Asleep From Day

by Margarita Montimore

  “Astrid?”

  Wait.

  “Astrid, what are you looking for?” A hesitant hand on my back.

  “I don’t know.” Whatever it was, it’s gone. “I need to lie down.”

  “I already made up the futon. Unless you prefer to sleep in my room.” Robin returns the linen to the drawer.

  “No, this is fine.” I lower myself onto the mattress, careful not to put weight on any tender areas. But even lying on my right side, my “good” side, triggers bitter twinges, radiating from the bones out. I feel like a box marked “FRAGILE” that’s been thrown down the stairs.

  “Were you able to reach my roommate?” I ask my father. “I hope Cass isn’t worried.”

  “I tried, but the line was busy,” he says. “Do you need something for the pain?”

  “I’m fine,” I say without thinking. My default response, but now’s the wrong time to downplay my agony to minimize his concern. “Actually, I could use something. Maybe Tylenol?” Preferably with codeine. “What about work? Did you call the agency?” Did anybody mail those contracts, book those flights, fix the copier?

  “I tried to get in touch with an office manager, but was told she wasn’t in.”

  “That’s me. I’m the office manager.” I sigh, and the small motion causes a jolt in my ribs. “Can I have the phone, please?”

  “I still don’t have a cordless. Why don’t I call again? Tell me the name of your boss and I’ll explain everything.”

  I look out the window. Grey skies, no sun. “What is it, Tuesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll probably fire me,” I blurt out before I can censor myself.

  “They’re not going to—”

  “That’s okay, a new job would do me good.” I say this so he doesn’t worry, but it’s not okay, not at all. It’s bad enough I don’t have a real career, that the needle of my inner compass spins and spins without landing on a solid direction. Bad enough that I watched my father swap his acting dreams for a steady paycheck when he found himself a single parent twenty years ago. Where another child would’ve seen it as a cautionary tale, I saw it as permission to grow up independent but unambitious. I’ve worked odd jobs since I was a teenager, many of them crappy, but I’ve never been fired. I don’t have a lot of money saved and the idea of being unemployed fills my head with thunder and doom, drains me of my last energy.

  I change the subject. “Has it been raining the entire time?”

  He leaves the room, either not hearing the question or choosing not to answer. Good talk, Robin.

  By the time he returns with the pills and a glass of water, I’m halfway to sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ..................

  Briiiiiiiiiiing!

  The phone rings . . . and rings . . . and rings. Not in this room, but close enough to wake me.

  I open my eyes. I’m back in the hospital. Sitting up, I expect to be pummeled by aches up and down my body, but I’m not sore at all.

  Briiiiiiiiiiing! Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!

  Jesus, why is nobody picking up? Is there no one on duty who can get it? No? Really? I guess it’ll have to be me.

  I ease my legs out of bed and test the cold floor with my bare feet, not sure how many tries it’ll take to get vertical. But there’s no dizziness, no weakness in my limbs, no creaks in my joints from being in bed all this time. I’m up and at ‘em in one go.

  I grab hold of my IV stand like a dance partner, take care that the tubing doesn’t snag on anything. I make my way out of the room and down the hall, follow the painted yellow stripe on the floor to the source of the sound. Whoever’s calling is not letting up.

  Though my body feels okay, I take slow, shuffling steps. Where is that ring coming from? Its tinny sound reminds me of old rotary phones.

  Briiiiiiiiiiing!

  Any second now, somebody who works here will find me and shoo me back to my room. Up ahead is an administrative cubicle area, but it’s empty. Doesn’t anyone fucking work here?

  Three quarters of the way down the hall, next to a painting of a pigtailed child holding balloons shaped like teddy bears, there it is: a payphone.

  As I approach, the ringing gets so loud, the receiver vibrates.

  I pick it up. “Hello?”

  “I’ve been trying to call you. I haven’t been able to get through.” A male voice, static on the line.

  “There’s no one else here.”

  “I wasn’t looking for anyone else. I wanted you to answer.”

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “You know who I am . . .” [static] “ . . . thought you forgot . . .” [static] “ . . . almost gave up . . .”

  “I think you have the wrong number. You don’t even know who this is.”

  The static grows louder. I strain to make out what he says. “I do know. I know but I can’t reach you. This . . .” [static] “ . . . Astrid? Where have you been?”

  I shiver and look around. The hallway is empty.

  “Astrid? “ [static] “ . . . let you go.”

  “Wait!” My knuckles go white gripping the receiver. “Do you go by your middle name?”

  The line gets quiet. “Now is not the time for riddles.”

  “Please tell me who you are,” I plead.

  But the static rushes back in and eclipses his voice. The only thing I can make out is my name.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ..................

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1999

  THE DAYS RECUPERATING AT ROBIN’S are more comfortable than the hospital, considering I don’t have a man dying two beds over or nurses interrupting my naps to bring in trays of unappetizing food. They’re also less boring, since my father has cable and splashes out on the premium channels. And he’s held onto all the books from my adolescence, so I can regress in comfort, reading Christopher Pike and V.C. Andrews novels in between mainlining HBO.

  Every other day, I try to call Cass, but the line remains busy. I call the agency, but my boss is on vacation so I leave a message with the temp receptionist that I’ll be back the following Monday.

  I don’t ask Robin to take any time off work to look after me, and he doesn’t offer, so he continues going to his two jobs, teaching drama at a local high school and directing plays at a community theater. He’s always preferred the stage world to the real one, anyway. Evenings keep him tied up in West Side Story rehearsals, but every night he brings something home for me: a gossip magazine, a bouquet of wildflowers, some scratch-off lottery tickets, a raspberry tart. He doesn’t cook, but keeps a stack of delivery menus at the ready and leaves me cash to cover the sustenance. I’d gladly trade these creature comforts for one real conversation with him, but I’m enough of an imposition. I mean, he’s already given me so much in my life, how could I ask for his time and attention on top of that?

  Most nights, Sally comes over to watch movies, though she commandeers the remote if I suggest anything black-and-white or subtitled. I’m happy to put my inner film snob on hold for her mood-brightening presence.

  Every day, I check on my bruises. When first discharged and back in my old room, I took off all my clothes to examine the damage. I gasped at the purple and brown patches that traced a mottled path up my left side. But then I looked in the mirror and caught myself smiling this fascinated smile. My body took a beating and showed all this resilience. It didn’t break or stop working. It just changed colors here and there. It kept on ticking. You go, body.

  A week later and my bruises still have dark cores, but are now ringed with yellow, and the cuts on my face are barely noticeable. The pain in my left side has gone from excruciating to tolerable, and my sprained fingers and wrist are nearly healed. There are still headaches, but I only take meds when they get really bad.

  I sleep a lot and wake up from intense and complicated dreams. Yet I only retain random details: a white feather, a hat on the wind, a ringing phone, a fountain. Probably drug-addled nonsense, but something nags at me. It’s lik
e being at the market without a shopping list, unable to recall a key item. Other times it comes on stronger, a sinking panic like I’m about to miss a flight or a court date—something time-sensitive and crucial.

  I don’t leave the apartment and hope the days doing nothing will bore me into missing my life in Boston. They do, but only a little. I miss seeing movies at The Brattle with my friend Daphne, getting tea upstairs at Algiers after. I miss sitting with Cass on the deck of our apartment, eating marshmallow treats with M&Ms (“I’m gonna get baked, then I’m gonna bake,” she liked to say). I miss going to The Garage on my lunch break and browsing at Newbury Comics. I don’t miss my job, but I miss having a sense of purpose and daily tasks to accomplish.

  Friday night, I’m watching La Dolce Vita when Sally buzzes from downstairs. Robin lets her in and shuffles back to his office.

  On TV, a glamorous evening-gown-clad-Anita Ekberg frolics in the Trevi Fountain.

  “It would be better with bubbles,” I murmur.

  Sally is wide-eyed and frenzied, ready to launch into her latest drama, but pauses to ask, “What would be better with bubbles?”

  I blink a few times like I’m half asleep. “I have no idea. What’s up?”

  She throws herself down on the couch with a little too much force, takes the remote, and changes the channel to a tornado report. It’s okay, their vitas weren’t all that dolce, anyway. “I found . . . something disturbing. At Corey’s.”

  “Were you snooping again while he was in the shower?” I knew he was sketchy. Something about his blank eyes and indistinct personality, like he was trying to blend into the world too much.

  “That’s beside the point, but yes.” She chews her fingernails, which I haven’t seen her do since high school.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “No. I’ll show you.” She pulls something out of her back pocket and tosses it into my lap.

  A passport. I flip it open.

  “You stole Corey’s passport?”

  “Take a closer look,” Sally urges.

  The words echo in my head, but a male voice speaks them.

  Take a closer look . . .

  Not now.

  I scan the photo page and— “Oh!” I sit up straighter. “Daniel Mothersbaugh?”

  “It’s gotta be a nod to his musical heroes, Danny Elfman and Mark Mothersbaugh. But that’s not all I found. There were a couple of photos tucked away in the back of his sock drawer.”

  “Polaroids of dead girls?” I blurt out.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  You don’t want to know. I don’t want to know.

  “They were pictures of him . . .” she pauses to build suspense, “ . . . of him with a mohawk. Playing the drums. I asked him about those.”

  “But not the passport?”

  “No.”

  Sally Logic strikes again.

  She leans in, scowling. “Turns out he was in a band in the ‘80s. Doesn’t talk about it because one of his bandmates died before they released their first album . . . Just when I thought I found myself a stable, non-arty guy . . . a fucking band.”

  “Just so we’re clear, the fake passport is the bigger deal here, right?” I wave it in front of her.

  “Oh, and on top of everything, he wants to postpone the wedding.”

  The words “dodging” and “bullet” come to mind, but I don’t speak them.

  “When I showed him the photos, he got mad at me for going through his things, went on about trust and privacy . . . I don’t know, all of a sudden he seems indifferent,” Sally’s low voice shifts down a note. “He talks about making sure our relationship is on more solid footing, but what does that even mean? It’s the same as always. Now I wonder if he cares if the wedding ever happens. And I don’t know what to make of this.” She motions to the passport.

  Why is she so hell-bent on marrying this thirty-something Wall Street cardboard cutout, anyway? I should get up the nerve to ask her. Sally’s been different since the engagement, too; the spunky and irreverent girl I’ve known since first grade has diminished, deflated, a new insecurity stamped across her like an unflattering shade of lipstick. I miss my old friend.

  Sally continues to bite her nails, eyes pleading for me to speak.

  “I hate to say this, Sal, but I can’t think of a good reason someone would have a fake passport.” She’s smarter than this. Deep down, she has to know.

  “I thought . . . I made it so close to reaching this romantic ideal . . . and now it doesn’t feel right.” Her voice is small and trembling with the threat of tears. She moves her free hand toward me—the one with intact fingernails—and I give it a squeeze.

  Is Sally’s steady diet of chick flicks and women’s magazines responsible for this damage? Or did her parents’ unicorn of a happy marriage set an unrealistic romantic standard? That’s one thing I’d never blame Robin for; I was too young to remember what his relationship with Mom was like before she died, and he gets cagey when I ask. Then again, he’s only had casual girlfriends since, so I’m clueless when it comes to recognizing any kind of romantic standard.

  My head gets tight; the pounding in my temples is eminent. “I’m sorry, Sally. What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing. I don’t want this to be a pity party . . . Let’s talk about something else.” She turns to the TV, sees a commercial’s on, then back to me. “So are you still having those weird dreams?”

  There’s a jolt in my stomach. “Not so much.” Why am I lying to her? “Maybe one here and there of doing random things around Boston. Nothing all that interesting, mostly walking.” I hope my answer is benign enough that she changes the subject.

  “Tell me more. Walking around where?”

  Damn it, Sally, why won’t you let it go?

  Ever since ninth grade, when she bought a dream dictionary, she fancies herself an expert on the subject. She spent a semester mercilessly analyzing our dreams on subway rides to and from school and would get so disappointed when I couldn’t remember any from the night before (“that’s why you should always keep a notebook by your bed!”). More than once, I ended up inventing some to appease her.

  I don’t want to do that now, but I also don’t want to tell her anything else about my dreams. Why am I so sensitive about them? So protective?

  If I reveal any strong emotion, she’ll sniff it out like a bloodhound and won’t drop the subject, so I play it casual, hide my hands beneath a throw pillow so she won’t see my tight, knotted fingers.

  “I really don’t remember, Sal. Mostly walking around where I work, Harvard Square and stuff.”

  “You probably miss your Boston life and want to go home.” Luckily, at that moment, a massive lightning storm sweeps across the TV screen, taking Sally’s attention with it. She turns her gaze forward, mesmerized by the beautiful-but-deadly natural phenomena on the screen.

  I wonder what it would be like to frolic in a fountain. My eyes fill with tears and I don’t know why.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ..................

  I’M LYING NAKED ON A soft mattress that undulates beneath me like ocean waves. Someone nibbles along my collarbone, which makes me gasp and arch my back. I can’t see who because I’m blindfolded. I also can’t move my arms. Are my wrists bound? No, someone’s holding them down on either side of me.

  “I need to redeem myself a little here,” a male voice murmurs.

  A tongue runs down between my breasts. I squirm with pleasure, anticipation.

  “You have nothing to prove,” I say, between quick breaths.

  “Does that mean you want me to stop?” He lifts his head from my body.

  The absence of his mouth on my skin is agony. “No. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

  His tongue resumes its downward path, now at the sternum, taking a slow, circular journey to my navel.

  There’s a loud, echoing sound above us, like typewriters clacking in a tin drum. I tense up.

  “Don’t worry about tha
t, it’s just the rain. It never seems to stop raining.” He releases my hands, and I go to remove the blindfold. “No, leave it on. You won’t remember this with your eyes open.”

  It shouldn’t make sense, but I believe him. “Okay, but can I touch you?”

  “No. Keep your arms where they are. Just focus on this. Enjoy it.”

  His tongue moves further south. Outside, the booming of thunder, the clatter of a shattering sky, far away, then closer, followed by sirens.

  He says, “You have nothing to be afraid of, you’re going to a safe place.”

  I can barely hear him over the din. The sirens are right above us now.

  “Where are we going?”

  He positions his body over mine, resumes his grip on my wrists. “You really want to know?”

  I spread my legs for him and he is inside me.

  “Tell me,” I gasp.

  “We’re in an ambulance. Taking you to the hospital.” His breath catches in his throat as he finds a slow, steady rhythm. “But we have to finish here first.”

  I have other questions, but he puts his mouth over mine, filling me above and below.

  Our groans are loud, but the sirens drown us out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ..................

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1999

  AT THE END OF THE week, after one more check-up, the bandages on my left hand are removed, I’m given a refill prescription for painkillers, and am finally permitted to return to Boston. I still have faint yellow remnants of a black eye and a map of violet-gray bruises along my left side, but I have enough energy to move around, so I book an afternoon bus ticket bound for South Station.

  Sally springs for a taxi to Port Authority and rides with me.

  “Somebody should see you off,” she says in the car.

  “Robin has a rehearsal.”

  “He always has a rehearsal.”

  I take out an envelope stuffed with twenties. “He left this for me.”

  She glances at the brief note on the envelope. “For incidentals?” Her sarcastic eyebrow matches her tone.