My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh Page 0,59

as a performance piece.

“I can’t get past the context of the art history classroom,” a Barnard girl said.

“There are so many conflicting layers of meaning here, it’s wonderful,” said the bearded TA.

And then, simply to humiliate me, the professor, a woman with long waxy hair and crude silver jewelry, asked me how much I’d paid for my shoes. They were black suede stiletto boots, and they’d cost almost five hundred dollars, one of many purchases I’d made to mitigate the pain of having lost my parents, or whatever it was I was feeling. I could remember all of this, each sniveling, pouty face in that classroom. One idiot said I was “broken by the male gaze.” I remembered the tick of the clock as they stared. “I guess that’s enough,” said the professor, finally. I was permitted to take my seat. Out the window of the classroom, flat, wide yellow leaves fell from a single tree onto gray concrete. I dropped the class, had to explain to my adviser that I wanted to focus more on Neoclassicism, and switched to “Jacques-Louis David: Art, Virtue, and Revolution.” The Death of Marat was one of my favorite paintings. A man stabbed to death in the bathtub.

I got out of the shower, took an Ambien and two Benadryl, wrapped a mildewed towel around my shoulders, and went back out into the living room to check my phone, which had charged sufficiently for me to turn it on. When I looked through my call history, the numbers I had dialed were Trevor’s and an unidentified 646 number, which I had to assume was Ping Xi’s. I deleted the number and took a Risperdal, pulled a gray cable-knit sweater and pair of leggings out of a pile of dirty laundry in the hallway, put the fur coat back on, stuck my feet into slippers, and looked for my keys. I found them still stuck in the lock on the door.

* * *

• • •

IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON, I gathered, from the clouds drifting overhead like crumpled bedsheets. In the lobby, I ignored the doorman’s cautious salutation about the storm and shuffled out and down the disappearing path snaking between the banks of snow piled high on the sidewalk and over the curb. Everything was hushed, but the air was angry and wet. Any more snow and the whole city would be covered. I passed a twitching, sweater-clad Pomeranian and its nanny on the corner, watched it lift its leg and piss on a flat, glassy plane of ice on the pavement, heard the singe of the hot stuff melting through, steam spreading in a contained bubble for a moment, then dissipating.

The Egyptians extended no special greeting when I walked into the bodega. They just nodded as usual and went back to their cell phones. That was a good sign, I thought. Whatever I’d done on the Infermiterol, whomever I’d cavorted with or how hard I’d “partied,” I hadn’t behaved so badly at the bodega at least to solicit any special attention. I hadn’t shit where I ate, as the saying goes. I got cash out of the ATM, poured my two coffees and stirred in the cream and sugar, then picked out a slice of prepackaged banana bread, a cup of organic yogurt, and a rock hard pear. Three Brearley girls in tracksuits formed a line at the counter. I glanced at the newspapers while I waited to pay. Nothing earth shattering was going on, it seemed. Strom Thurmond gave Hillary Clinton a hug. A pack of wolves was spotted in Washington Heights. Nigerians smuggled into Libya might one day be washing dishes at your favorite downtown bistro. Giuliani said cursing at a cop should be a crime. It was January 3, 2001.

In the elevator back up to my apartment, I thought up combinations of pills that I hoped would put me out—Ambien plus Placidyl plus Theraflu. Solfoton plus Ambien plus Dimetapp. I wanted a cocktail that would arrest my imagination and put me into a deep, boring, inert sleep. I needed to dispose of those photographs. Nembutal plus Ativan plus Benadryl. At home, I took a good helping of the latter, washing the pills down with the second coffee. Then I ate a handful of melatonin and the yogurt, and watched The Player and Soapdish, but I couldn’t sleep. I was distracted by the Polaroids under the couch cushions. I put in Presumed Innocent, hit rewind, pulled the Polaroids out, and took them and sent