1987

I AM ON This bed in a cheap motel listening to the growl

of the Gulf. My cameras remain in their silvery Halliburton

case. I have hung the shirts and jeans in the closet. On the

wall there is a fading photograph of the Blue Angels flying in

tight formation over Pensacola. There is no room service and

I am hungry, but I don t care to move. It is a week now since

my third wife left me, and I am 1,536 miles from home.

It was easy to pack my bags and drive down here, to the

places l had not seen in more than thirty years. I was weary

of many things: New York and the people I knew there.

Photography. Myself. We were in a time of plague. All around

me people were dying, as a fierce and murderous virus spread

through their blood and destroyed all those immune systems

that had made them so briefly human. Each day s newspaper

carried the names of the previous day s body count. I knew

some of them. Their names filled my head as I remembered

thhem i~life and tried to imagine theirpainful final days, hut

after a few hours they just became part of the blur.

In restaurants with my wife, Rose, in the final weeks, I