Maria

She had never wanted Danny back.

###“Poor fellow,” Gabriel laughs, “he’s falling apart just like I am.”

###Passing the shop on Second and Blanchard just below Roza’s apartment in downtown Seattle, they catch sight of the doll on a regular basis. It cuts a comical figure, this handmade oddity propped up amid other detritus on display in the window of the Millionaire’s Club Thrift Store. One day, Gabes pulls out a comically clichéd bit of his Irish heritage and serenades the silent figure. “Oh, Danny Boy,” he sings, bestowing a name and an identity upon the stuffed fabric toy.

###For Roza, the doll’s symbolism is evident: from the small, upturned smile set in its round face to the tuft of hair that echoes Gabes’ club-scene hairdo. Its thread-eyes are unraveling, but it retains a cheeriness in the face of catastrophe. All the while, it remains impeccably dressed, donning a crisp linen tunic trimmed with colorful rickrack. Its wooden feet are painted to a tidy black sheen.

###Although there is a toughness about Gabes—nose crooked from a former break and a bent towards self-destruction from a hardscrabble life—this is undercut by the boyish vulnerability he projects with his mild blue eyes and serene Paul Belmondo lips, his wit, his gentleness, and his motley collection of teddy bears.

###Gabriel’s health spirals downward. Danny grows dustier. It is painful to see him this way. One day, returning home after accompanying Gabes to another demoralizing exam that revealed a plummeting T-cell count and a new respiratory infection, Roza wonders how such a slight body can be the locus of so much suffering. That day, Danny and the other misshapen objects—a chipped enamel bowl and a stained floral smock—are missing from the display. Roza strains to see through the window, but the dark shop is closed for the night. Taking the back entry to her apartment, her breath catches at the sight of the tiny upturned smile. From the edge of a battered green dumpster, Danny’s body hangs lifelessly.

###She cups him in her hands and is seized by a visceral sensation that other hands have touched Danny—hands that created and played with him. Someone else invested Danny with a personality, someone who is grown, perhaps elderly, perhaps no longer alive. This discarded object anchors Roza to another existence in another era. She can feel the precise measure of a lifespan.

###Gabes and Roza wield a dark sense of humor as their main weapon against the brutality of their predicament. As they listen to a news story about passengers who survived a plane crash in the Indian Ocean, they let out an incredulous guffaw at the fate of these survivors: they were eaten by sharks. How could life be so savage? It was as if some diabolical persona was scripting it.

###Their other weapon is trips taken together, of the chemical variety. But to Roza, an art student testing the boundaries of life, these are experiences to be had infrequently, with much reflection in between. It takes something out of her, staying up all night, exploring the edges of creativity, seeing the world from a disconcerting new perspective. Coming down fills her with remorse for taxing her physical being, and with guilt about what her parents might think of their straight-A student.

###She knows that she doesn’t share Gabriel’s propensity for addiction. Still, she thinks that if she can adopt the same lifestyle, lose weight at the same rate, and survive the same bodily assault, so can he.

###In the final bender, a mutual friend proffers white powder in a narrow restroom stall, saying: “That’s okay, honey, you don’t have to take *all* of it!” She thinks she will be up until the fourth of July. That is the last time.

###Walking in the spring sunlight, life emerging, cells dividing, air redolent with the fragrance of blossoms, she starts to grasp that she shall continue her stay on the planet. Gabriel, though, is so slight now, as if fading into the air. He often stares out as if he can see something in the great beyond that is completely inaccessible to her. She understands that this youthful exuberance, already on the wane, will be arrested before he reaches twenty-five.

###In a monochromatic room in Harborview Hospital, he lays, closed eyelids fluttering lightly. She tries not to wake him, but he stirs.

###“Hi-iye.” He manages a stab at an upbeat welcome.

###“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

###“No, no…I wasn’t sleeping,” he says breathily.

###“I’ve brought a visitor,” she says, dipping into her handbag.

###“Danny! What took you so long!”

###They laugh.

###“Looking sharp!” He winks.

###“Hey, will you help me with this?”

###He struggles to remove his oxygen mask to sneak a cigarette.

###“Don’t let the nurses see.”

###He takes a couple drags, shakily.

###“I just need a little rest.” In seconds, his chest is heaving and falling. Roza tucks Danny beneath his arm and tiptoes toward the door. She lingers, drawing in one last look. He’s like a sleeping child clasping his favorite toy.

###The memorial service rips her insides out. She stores Danny away and struggles to get through the pain. At some distant point, she reaches emotional equilibrium, and that chapter of her life falls back with the others in her youth. Gabes wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise.

###Decades later, living with a husband and a child in a different city, having seen the world and left that young woman behind, all the time between her and Gabes collapses the moment she opens the shoebox and touches the doll’s unfortunate form.

###She tucks Danny in once more, preparing him for an extended sleep, wrapping the frayed-cotton cloth around his barely attached limbs, and folding the memory of Gabriel back into her heart. Gently, she closes the box.