past and potential bosses purely by taste.
It was really getting late, and Mercedes was starting to feel anxious as the elevator descended from Trafford’s office. The door opened, and she strode briskly across the lobby, hoping for a quick cab. Not even Sean could always be so trusting, so dense.
As Mercedes pushed into the revolving door, she saw her reflection in the glass. Somehow something seemed wrong with her image there, and then she realized that she was not looking at her reflection, but at another person confined within the glass chambers of the revolving door.
Her twin gaped back at her as they spun past. There was a shock of panic, a feeling of vertigo, and then a sense of some wrenching, of deep tearing.
And Mercedes was through the door, stumbling across the sidewalk, frantically hailing the cab that waited there.
Mercedes lay back against the seat cushions, as the feeling Mercedes lay back against the seat cushions, as the feeling of lightheadedness began to fade. She really had been working
of lightheadedness began to fade. She really ought to cut-back
too hard lately, but the response to her presentation made
on the coke and ’ludes, but it helped to get her through the
all the hard work worthwhile. The senior staff were taking
living hell with Sean. A’t least Trafford was a good fuck, and
note of her abilities, and there was a lot of talk of a major
office gossip indicated she could ride him to a senior vice-
promotion.
presidency.
Sean would be so proud of her, and she’d work even harder Sean
would be a problem, and it was time she left the drunken Irishman
to support their life together. Mercedes hoped his sessions
He was a washed-up loser; and Mercedes
with Nicki had gone OK. Sean was a genius, and it hurt her to
rejoiced with each predictable failure. She liked wielding
see his work ignored. Probably by now he was worried sick
the financial whip hand over him. Probably by now he was drunk
about her. At least he knew that she was faithful to him,
and passed out in his vomit. At least he never guessed that
just as she knew Sean was faithful to her.
she was flicking around, not that Sean could get it up anymore.
Mercedes was reaching for her key when Sean opened the Mer
cedes let herself into the apartment and found Sean
door—relief and excitement in his face. He held a dozen red
sprawled on the couch, his face bloated and angry. He had a
roses out to her, and he was kissing her while she tried to take them.
near-empty bottle of vodka in his fist, and he staggered toward her.
“Nicki came through!” Sean told her, trying to hug her
“Who you been fucking tonight, you goddamn slut!” Sean and dance at the same time. “Billy Spree picked me for his
shouted, trying to hit her with the bottle. “I been waiting
new lead with The Terminators!”
here all night for some dinner!”
“Sean! I knew it’d happen!”
“Sean! Keep away from me!”
Mercedes sorted out purse, roses, and Sean—kissing the latter. Mercedes dodged the bottle, screaming at him.
“Keep your purse,” Sean said. “I’m taking us out on the town.” “You're gonna pay for fucking around on me!” Sean yelled.
“Let’s just stay here,” Mercedes said.
“You drunken son of a bitch!” Mercedes shouted back.
Then they were together on the couch, laughing and kissing like Then he knocked her to the floor, where they wrestled and screamed like giggling teenagers, and the roses scattered a red pattern across the rug. animals, until Sean began to bash her face with the bottle, and a red pattern sprayed across the rug.
Endless Night
I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
—John Donne, Holy Sonnet I
The dream landscape always stretched out the same. It had become as familiar as the neighborhood yards of his childhood, as the condo-blighted streets of his middle years. Dreams had to have some basis in reality—or so his therapists had tried to reassure him. If this one did, it was of some unrecognized reality.
They stood upon the edge of the swamp, although somehow he understood that this had once been a river, and then a lake, as all became stagnant and began to sink. The bridge was a relic, stretched out before them to the island—on the far shore—beyond. It was a suspension bridge, from a period which he could not identify with certainty, but suspected was of the early 1930s judging by the Art Deco pylons. It seemed ludicrously narrow and wholly inappropriate for its task. As the waters had risen, or the land