Where the narrow halls separate like chambers of a heart, every blue door stands wide open now as festive music floats from the cafeteria.

 

It is the annual New Year’s Party and Sol is folding his accordion, playing for the fourth time the only tune he knows. Terry with the brigadier mustache and giant spatula hands pours a second bag of sugar into the punch, yowls upon sipping the ladle. When the white coats turn their head he empties in a tin flask. He will be the one to distribute refreshments throughout the evening, and only once will somebody make a crack about how fitting it is considering his history of date rape. Only once, because he’ll snap then, flinging the ladle across the room and kicking the cooler to the floor, charging forth with a plastic fork. Before the muscle men arrive he will have already apologized though, more embarrassed than anything else, his ridiculer having apologized too, extending a hand to acknowledge his cardinal sin: in a place where everyone is equally guilty, no one is proud of what they did or what they are, and it is cruelty to wave someone’s past in front of his face.

 

No one in need of a history lesson when every morning is a new martyrdom.

 

Forced to attend, Leonard sits in a corner folding a paper horn in half, watching Rhea through a cloud of confetti as Sol offers her his tinsel tiara.          

 

She accepts, placing it crooked on her head like a queen of small slaughters.