I can’t breathe, so I wake up. I picture myself like a tortured heroine in every other movie I’ve ever seen, glamorously helpless, and sitting bolt upright from a nightmare that’s run to the edge of consciousness by the time their eyes are open. The physical resemblance is neither canny nor uncanny – it isn’t there, but it’s an experience we both share.
The air in the apartment is stale, unaffected by the fan I usually leave on during the night. Only then does the room come into focus. The ugly couch with the mismatched colors I’d sooner burn than sit on, dark blue carpet worn to the ground by past and present partying, the drying rack covered in wrinkled clothes, exposed to anyone who wanders past. I’m in the living room.
“The shit?” My fingers find my eyes and massage them vigorously, miraculously failing to upset the contacts that have been resting there two weeks too long. Ten seconds to blink, and then a considerable effort to focus. The memory of how I fell asleep on her living room floor is completely absent, just like the dream now hovering on the outskirts of my consciousness. In another ten minutes, it will have vanished through my ear. Maybe I won’t even remember what it was like to suffocate in sleep.
A shiver runs through me like spiders with scissor legs, and my palms find the skin of my arms, rubbing for friction. Eyes tilt downward to confirm what I knew but did not realize several moments before: most of my clothing appears to be missing. A lump with the weight of the moon lodges in my throat, and the panic returns with a vengeance. There are clues as to what transpired the night before. A certain soreness and an odd feeling on my neck, but these are not carefully examined. That will come later, and possibly lead to more familiar oblivion.
The missing clothes are not too far away, slung over the drying rack as well, but with a haphazard chaos. They were not placed with care. If I had a visitor the night before, they have left no trace that I can see.
My hand stretches towards the couch and snatches up the blanket lying there, bright and colorful, a swirl of rainbows so arresting I have to flinch when I look, yet I cannot look away. Tossing it about my shoulders, it provides the warmth my own skin cannot provide, and for a moment, that’s all I need to make the morning (or perhaps afternoon) a little less than what it is. The blanket reeks of familiarity, of the mundane. A comfort better than a phone call or embrace can do me now.
The fabric brushes my neck, the spot that feels off. The memory of suffocation is fleeting, replaced by something else. Fingers wrapping around the short chain of necklace, pulling down. Laughter and spilt tequila, all of it wasted. The feeling of resistance, and the power of insistence. Trying to close and lock my door without using my hands.
“Ugh.” It’s really all that can be said.
My legs are finally remembered and with some difficulty, I’m upright. Staggering for a moment, something sharp buries itself into the bottom of my foot. A less than creative curse, some kicking, and a nigh-disastrous catch, and the offending object is in my hand.
The short chain of a necklace.
“Ugh,” I repeat, with more emphasis. Clutching the choker in my hand, I swipe the back of my arm against my brow, slick with old make-up and night oil. “What did I do last night?”
I frown and staunchly ignore the obvious joke.
A closer inspection is warranted. Through hazy vision, the chain in my hand becomes clearer. It’s old, silver and tarnished. It’s hung around a neck for quite a few years. What’s more, it wasn’t removed willingly; it snapped off. But by some miracle, the charm has stayed on. Jesus Christ in crucifixion mode, as clothed as I am now, and in a much more dire situation.
“Can’t seem to muster up any sympathy,” I mutter out of spite. It’s unfair, taunting a hunk of metal who may or may not be a deity, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t have room for pity. The lump hasn’t gone away and the blanket brushes against my neck. It feels like a noose, but I can’t let the thing fall to the ground unless I want to freeze.
I know who it belongs to.
“If you’re going to try and save me, please save your breath,” I said, trying not to be exasperated with him if he was only trying to share his faith, but I’d been solicited three times by those people already, and my patience was gone. “I’m really not interested anymore.”
He laughed, his voice rising above a girl in a high-necked sweater reading a familiar passage: New Testament, no fire and damnation. I thought it was one of Paul’s letters. “No, I’m not with them.”
I raised an eyebrow and pointed at the cross, the first thing I noticed about him. I told myself that his attractiveness hadn’t even crossed my mind yet. “You always wear Jesus on your neck?”
“Yeah,” he admitted, his fingers sliding across the delicate chain but going nowhere near the object in question. “But I don’t, you know… I’m not really that much into evangelism.”
Instant understanding. “You’re Catholic.”
A smile, not impossibly white nor glittering nor at all resembling a movie star, but pleasant all the same. “I’m also Robert.”
Robert. Catholic, nice-smile, well-dressed, attentive, good acquaintance but not really friend Robert. Robert who she didn’t remember being at the party, but whose presence would not have surprised her. He’s very much a fan of Jack Daniels. I hadn’t gotten his opinion on sex yet, and I still don’t have it. He’d been there, and he’d been so eager to leave that he’d left the necklace he wore every day behind.
“Wonders for my self-esteem,” I mumble, letting it fall to the ground.
Certain of the identity but not of much else, the natural course of action seems clear. Find cell phone, call Robert, and…
Well, first find cell phone.
After five minutes of searching, and another five for staring at the number, thumb hovering over the green ‘call’ button, the dial tones ring out. Then the rings. Once, twice, three times.
“Hey this is Robert. You know what to do.”
The automated message booms into my ear; female and computerized, it feels like an invasion. Swallow the lump as my knees collapse, a building falling from the weight of a bomb. The liquid in my mouth follows the lump and I realize I don’t have a thought in my head.
Beep.
Silence. So much, so much, so much silence.
“You said I should know what to do.” The blanket pulls tighter, and I don’t mind feeling breathless. “Tell me anyway.”
