurse, a sharp-boned woman named Patience (truly, that was her name), would hand him his teeth in a little plastic cup. Prisoners, he thought, looking at the teeth. I have freed them for their morning exercise. Dotage
It wasn’t difficult. Patience was arguing with a sandwich deliveryman. The front door had a push-bar. Arthur pushed. The air outside was cold and tasted of rain and real things. He walked. His legs were unreliable, two old twigs wrapped in corduroy, but they carried him. Arthur believed the forgetting started in his thumbs
The other residents were ghosts in a waiting room. A man named George cried for his mother every afternoon at four. A woman named Helen believed she was a duck and refused to eat anything not thrown to her from a distance. Arthur found Helen the most sensible person in the building. The floor was a cold river
One Tuesday—or possibly a Thursday; time had become a Mobius strip—Arthur escaped.
Elara put him in Sunny Meadows, a place that smelled of boiled cabbage and despair. His room was cheerful: a yellow blanket, a photo of a man he was told was his son (he had a son? The news felt like a small, distant explosion), and a plastic plant. He hated the plastic plant. It was a lie.
He walked until he found a park bench. The trees were bare. A woman sat at the other end, feeding crumbs to pigeons. She was old, like him, but her eyes were clear. She wore a red coat.