My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh Page 0,70

the wet blacktop as silently as cockroaches, each so small it amazed me that they hadn’t been squashed underfoot. Easy to love. Easy to kill. I thought again of Ping Xi’s stuffed dogs, the preposterous myth of his industrial dog-killing freezer. A tight sheet of wind slapped me in the face. I pulled the collar of my fur coat up around my throat, and I pictured myself as a white fox curling up in the corner of Ping Xi’s freezer, the room whirling with smoky air, swinging sides of cow creaking through the hum of cold, my mind slowing down until single syllables of thought abstracted from their meanings and I heard them stretched out as long-held notes, like foghorns or sirens for a blackout curfew or an air raid. “This has been a test.” I felt my teeth chatter, but my face was numb. Soon. The freezer sounded really good.

“Some flowers just came for you,” the doorman said as I walked back into my building. He pointed at a huge bouquet of red roses sitting on the mantel over the nonworking fireplace in the lobby.

“For me?”

Were the roses from Trevor? Had he changed his mind about his fat old girlfriend? Was this good? Was this the beginning of the new life? Renewed romance? Did I want that? My heart reared up like a frightened horse, an idiot. I went over to look at the flowers. The mirror hanging on the wall above the mantel showed a frozen corpse, still pretty.

And then I noticed that the glass vase was skull-shaped. Trevor wouldn’t have sent me that. No.

“Did you see who dropped these off?” I asked the doorman.

“A delivery guy.”

“Was he Asian?” I asked.

“Old black guy. A foot messenger.”

Tucked between the flowers was a small note written in girly ballpoint: “To my muse. Call me and we’ll get started.”

I flipped it over: Ping Xi’s business card with his name, number, e-mail address, and the corniest quotation I’d ever read: “Every act of creation is an act of destruction.—Pablo Picasso”

I took the vase off the mantel and got into the elevator, the smell of the roses like the stink off a dead cat in the gutter. Up on my floor, I opened the garbage chute in the hallway and stuffed the roses down, but I kept the card. However much Ping Xi disgusted me—I didn’t respect him or his art, I didn’t want to know him, I didn’t want him to know me—he had flattered me, and reminded me that my stupidity and vanity were still well intact. A good lesson. “Oh, Trevor!”

At home, I stuck Ping Xi’s business card into the frame of the mirror in the living room, next to the Polaroid of Reva. I popped four Ambien and sucked down some Dimetapp. “You are getting very sleepy,” I said in my head. I dug in the linen closet for fresh sheets, made my bed, and got in. I shut my eyes and imagined darkness, I imagined fields of grain, I imagined the shifting patterns of sand between dunes in the desert, I imagined the slow sway of a willow by the pond in Central Park, I imagined looking out a hotel window in Paris, at the flat gray sky, warped green copper and slate roofs, and tendrils of black steel on balconies and wet sidewalks down below. I was in Frantic with the smell of diesel and people with trench coats flying like capes from their shoulders, hands on hats, bells ringing in the distance, a two-tone French siren, the fierce, unforgiving vroom of a motorcycle, tiny brown birds whipping by. Maybe Harrison Ford would show up. Maybe I’d be Emmanuelle Seigner and rub cocaine on my gums in a speeding car and dance at a nightclub like a boneless serpent, hypnotizing everyone with my body. “Sleep. Now!” I imagined a long hospital hallway, a nurse in blue scrubs and thick thighs rushing soberly toward me. “I’m so, so sorry,” she was going to say. I turned away. I imagined Whoopi Goldberg in Star Trek wearing a purple robe standing at the huge panel through which outer space stretched into infinite mystery. She looked at me and said, “Isn’t it pretty?” That smile. “Oh, Whoopi, it’s beautiful.” I took a step toward the glass. The sheets ruffled against my foot. I wasn’t entirely awake, but I couldn’t cross the line into sleep. “Go. Go on. The abyss is right there. Just a few more steps.” But I was too