put the nicest stuff I could afford in them—she had reconfigured the whole space: dropped the ceilings, installed recessed lighting, fans to circulate the heat. What truly caught my eye, though, were Faye’s paintings on the walls—seemingly perfect facsimiles of old master works but ripped apart, burned to cinders, revealing her whimsical line drawings and cartoons underneath. Real and fake, all mixed together.
“You make your bed, Sailor,” Faye said as she nodded toward the couch. She opened a closet door, reached to a top shelf, and pulled down an old army sleeping bag and a mushy pillow sans pillowcase, and tossed them in my direction.
I tried finishing the story I had been trying to tell her, but she seemed too busy to listen now. She took out her cellphone to make a call, then turned up her thermostat; a little blue flame flickered on in the radiator as she walked briskly to the industrial metal sink in her kitchen. She poured herself a mug of water, drank it, poured herself another. I asked for the bathroom; she thumbed to a door.
In the bathroom was another window covered by a plastic sheet, held in place by duct tape. There was a wheezy toilet, a rusty sink, a sunken tub, and a dirt-speckled mirror. I looked in that mirror and saw the reflection of a weather-beaten man—shadows under my eyes, creases where I hadn’t remembered seeing them before. I felt as though I were playing a game I used to play with myself when I was a kid—rubbing shaving cream in my hair, folding my cheeks, seeing what I would look like when I was old. I turned on the tap, looked in the cabinet for soap, couldn’t find any, washed off the blood and dirt with brown water. I looked in vain for a towel, wiped my face with my shirttail, then exited the bathroom, face and hands still wet.
In the workspace, Faye was standing naked save for a pair of white briefs with Asian characters on them; her red hair was cascading down, and I could see the tattoo of the twilight flower on her right shoulder. I felt a pang of longing knife through my guts as I stood with my arms folded, body quivering. Faye acted as if she didn’t notice me or the cold. She spoke on the phone as she stepped out of her underwear, then walked barefoot over the cement floor to the closet, where she grabbed another pair of underwear, jeans, a T-shirt, on it, the name of some seventies band.
Faye sounded as though she were speaking on the phone to a boyfriend, someone she would be meeting later, someone with whom she would probably be staying for a while, as evidenced by the fact that she was shoving pants, caps, and underwear into a backpack. I had been hoping she would stay here tonight.
She finished dressing, ended her phone conversation, put on her denim jacket and her black corduroy cap, stepped back into her boots.
“Can I stay here two nights?” I asked, and when Faye shrugged, then nodded, I wished I had asked for three, wished I had asked for a month or a year. I wouldn’t even need the couch to help me fall asleep, I thought, the cement floor would serve me just fine.
Faye put her hand on her front doorknob.
“Back tonight?” I asked. She crinkled her nose.
“Going to your boyfriend’s?” I asked.
“Something like that,” said Faye.
“How long till you come back?”
“How long did you say you’d be here?”
“Three nights.”
“Then not until after that,” said Faye. When I called out to her and asked for a key, she only shrugged. “Nothing worth stealing in here, Sailor,” she said, then added with a smirk, “Maybe I’ll see you after the last page.”
The door reverberated like a prison gate as she clanged it shut. I listened to her boots on the steps, the front door opening and closing, until all I could hear was the wind fluttering the plastic sheets covering the windows, and Faye whistling the song “Point of Know Return.”
THE HEART IS DECEITFUL, ABOVE ALL THINGS
I thought I’d fall asleep the moment my head touched the pillow, but I couldn’t sleep at all. I rolled this way and that, scrunched my pillow, turned it to the cool side, fluffed it, scrunched it again, turned it some more. I was too warm and too cold. I couldn’t sleep with the lights on, or with them off. I tried dimming the chandelier, smushing