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This is the address to the station that be playin the news, she say. Imma write to them and they gonna do a story on us.

I’m like, Yo, Kandese, that’s a good idea.

My mama put on the news every night. I didn’t know you could send them letters.

Ain’t no news cameras comin down here, Bernita say. Cops don’t even come here.

She love rainin on parades.

I realize then that Wichu knows. Of course he knows. He was here, at this temple, outside of the pavilion with his mother, when Khamron got drafted years ago. He was here when the wealthier boys got taken out of the line. He was here when those same boys came back an hour later, took their places at the end of the lottery line, and—when their turns came—drew black card after black card after black card. Wichu had told me all about it the night of his brother’s draft. Although I had only half listened to him at the time, the memory of his voice comes back to me now in all its anger.

“Draft Day” from SIGHTSEEING © 2005 by Rattawaut Lapcharoensap; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc.

My ex answers your call like shit is sweet, says, Good to hear from you, so fake you want to reach through the receiver. Next thing, she drops the phone minus nary a pardon and leaves you on an indefinite hold soundtracked by the blare of some rap video cranked beyond good sense. Meanwhile, you carry the noisy cordless into another room, crack the blinds, and watch a pair of baseheads, both thin as antennas, push a half-wrecked sedan down the street. The baseheads, they’ve got the sedan’s doors flung open, and seethe at each other across a scrappy ragtop roof. Farther, they jog their hooptie to a slow cruise, jump in on the run, and sputter off. It’s still plenty of lightweight action on the set. The old lady dressed in a who-gives-a-what-about-the-heat getup (down coat, snow boots, thick wool scarf) tugging a shopping cart full of thrashed cans. Down a ways, boys riding wheelies for distance on dirt bikes with mismatched rims.

I told him about the nucleotides, the genetic test, the prognosis. I told him that atrophying of basal ganglia starts years before symptoms present, and that right now—in this car, in this moment—parts of my brain were dying, parts that I didn’t know I needed, but parts that I would never, never be able to get back. I told him that there wasn’t an emotion or an impulse or a stumble that I could completely trust; I told him that one day—if I let it—everything I did and said and thought would be nothing more than the entropic implosion of a condemned building or a dying star.