by Matt Cahill
I could feel the drugs working. Sometimes it was hard to feel them, but today – even if it was only my imagination – I could feel my liver working overtime: it was tingling down there. I wished I could sleep, but I couldn't. I was alone on the cot. The room was dark and fathomless. It felt like I was floating – perhaps that was also the drugs working. I couldn't move my arms. Breathing's rough – nose is stuffed and my lungs are still built up with crap. At least I'm not hacking anymore. The good news is that I don't feel any tubes in me, and nothing against my face. I can handle: not being able to sleep, or to read, or to talk to anyone, or to breath properly. I can handle all of that providing nothing is laying against my face while I'm here floating, immobile in the dark.
I could feel the drugs working. Sometimes it was hard to feel them, but today – even if it was only my imagination – I could feel my liver working overtime: it was tingling down there. I wished I could sleep, but I couldn't. I was alone on the cot. The room was dark and fathomless. It felt like I was floating – perhaps that was also the drugs working. I couldn't move my arms. Breathing's rough – nose is stuffed and my lungs are still built up with crap. At least I'm not hacking anymore. The good news is that I don't feel any tubes in me, and nothing against my face. I can handle: not being able to sleep, or to read, or to talk to anyone, or to breath properly. I can handle all of that providing nothing is laying against my face while I'm here floating, immobile in the dark.
I could feel the question, regardless that I didn't want it asked: where was Anne?
How 'bout those Jays? Where was Anne?
How many people in the fucking world are dead now? Where was Anne?
How long can I lay here, motionless, without sleep, without the perception of space, without crying out for help?
Where was Anne?
* * *
“Can I tell you a secret?”
My friend behind the bar dumped a bucket of ice into the stainless steel sink. It roared throughout the emptiness. I knew his manner was curt. When I did hear him talk, not to me but to others, his voice was deep and came out with a thick accent. It was Eastern European – I don't know accents well enough to be more exact.
It was late and he switched to his closing-music: Bach's Goldberg Variations. It made the bar more intimate, as if we abutted a church. Silence and tension, as if in a dream. I think I come here because he trusts me enough to play Bach without asking for permission. He wasn't like the others, the ones who played dance music the moment their shift started. This man kept it silent, as if to say: let the mind roam on its own.
Maybe it was contempt? I've been coming here for months and I still didn't know his name. I just assumed he didn't think name-sharing was necessary.
It didn't mean that I couldn't bother him.
“Let me tell you a secret.” I said. I was looking at my drink while he went through his shift-chores, hanging wine glasses on a rack above me, between us.
Maybe the reason I came here is that I never know whether or not he's listening. And if not? Well, that's what it's all about: finding out.
“I'm different than people think I am.” I said. “Everyone who knows me thinks I'm...me. But I'm something else. I'm complex and unfocused, and that's not sexy. Nobody draws comics about unfocused people. For them, in their fucked-up imagination, I worked as a SCUBA instructor in Corfu. Or I sold heroin to Europeans in Nepal.”
I looked to see if he was following my admission. His eyes darted down to his glass cleaning. What does it matter?
“It's like they need to hear this. To believe this about me. People want me to have lived this trashy, boho-asshole lifestyle and the thing is... while I never encouraged this, I also never said anything to make them think differently.”
My friend began wiping down the counter. I have been tempted to learn a Slavic language just so he would pay more attention to me.
The last time I talked this openly was at Wilma's grave.
I wanted to say: I'm a lot of things, but overall I'm pretty normal. I've never stolen and, outside of the lies I can defend, I rarely lie. I am allergic to danger and ambivalent toward non-conformity. I'm not complete yet, not this soon afterwards, but I'm getting there, save for abetting a public misperception about me.
“You married?” I asked. I couldn't remember if I'd asked before.
