Hilda snorted. "More upscale, I take it?" Lester and Hilda hadn't really talked about the fatkins thing, but Perry suddenly remembered the vehemence with which Hilda had denounced the kids who were talked into fatkins treatments in their teens and wondered if she and Lester should be clearing the air. "Not really -- but more functional. More about, I don't know, pursuing your hobby. Less about showing up in an emergency." Hilda snorted again and they were at Death's room. They walked past his roommates, an old lady with her teeth out, sleeping with her jaw sagging down, and a man in a body-cast hammering on a video-game controller and staring fixedly at the screen at the foot of his bed. Then they came upon Death Waits. Perry had only seen him briefly, and in bad shape even then, but now he was a wreck, something from a horror movie or an atrocity photo. Perry swallowed hard as he took in the boy's wracked, skinny body, the casts, the sunken eyes, the shaved head, the caved-in face and torn ears. He was fixedly watching TV, which seemed to be showing a golf show. His thumb was poised over a rocker-switch connected to the IV in his arm. Death looked at them with dull eyes at first, not recognizing them for a moment. Then he did, and his eyes welled up with tears. They streamed down his face and his chin and lip quivered, and then he opened his mouth and started to bawl like a baby. Perry was paralyzed -- transfixed by this crying wreck. Lester, too, and Suzanne. They all took a minute step backward, but Hilda pushed past them and took his hand and stroked his hair and went *shhh*, *shhh*. His bawling become more uncontrolled, louder, and his two roommates complained, calling to him to shut up, and Suzanne moved back and drew the curtains around each of their beds. Strangely, this silenced them. Gradually, Death's cries became softer, and then he snuffled and snorted and Hilda gave him a kleenex from her purse. He wiped his face and blew his nose and squeezed the kleenex tight in his hand. He opened his mouth, shut it, opened and shut it. Then, in a whisper, he told them his story. The man in the parking-lot and his erection. The hospital. Posting on the message boards. The lawyer. "*What*?" Perry said, loud enough that they all jumped and Death Waits flinched pathetically in his hospital bed. Hilda squeezed his arm hard. "Sorry, sorry," Perry muttered. "But this lawyer, what did he say to you?" Perry listened for a time. Death Waits spoke in a low monotone, pausing frequently to draw in shuddering breaths that were almost sobs. "Fucking *bastards*," Perry said. "Evil, corporate, immoral, sleazy --" Hilda squeezed his arm again. "Shh," she said. "Take it easy. You're upsetting him." Perry was so angry he could barely see, barely think. He was trembling, and they were all staring at him, but he couldn't stop. Death had shrunk back into himself, squeezed his eyes shut.