My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh Page 0,83

wake up with a different face and body and name. I’d appear to be the old me.

“But that’s cheating,” he said. “If you’re planning to walk out of here and go back to being the same person you are now, what’s the point?”

“It’s personal,” I said. “It’s not about ID cards. It’s an inside job. What do you want me to do? Walk out into the woods, build a fort, hunt squirrels?”

“Well, that would be a more authentic rebirth. Have you seen any Tarkovsky? Haven’t you read Rousseau?”

“I was born into privilege,” I told Ping Xi. “I am not going to squander that. I’m not a moron.”

“I might have to, like, downgrade to Super 8 then. Can I take down the blinds in the bedroom?” He pulled a handwritten document from his messenger bag.

“Put the contract away,” I said. “I won’t sue you. Just don’t fuck this up for me.”

Ping Xi shrugged.

I gave him the key to the new lock.

“If I need anything, I’ll stick a Post-it note here,” I said, pointing to the dining table. “You see this red pen?”

Each time Ping Xi came over, he was to mark off the days on a calendar hanging on the door to my bedroom. Every three days, I’d wake up, look at the calendar, eat, drink, bathe, et cetera. I would only spend one hour awake each time. I did the math: for the next four months, 120 days total, I would spend only forty hours in a conscious state.

“Sweet dreams,” said Ping Xi.

His face was wan, fleshy, something blurry about it—maybe it was the Vaseline on his chin—but his eyes were sharp, hooded, dark, clear, and although I understood that he was foolish, I trusted his resolve. He wouldn’t let me out of there. He was too conceited to fail to keep his word, and too ambitious to give up the opportunity to take advantage of my offer. A woman out of her mind, locked in an apartment. I shut the door in his face. I heard him slide in the key and lock it.

I took the first of forty Infermiterol, went into the bedroom, fluffed the pillow, and lay down.

* * *

• • •

THREE NIGHTS LATER, I came to in pitch darkness, crawled off the mattress, turned on the lights, and went into the living room, expecting to find scratches at the door, evidence of a wild animal being held against her will. But I found nothing. Ping Xi hadn’t even crossed out the days on the calendar. My apartment was almost unrecognizable in its blankness, clean and empty. I could imagine some well-dressed real estate agent bursting in—a floral scarf fluttering like a sail from her upheld arm as she extolled the virtues of the unit to a newly married couple: “High ceilings, hardwood, all the original molding, and quiet, quiet. From those windows, you can even see the East River.” The agent’s suit was canary yellow. The couple, I imagined, were the ones whose photo I’d taken a few days earlier on the Esplanade. My memory had blundered into my imagination, but I knew what was what. I understood that three days had passed without me, and there was a long way ahead.

I saw no trace of Ping Xi until I went to the kitchen: Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans; tin foil smeared with the contents of what I could assume was a burrito; the New York Times from February 2. I wrote a list of things I desired on a Post-it and stuck it to the table: “Ginger ale, animal crackers, Pepto-Bismol.” And then, “Remove all garbage after each visit! Cross out the days!” I guessed Ping Xi had been over to take measurements or talk or sketch plans for some video project, but had made no real work yet. I just had that feeling.

I pulled a slice of pizza from the fridge and ate it cold, with my eyes closed, swaying under the fluorescent light streaming down from overhead and reflecting back up off the kitchen floor. I should have bought a sunlamp. The thought occurred to me, then rang a bell that I’d left in a boring corner of my mind to remind myself to take my vitamins. I gulped grayish water from the tap. When I righted myself, I felt a little swoon of panic at the thought of that lock on the door. If something happened to Ping Xi, I could die in here, I thought. But the panic vanished as soon