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Exhausted but too jumpy to go back to sleep, I head to the kitchen to make coffee. Instead of a quick and easy Keurig machine, the apartment has such a high-tech, absurdly complex coffeemaker that I spend several groggy minutes just turning it on. It takes so long that my body is aching for caffeine by the time coffee starts dripping into the pot.
As it brews, I go back upstairs and shower, trying to shake off the nightmare. God, what a strange, awful dream.
There have been others, of course. Not long after my parents died. Nightmares about burning beds and thick smoke and internal organs blackened by illness. Some were so wretched that Chloe had to shake me awake because my cries threatened to wake the entire dorm. But none had ever felt so true, so real. Part of me worries that if I look out the window into Central Park, my family will still be there, glowing their way across Bow Bridge.
So I spend the morning looking at clocks.
The digital alarm clock in the bedroom as I dress for the day.
The clock on the microwave as I pour the coffee that has at long last brewed.
The grandfather clock as I drink said coffee in the sitting room, counting the pairs of eyes in the wallpaper. My tally stands at sixty-four when the clock bongs out the hour. My heart sinks. It’s only nine o’clock.
When I was laid off, I was presented with a folder of resources. Job-hunting tips and career counselors and information about student loans in case I wanted to go back to school. Everything I needed to face life as someone who was officially unemployed.
What wasn’t in that folder was advice on what to do with all that sudden free time. Because here’s something else no one understands unless they’ve been there: unemployment is boring. Soul-crushingly so.
People have no idea how much of their day is taken up by the act of going to work. The getting ready. The commute there. The eight hours at your desk. The commute home. So much time automatically occupied. Take them away and there’s nothing but empty hours stretching before you, waiting to be filled.
Kill time before it kills you.
My father told me that, not long after my mother got sick and he lost his job. It was the peak of his short-lived birdhouse phase, when he spent hours in the garage building them for no discernible purpose. When I asked him why he was doing it, he looked up from the pine plank he had been painting and said, “Because I need one thing in my life I can control.”
It’s a sentiment that makes sense only in hindsight. At age nineteen, I was confused. As an unemployed adult, I get it. Although finding something to control is hard when my whole existence feels as though it’s been hit by a hurricane.
So I kill time by doing another job search, finding no openings I haven’t seen before. I do a little light cleaning, even though nothing needs it. I empty trash cans that have hardly anything in them and take the bag to the garbage chute, located in a discreet alcove near the stairwell. I drop the bag inside and listen to it slide all the way down to the basement, where it lands with a soft thud.
Five more seconds wasted.
When the grandfather clock announces noon’s arrival, I leave the apartment, spotting no one new on the trip to the lobby. Just the usual suspects coming and going. Mr. Leonard and his nurse struggling up the steps and Marianne Duncan and Rufus in the lobby itself, returning from their walk. Today, Marianne wears a seafoam green cape with a matching turban. Rufus sports a red handkerchief.
“Hello, darling,” Marianne says, adjusting her sunglasses as she swans toward the elevator. “It’s chilly out there today. Isn’t it, Rufus?”
The dog barks in agreement.
Since Ingrid’s not there yet, I go to the mailboxes and look to see if anything’s been sent to 12A. It hasn’t.
I close the mailbox and check my watch.
Five minutes past noon.
Ingrid is late.
When my phone rings in my pocket, I reach for it immediately, thinking it might be her. My stomach tightens when I see who’s really calling.
Andrew.
I ignore the call. A second later, a text arrives.
Please call me.
It’s followed by a second one.
Can we just talk?
Then a third.
Please????????