Me Vs. Me. Sarah Mlynowski
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heaves the window open. The honking gets louder. “You’ll need to air out the room,” she says. “Leigh was a pig.”
I wheel my luggage into the center of the empty space. “Wait a sec. Where’s my new bed?”
Heather shrugs. “It never arrived.”
You’ve got to be kidding. “What am I supposed to sleep on?”
“What do you want me to do? Call a mattress company.”
Crap. My phone. “I forgot to pack my phone.”
“Where’s the rest of your furniture? Where are you going to put your clothes?”
“At the moment, I’m more concerned with where I’m going to put me.” The couch did not look all that comfortable.
“It’ll probably come tomorrow. Are you hungry? What are you doing for dinner?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Do you eat Italian?”
“Sure.” Who doesn’t? “But I’d like to unpack first, if that’s okay,” I say, glancing dubiously at the miniscule closet.
“Obviously. I need to make us a reservation, anyway.”
At least I remembered my Hello Kitty alarm clock. I set the current time and the alarm for tomorrow. Then I pull my work clothes out of my bag and shake them out. I have no idea what I’m going to wear tomorrow for my first day, but whatever it is, it must not be wrinkled. I open the closet to find it…stark free of hangers. Wonderful. “Can I borrow some hangers?”
“I don’t have too many extras.”
Come on. “One? Two? I’ll buy my own tomorrow.”
She sighs and retreats into her bright orange room (which looks bigger than mine from this angle), and returns a few minutes later with three metal hangers, the kind you get at the dry cleaners. “I’ll need these back ASAP.”
I guess we won’t be sharing shoes just yet.
“So what’s your story?” she asks over our Caesar salads. We’re at a table by the window looking onto Lexington. Every time the door opens, a burst of cold air blows through my clothes.
“Which one?”
“Men-wise.”
This is one story I don’t feel like rehashing. “Had a boyfriend. Now I don’t.”
Her eyes gleam. “So you’re single.”
Single. I haven’t been single in years. The word feels foreign in my head, like another language. “I suppose so.”
“Good. I could desperately use a new single friend. All my girls have sold their souls. It’s the worst. Their men are their goddamn appendages. Tell me, why can’t a wife have dinner with her friends one night a week? Will her husband starve?”
“I don’t know.” Cam was actually pretty good about letting me have my own space. Although who knows if that would have changed if we lived together.
“Well, I do. Women let men control their lives. They don’t know how to create boundaries.” She draws a square in the air with her index finger. “They don’t know how to keep their own individuality. At least we’ll have each other. At least you didn’t bail. You wouldn’t believe the freaks I met trying to sublet this place. I wish I could keep the whole apartment on my own, but I’d be broke by Christmas. Leigh moving out totally screwed me, you know. What a bitch.”
If Leigh was a bitch, what does that make Heather? Our server arrives with our raviolis, and I shove a forkful into my mouth in case I’m suddenly tempted to answer my question out loud.
After dinner, I’m in my bedroom, staring at the apartments across the street, my sheets covering my makeshift bed (aka the couch cushions). It’s already eleven, but I doubt I’ll be able to doze off anytime soon.
First of all, it’s only nine my time. Second, I’m terrified of closing my eyes. I’ve been in denial all day, but I can’t ignore that every time I go to sleep, I seem to end up in an alternate reality. And since that isn’t possible, I must just be having weird dreams, right?
Maybe tonight I’ll dream about something normal, like failing a test in high school.
What if I wake up back in Arizona?
No. No, no, no. Must think positively. It won’t happen again! I will wake up in New York! I will…I will…I will…
My eyelids feel heavy. Yes, that’s what’s going to happen. I will wake up in New York. I will wake up back in New York. I will…
Blinding pain. Light.
“This week in sports…”
There’s a fire in my head! I blink twice and open my eyes. Shit.
“Morning, gorgeous,” Cam says. He’s sitting up in bed, shirtless, watching TV. “You must be zonked. It’s already ten.”
I try not to cry. I am going mad. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I tell the difference between dreaming and real life? Why is my brain playing tricks on me? I pull the covers back over my head.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nightmare,” I say.
“About what?”
About what, indeed. “A fire.” My brain is on fire.
“No fires here,” he promises.
I stay hidden until Cam eventually leaves to make us breakfast. “Omelet?” he asks from the kitchen. “Cheese and onion?”
“’Kay,” I answer. I am not coming out. I am temporarily crazy, so I will remain here until it passes. Like the flu.
My stomach starts to growl as the scent of onion and bacon wafts under the sheets. Yum. I doubt Heather is making me anything this good in my real life.
“Since you won’t come out for the chow, the chow is coming to you,” Cam says, placing a tray on my lap. Breakfast in bed. How sweet is that? “Eat, future wife,” he says. “You need your strength.”
I slither out from the sheets, lean up against the headboard and dig in. A girl’s gotta eat, even if she is asleep. “And why is that?” I ask, digging into my omelet.
“Because as soon as you finish, you have to call your parents. It’s not right.”
Yes! The man’s a genius! I’ll speak to my mom. She’ll remember our conversation yesterday. She’ll have to. Mothers know these things, right? They can sense if their children are losing their minds. I reach for the phone as I stuff another forkful of egg into my mouth. “I’m going to call her right now.”
He winks, hands me a napkin and sits down on the edge of the bed beside me. “There’s a good girl.”
I dial her room at her hotel, but she doesn’t answer. So I call her cell. “Mom? It’s me.”
“Oh, so nice of you to call,” she snaps. Do I detect a hard line of sarcasm in her voice? “Anything you’d care to tell me?”
“What are you talking about?” I take another bite of egg. A drop of ketchup smears onto the bedspread. Cam rolls his eyes and points to the napkin.
“Alice called me this morning.”
I smack Cam’s leg. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. Why is it that I heard about my only daughter being engaged from someone other than my daughter? Huh?”
“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t have a chance to call you yesterday.” Was it yesterday? I hear a smash and then a clang. I think she just threw the phone. “Mom?” I wait for her to pick it back up.