"You look skinny," she says, but he isn't there when she turns. It's because he never sits still indoors, behaving as if he belongs somewhere else and believes it.
"I think it's cause I have AIDS," he calls to her from the bedroom, then says, "Not really."
She looks at him and rolls her head around in a theatrical way. This is what she always does when he says vaguely disturbing things in passing. He watches her neck, thinking figure skaters spin their heads the exact same way when they bow to a crowd.
Finally, he sits in front of the television on the separate end of the sofa. This is unusual and usual, probably having something to do with absence of air conditioning in a summer leaving them both perspiring uncontrollably behind the knees.
They sit there motionless with all the other people on the television, watching white ice skaters doing things unilaterally with bouquets.
"I wish I could do that," she says.
"You know you could if you wanted," he says.
He talks about fast-food and the thyroid then tries to recall the last time he went swimming. It was at a lake in the woods and it felt like bathwater. She talks about the bath and says it hasn't been cleaned in a very long time.
People start clapping and smiling around a faraway area, standing, touching their hands together and moving from one foot to the other. He stares at the ceiling fan and sighs, thinking everything looks the same again. She watches the television and he watches her watching. He sees the glare of the screen on her wet eyeballs. For some reason, he thinks her eyes are too far apart for a person and has picture in his head of her with the eyes of a horsefly - a thousand lenses reflecting a thousand identical television screens.
During a commercial, he moves behind her slowly.
As he does this, she can see him.