Gossamer

Strapping’s previous assignments include a famous actor and a clown in a traveling circus, but he never took much interest in his work until he was assigned to the young woman. He prefers order and organization, so he was initially annoyed by the young woman’s messy apartment. However, the leader of his Heap, Dowager, gave him this assignment because she knew that it could unlock his potential. He begins to look at the woman’s “sad and needy” life with more compassion and notices her efforts to improve her situation (99), such as the way she organizes the unoccupied second bedroom for her son and stops smoking inside the apartment. The young woman tidies her apartment and takes stock of her finances. When she falls into a restless sleep, Strapping gathers fragments from a broken seashell, a child’s baseball cap, and bronzed baby shoes to give her “dreams of a future with her son” (101).

One morning, John feeds Toby breakfast, which reminds him of a traumatic experience that occurred when he was three years old. Once, when John was three, he ran around the house naked and urinated on the floor. His father told him that if he was going to act like a dog, he would treat him like a dog.