For Dixie it was the best place she'd ever lived.
She got fed three times a day, she got to watch TV. She had a bed with a light she could turn on and off when she wanted except she couldn't bother Mrs Gray in the room with her.
If she wanted she could walk down to the traffic lights. She didn't like to cross. It took her too long.
The stroke got her in.
They wouldn't release her to the street again. Turned out she should have been getting Social Security for the last ten years, but being homeless it never caught up with her so here she was all warm and comfortable and loving it.
Some time in her third week the angel of death appeared at the end of her bed. It was around three in the morning. The angel loomed in the dark and appeared to be beckoning.
``Get away,'' she said. ``Where was you when I needed you? Where was you when I backed over my only child's only child? Where was you when I put the gun in my mouth and it didn't go off? I really needed you then but you was no where around.''
The angel of death said nothing.
``You ain't taking me now,'' she said, ``I'm too happy here. Aint no-one hassling me. There's good food and I can sleep all I want. Where was you when I was sick all that time? When I hadn't ate for weeks? When the landlord threw me out on the street? I was looking for you then, but you wasn't there.''
The angel of death said nothing.
Dixie thought of the beds she had made that she never slept on, of food she had prepared that she never ate, of floors she had waxed that she never walked on. She thought of the dreams she had never hoped to dream. She picked up her water pitcher and flung it at death's head.
The aide ducked and retreated to the nursing station.
``Dixie had a little episode,'' she wrote.