Maybe this memory triggered the hemorrhage of adrenaline that pushed me to go back inside the gallery. I pulled a few Kleenex from the box on my old desk, flipped the power switch to turn on the lasers, and stood between the stuffed black Lab and the sleeping dachshund. Then I pulled down my pants, squatted, and shat on the floor. I wiped myself and shuffled across the gallery with my pants around my ankles and stuffed the shitty Kleenex into the mouth of that bitchy poodle. That felt like vindication. That was my proper good-bye. I left and caught a cab home and drank the whole bottle of champagne that night and fell asleep on my sofa watching Burglar. Whoopi Goldberg was one reason to stay alive, at least.
* * *
? ? ?
THE NEXT DAY, I filed for unemployment, which Natasha must have resented. But she never called. I set up a weekly pickup with the Laundromat and automatic payments on all my utilities, bought a wide selection of used VHS tapes from the Jewish Women’s Council Thrift Shop on Second Avenue, and soon I was hitting the pills hard and sleeping all day and all night with two-or three-hour breaks in between. This was good, I thought. I was finally doing something that really mattered. Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.
Two
I’D BEEN SEEING Dr. Tuttle once a week, but after I left Ducat, I didn’t want to have to make the trek down to Union Square that often. So I told her that I was “freelancing in Chicago” and could only see her in person once a month. She said we could talk over the phone every week, or not, as long as I gave her postdated checks for my copayments in advance. “If your insurance asks, say you were here weekly in person. Just in case.” She never caught on that I was having her call in my refills to my local Rite Aid in Manhattan. She never asked how my work in Chicago was going, or what I was doing there. Dr. Tuttle knew nothing about my hibernation project. I wanted her to think I was a nervous wreck, but fully operative, so she’d prescribe whatever she thought might knock me out the hardest.
I plunged into sleep full force once this arrangement had been made. It was an exciting time in my life. I felt hopeful. I felt I was on my way to a great transformation.
* * *
? ? ?
I SPENT THAT FIRST WEEK in a soft twilight zone. I didn’t leave the apartment at all, not even for coffee. I kept a jar of macadamia nuts by the bed, ate a few whenever I rose to the surface, sucked a bottle of Poland Spring, gravitated to the toilet maybe once a day. I didn’t answer the phone—nobody but Reva ever called me anyway. She left me messages so long and breathless that they got cut off midsentence. Usually she called while she was on the StairMaster at her gym.
One night, she came over unannounced. The doorman told her he thought I’d gone out of town.
“I’ve been worried,” Reva said, barging in with a bottle of sparkling rosé. “Are you sick? Have you been eating? Did you take time off of work?”
“I quit,” I lied. “I want to devote more time to my own interests.”
“What interests? I didn’t know you had interests.” She sounded utterly betrayed. She stumbled a little on her heels.
“Are you drunk?”
“You really quit your job?” she asked, kicking her shoes off and flopping down on the armchair.
“I’d rather eat shit than have to work for that cunt one more day,” I told her.
“Didn’t you say she was married to a prince or something?”
“Exactly,” I answered. “But that was just a rumor anyway.”
“So you’re not sick?”
“I’m resting.” I lay down on the sofa to demonstrate.
“That makes sense,” Reva said, nodding compliantly, although I could tell she was suspicious. “Take some time off and think about your next move. Oprah says we women rush into decisions because we don’t have faith that something better will ever come along. And that’s how we get stuck in dissatisfying careers and marriages. Amen!”
“I’m not making a career move,” I started to explain, but I went no further. “I’m taking some time off. I’m going to sleep for a year.”