I tried to sleep.
It didn’t work.
I went downstairs to warm some milk.
I glanced into the living room.
Melissa wasn’t on the sofa. She was on the floor. Face down. One arm limp across the ottoman. One bent behind her back. An unnatural position for sleeping.
But she wasn’t sleeping.
She was unconscious.
There’s a difference, I’d learned.
I didn’t stop to try to pick her up. I was too angry. I’d seen this pose before. She’d had the local drugstore bring some pills. Or come across the hiding place of some forgotten flask of vodka. Perhaps she’d even given in and breached the ultimate taboo, the talisman. It didn’t matter which. Whatever it was, we were back at the starting gate. Again. It hadn’t been an aberration. Tomorrow I’d try to deal. She’d tell some lies. She’d had a cold. It was cough medicine.
I didn’t have the energy to care. Let Steiglitz care. Let Steiglitz deal. I needed sleep. I climbed the stairs. I lay down. I slept.
In my dream the fog had eyes. The fog had eyes to see through me. Through the fog I could see nothing. Nothing but the fog around me. The fog had a mouth. A face. A name. Hello! The face was Jake’s. Jake laughed. He put his arm around my shoulder. Bought me a drink. I felt grateful. The fog had lifted. I turned to him.
I had my arm around a woman. Her name was Lola. Tall. Slim-waisted. Muscular. A snakelike thing. It broke my grasp. It got away. Escaped.
I woke up feeling strange. It was six in the morning. Too early to get up. I tried to place the feeling. I wasn’t just hungover. Or anxious. It was something more specific. After a while it occurred to me: unsatisfied. I felt unsatisfied.
I lay in bed for a while, thinking about what it meant. To be unsatisfied. It was different from being dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction implied a goal. Something expected or desired that hadn’t come to pass. Something specific. Being unsatisfied was different. It was an emptiness waiting to be filled. With something. Anything. Anything, that is, that would fill the emptiness.
But what that was, what that could be, I didn’t know.