I pulled a slice of pizza from the fridge and ate it cold, with my eyes closed, swaying under the fluorescent light streaming down from overhead and reflecting back up off the kitchen floor. I should have bought a sunlamp. The thought occurred to me, then rang a bell that I’d left in a boring corner of my mind to remind myself to take my vitamins. I gulped grayish water from the tap. When I righted myself, I felt a little swoon of panic at the thought of that lock on the door. If something happened to Ping Xi, I could die in here, I thought. But the panic vanished as soon as I flicked off the kitchen lights.
I bathed quickly, put my laundry in, did a few exercises, brushed my teeth, took an Infermiterol, and went back to the bedroom. Nothing felt very deep yet. Everything was mundane and practical. In the moments waiting to lose consciousness, I imagined Trevor on one knee, proposing to his current lady friend. The self-satisfaction. The stupidity of wanting something “forever.” I almost felt sorry for him, for her. I heard myself chuckle, then sigh, as I drifted away, back into the cold.
* * *
? ? ?
THE SECOND AWAKENING WAS at midday. I came to with my thumb in my mouth. When I pulled it out, it was white and wrinkled, and I had a kink in my jaw that reminded me of the cramp I used to get giving blow jobs. This didn’t alarm me. I rose, alert and hungry, and went to the kitchen. Ping Xi had crossed six days off the calendar and stuck a Post-it note on the fridge that said, “Sorry!” I opened the fridge, chewed a slice of pizza, took my vitamins, and chugged a can of Schweppes. The trash can was empty this time, no liner. I left the empty soda can on the kitchen counter and thought only passingly of Reva and her Diet 7UPs full of tequila before I bathed, combed my hair, did some jumping jacks, et cetera. I made a mental note to change the sheets upon awakening, took an Infermiterol, lay down, massaged my jaw with my fingers, and lost consciousness.
* * *
? ? ?
THE THIRD AWAKENING MARKED nine days locked inside my apartment. I could feel it in my eyes when I got up, the atrophy of the muscles I’d use to focus on things at a distance, I guessed. I kept the lights low. In the shower, I read the shampoo label and got stuck on the words “sodium lauryl sulfate.” Each word carried with it a seemingly endless string of associations. “Sodium”： salt, white, clouds, gauze, silt, sand, sky, lark, string, kitten, claws, wound, iron, omega.
The fourth awakening, the words fixated me again. “Lauryl”： Shakespeare, Ophelia, Millais, pain, stained glass, rectory, butt plug, feelings, pigpen, snake eyes, hot poker. I shut the water off, did my due diligence with the laundry, et cetera, took an Infermiterol, and lay back down on the mattress. “Sulfate”： Satan, acid, Lyme, dunes, dwellings, hunchbacks, hybrids, samurais, suffragettes, mazes.
* * *
? ? ?
SO MY HOURS WENT by in three-day chunks. Ping Xi was dutiful about the calendar and the garbage. One time I wrote a Post-it note and asked for Canada Dry instead of Schweppes. Another time, I wrote a Post-it note and asked for dryer sheets. I paid minor attention to the dust on the windowsills, swirls of lint and hairs caught between the floorboards. I wrote a Post-it note: “Sweep or tell me to sweep when I’m blacked out.” I forgot Ping Xi’s name, then remembered it. I passed the hallway to the locked door of the apartment and vaguely nodded at the idea of the lock, as though it might be just an idea, the door itself, just the notion of a door. “Plato”： chalk, chain, Hollywood, Hegel, carte postale, banana daiquiri, breezes, music, roads, horizons. I could feel the certainty of a reality leeching out of me like calcium from a bone. I was starving my mind into obliqueness. I felt less and less. Words came and I spoke them in my head, then nestled in on the sound of them, got lost in the music.
“Ginger”： ale, smoke, China, satin, rose, blemish, treble, babka, fist.
* * *
? ? ?
ON FEBRUARY 19, I stared into the mirror. My lips were chapped but I was smiling. Two syllables chimed in my mind and I wrote them down on a Post-it for Ping Xi: “Lip balm.”
“ChapStick”： strawberry, linoleum, pay scale, sundae, poodle.
And then, another Post-it note: “Thank you.”
* * *
? ? ?
ON FEBRUARY 25, I could tell immediately that something was different. I awoke not sprawled on the mattress in the bedroom, but curled up under a towel on the floor in the northeast corner of the living room, where my desk used to be.
I thought I smelled gas, and the association with fire alarmed me, so I got up and went to the stove before remembering that it was electric. Maybe, I thought, what I’d smelled was my own sweat. I relaxed.