Anna in Chains by Merrill Joan Gerber

voice belonged to Ida (whose husband, Herman, was upstairs with Alzheimer’s) or Sadie (emphysema—she smoked four packs a day) or Ava’s best friend, Mickey (her husband had had a fatal heart attack when he tripped on two gay boys, naked on the beach at night, a year ago).
    â€œWhy should anyone move to a morgue?”
    A man’s voice. At first Anna thought it came from Collins Avenue, from the sidewalk five feet in front of her chair where a trickle of old folks passed by in the deepening dusk. The women, dragged down by their diamonds and mink, promenaded, as if along a hospital corridor, on the arms of old men wearing jackets and bow ties. Anna glanced along the row of metal chairs till she made out what looked like a dark balloon floating against the pink stucco of the hotel wall. She tried to focus her eyes. Glaucoma was working its way through her retina; one of these days the sights of the world would go black on her. (Amazing, how this morning, Ava, needing to sew a button on her housecoat, threaded the needle in just one pass; eyes like an eagle and she was ninety to Anna’s seventy-eight.)
    â€œIrving bubbie, light of my life, go back upstairs or go across to the Crown and see the show but do us a favor and shut up,” said Sadie.
    â€œAah, they die like flies here,” Irving said. “What’s the point? Tell me,” he leaned forward and addressed Anna. “What is the point of it all?”
    Anna squinted, trying to see him better. She made out a pair of white suede loafers with red rubber soles, some skinny knees.
    â€œThere is no point,” Anna said in his direction. “You’re right—it’s all a big nothing.”
    â€œLook around you,” he said. “We all come to the last stop like lemmings running to the ocean. We run to Miami Beach and play cards with our last breaths. We’re dying and playing cards at the edge of the cliff till we get shoved off.”
    â€œYou’re a sick man?” Anna asked.
    â€œI have AIDS,” he said.
    â€œAIDS?” Anna said, shocked. She shut her mouth tightly. He didn’t look like the type, but you could never tell. A snort came from Ava at the card table.
    â€œTell her, Irving, what kind of AIDS you have.”
    â€œYou want to know?” He addressed Anna.
    â€œDon’t feel you have to talk about it,” she said, trying to breathe very shallowly.
    â€œI’m happy to tell you. I’m able to talk very freely about this.” He paused. “I got hearing aids!”
    It took a moment for Anna to digest this information. Then she felt taken. She wished fervently she were home in her dark apartment in Los Angeles where the Armenians next door choked her with their barbecue fumes. She had come on this trip to Florida to see Ava one last time before one of them died. Sisters were sisters, after all, and how much time was there? Ava already had a pacemaker and an artificial heart valve. Anna, thank God, had only the usual: arthritis, glaucoma, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, nothing serious.
    Irving said, “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, take your pick.”
    â€œSerious things like AIDS you shouldn’t joke about,” Anna insisted. “Have some respect.”
    â€œFor what? I should take the world seriously? Why should I? What’s the world ever given me that’s any good except maybe my children?”
    â€œAnd then even they don’t visit,” Anna remarked strictly for his benefit only, since her daughters, when she was home in LA, called her every day.
    â€œNot my children. My daughter is married to a millionaire,” Irving corrected Anna. “She sends a limousine for me every Sunday, I go to eat Chinese, Italian, whatever I want, cost is no object.”
    Ava called over from the card table, “Tell the truth, Irving. Tell my sister you eat with the chauffeur, not with your daughter. When does she come? The