My Year of Rest and Relaxation (27)
I didn’t answer. I spat the rice out and carried all the containers of Chinese food to the garbage. Then I opened each pint of melted ice cream and poured the contents down the drain. I imagined Reva would gasp if she saw all the food I was throwing out, as if eating it all and vomiting it back up wasn’t just as wasteful.
I took the garbage out into the hallway and threw it down the trash chute. Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with the trash of others. The things I touched touched things other people had touched. I was contributing. I was connecting.
I took a Xanax and an Infermiterol, pulled my soggy coat out of the tub, and ran a hot bath. Then I went to the bedroom to find clean pajamas so that I could put them on right away and fall asleep to Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The furniture in my bedroom had been reorganized. My bed had been turned around so the head of it faced the wall. I pictured myself, in a drugged blackout, assessing my home environs, and using my mind—what part of it, I’m not sure—to make decisions for how to strategically improve the spatial ambiance. Dr. Tuttle had predicted this kind of behavior. “Some activity in sleep is fine just as long as you don’t operate heavy machinery. You don’t have children, do you? Stupid question.” Sleepwalking, sleeptalking, sleep-online-chatting, sleepeating—that was to be expected, especially on Ambien. I’d already done a fair amount of sleepshopping on the computer and at the bodega. I’d sleepordered Chinese delivery. I’d sleepsmoked. I’d sleeptexted and sleeptelephoned. This was nothing new.
But my experience with the Infermiterol was different. I remember pulling out a pair of leggings and a thermal shirt from my dresser drawer. I remember listening to the rumble of the water filling the tub while I brushed my teeth. I remember spitting bloody suds into the crusty sink. I even remember testing the temperature of the bath water with my toe. But I don’t remember getting into the water, bathing, washing my hair. I don’t remember leaving the house, walking around, getting into a cab, going places, or doing anything else I may have done that night or the next day or the day after that.
As if I’d just blinked, I woke up on an LIRR train wearing jeans and my old running shoes and a long white fur coat, the theme from Tootsie running through my head.
Four
DR. TUTTLE HAD WARNED ME of “extended nightmares” and “clock-true mind trips,” “paralysis of the imagination,” “perceived space-time anomalies,” “dreams that feel like forays across the multiverse,” and “trips to ulterior dimensions,” et cetera.
And she had said that a small percentage of people taking the kind of medications she prescribed for me reported having hallucinations during their waking hours. “They’re mostly pleasant visions, ethereal spirits, celestial light patterns, angels, friendly ghosts. Sprites. Nymphs. Glitter. Hallucinating is completely harmless. And it happens mostly to Asians. What, may I ask, is your ethnic background?”
“English, French, Swedish, German.”
“You’ll be fine.”
The LIRR wasn’t exactly celestial, but I wondered if I might be lucid dreaming. I looked down at my hands. It was hard to move them. They smelled like cigarettes and perfume. I blew on them, petted the cool white fur of the coat, made fists and punched down at my thighs. I hummed. It all felt real enough.
I took stock of myself. I wasn’t bleeding. I hadn’t pissed myself. I wasn’t wearing any socks. My teeth felt gummy, my mouth tasted like peanuts and cigarettes, though I found no cigarettes in my coat pockets. My debit card and keys were in the back pocket of my jeans. At my feet was a Big Brown Bag from Bloomingdale’s. Inside the bag, a size two Theory black skirt suit and a Calvin Klein matching nude bra and panty set. A small velveteen jewelry box contained an ugly topaz pendant necklace set in fake gold. On the seat beside me was an enormous bouquet of white roses. A square envelope was tucked beneath it, my handwriting on the front: “For Reva.” Beside the flowers, there was a People magazine, a half-empty water bottle, and the wrappers from two Snickers bars. I took a sip from the water bottle and discovered it was filled with gin.
Out the window, the sun throbbed pale and yellow on the horizon. Was the sun coming up, or was it setting? Which way was the train headed? I looked at my hands again, at the gray line of dirt under my chewed-up fingernails. When a man in uniform passed, I stopped him. I was too shy to ask the important questions—“What day is it? Where am I going? Is it night or morning?”—so I asked him what the next stop on the train would be instead.
“Bethpage coming up. Yours is the station after.” He plucked my ticket from where it was stuck on the seat back in front of me. “You can sleep for a few more minutes,” he winked.
I couldn’t sleep now. I stared out the window. The sun was definitely rising. The train rumbled, then slowed. Across the platform at Bethpage, a small crowd of long-coated middle-aged people with coffee cups stood waiting for the train coming in the opposite direction. I figured I could get off there and catch that train back into Manhattan. Once the train came to a stop, I stood. The fur coat swept down to the floor. It was heavy fur and tied with a white leather belt around my waist. My bare feet were damp inside my sneakers. I wasn’t wearing a bra, either. My nipples rubbed against the soft fuzz on the inside of my sweatshirt, which felt new and cheap, the kind of sweatshirt you can buy for five dollars at Walgreens or Rite Aid. A bell clanged. I had to hurry. But as I gathered up my things, I had a sudden and overwhelming urge to shit. I left my bag and the roses on the seat and hurried down the aisle to the toilet. I had to take the coat off and turn it inside out before hanging it up so that only the silky pink lining rested against the grimy wall of the toilet stall. I don’t know what I’d eaten, but it certainly was not the usual animal crackers or salad from the diner. I felt the train start back up as I sat there. I pushed up the large sleeves of the sweatshirt to survey my arms, looking for a stamp or mark or bruise or Band-Aid. I found nothing.