Loren moved in to the apartment below us the week after my myomectomy. That's fibroid surgery, to non-medical types. It's like having a C-Section, only instead of going home with a baby, you leave the hospital with only a six-inch scar below your bikini line and prescriptions for the kind of pain medication that pharmacists will not dispense without proper identification. The kind Loren would have enjoyed, if I had told him I had it, which I didn't.

I can't tell you if Loren was a real person or just a part of myself. The truth is that when he moved in, I was so heavily sedated that the whole month-long incident could have been an extended hallucination. I don't think so. And I hope not. But maybe you can be the judge.

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His apartment was exactly the same as ours. Except that in the room where we had a bed and a custom built armoir, he had spread plastic drop cloths on the floor and lengths of unstretched canvas along the four walls. There was a paint-spattered boombox on the floor in one corner plugged into an extension cord that wrapped around the doorway and into what upstairs was the livingroom. Loren had no livingroom. He didn't feel he needed one, as he never entertained guests and preferred to set up his foam futon on the floor by the gas fireplace. Propped five deep against the walls was Loren's artwork. Canvases done by Loren as well as those given to him by his customers -- in the days when Loren was brave enough to go out.

ãElizabeth Terry
8/2000