I made the cab driver let me out at the house on the corner with the green roof. At the time I thought I had convinced him to drop me off at some place he was not supposed to and that my superb negotiating had offered me a daring escape from what surely awaited me at his intended destination. At the time I was still kind of drunk.

I knew the back door would be unlocked, and I stepped softly through the kitchen to the room that used to be a screened-in porch but was now a bedroom. I tried to enter silently, but the door, with its twelve individual panes of glass, refused to fit the doorway and reverberated loudly when I pushed it open. He opened his eyes.

“What happened to you?” he asked, appraising the hospital bracelet on my wrist, the bruises on my hand from the IV, the EKG electrodes still adhered to my skin, peeking out from below my collarbone.

“I need to sleep,” I answered, and he moved over to let me crawl into bed next to him. Continue reading →