I think about the blood and the people it once belonged to. Thin crimson tubes—silicon,

plastic, rubber?—connect me to the robot, whirring, spitting and spinning. Do they check the

blood before they give it to the robot to give to me? Clean it? Rex played a scientist in a stage

production once, he said. There was a microscope on stage, but it was a big ugly prop. He

couldn’t check on these blood cells with that thing, couldn’t make sure they’re intact. I shouldn’t

worry about the blood, about the robot and the doctors, he says. Wives are for worrying and

husbands are for quenching fires.

I make Rex laugh more than anyone. I speak loudly at restaurants, drink dry martinis on

empty stomachs, walk naked around the flat when he has company. He thought I was funnier

when he was married to that other woman, when we snuck around film sets and I did topless

impressions of the president of MGM. Now he’s serious, his smile stapled into a flat line unless

he’s acting. The sex was better when he was someone else’s husband. How much of the blood

belongs to someone else’s husband?

The nurse told me to stop singing during the transfusions. It’s just anemia, she said.

People around you are dying, it’s like you’re gloating, she said. The doctor looked at Rex,

smoking and glaring, and told her to let me sing.

Rex and I married quickly. When you know you know, etc. Third wives don’t get

weddings, third wives get newspaper columns where she looks radiant next to her husband’s

thinning hair. I asked Rex if they do surgeries to bring back a receding hairline, a reverse

Hayworth, I called it. I don’t want to be the mother of a bald man’s children, I said. I already

have children, he said.

It’s hard to shake him up. That Landis girl set me up well, leaving him his own note to be

found with her body. She’s the reason he married me I think. Two dead blondes would be a hell

of a record, although I wouldn’t have killed myself: My blonde comes from a bottle. The Landis

girl was dead long before Rex got there, and then long after until he finally called a doctor. Her

organs, her blood, were no good. She would have spoiled. Do they check the blood for spoilage,

for chunks, for mold?

A steak should fix me. A helping of spinach. Tablets. I shouldn’t need this much blood,

shouldn’t be taking it from the people around me, rotting in their beds. They don’t get to leave

when the whirring stops and the tubes empty, but I am needed on set this afternoon. The robot

keeps feeding, and I keep taking the dirty blood of strangers, and Rex keeps watching, smoking

in the corner.