12: the choice

I'm not going to make this a big thing, because it isn't one yet. It's a pill in a pocket. This is everything that happened, in order, because order is the only thing I've got left that's mine right now.

Sunday I lined up the numbers and both versions fit. Tuesday I watched somebody's eyes go smooth. Wednesday I checked the corridor photos again, twelve now, and it's the same twelve pixels of lint. Thursday my manager said I seemed like myself again, it’s the second time she's said it, and I said thanks. I thought: which self? The one who sees it, or the one who's fine. Because she means the one who's fine. Everybody means the one who's fine.

I just want to see what's there. That's all. That's the whole reason. I'm not trying to prove anything, I'm not going to go looking for the back, I don't want to be swallowed by anything, I just want to look at the thing without the subtraction one more time and know what I'm looking at. I want to know if the sticky eyes are mine or if they're a thing that happens to me when I'm out.

So I made rules, because I know myself off the pill and that person needs rules.

1. Keep the job. I go in, I do the walk, I dress the fixtures, I send the recap. If the job starts to go, I stop. Immediately.
2. Keep the log. Every morning, corridor, photo, fixture 14. Every night, this.
3. Eat. Kate will make me a plate and I will eat the plate.
4. Don't tell Kate.

I sat with four riding my shoulders like a heavy burden for a long time. She'd be kind about it, but that's exactly why. She'd be kind and she'd call someone, and I'd be back on it by Monday, and this would be a thing I tried once. And also, the sticky note. I'm not saying the sticky note means anything. I'm saying I don't want to have the conversation about the sticky note.

So this morning: 6:46 am. I'm in the kitchen, the kettle's on, the bottle's on the counter where it lives. Ten pills. I know because I counted last night and I counted again this morning, both hands on the counter, ten. I opened it and took one out and I put it in the front left pocket of my work pants. Then I closed the bottle, and I filled a glass, and I drank the glass of water standing at the sink the way I do every morning, and I put the glass in the rack.

Kate stepped out of her room, untucking her hair from her robe, and said "did you take it?"

6:49. I looked at the clock on the stove. I hadn't sat down yet. I hadn't gone anywhere. There wasn't a beat of time in which her asking would make sense, I was standing at the sink with my hand still on the glass, and she was in the doorway in her robe with her hair down, asking. Not suspicious. Just asking. The way you'd ask, “Did you lock the door?”

I said yep. She said "good," and did the pause, and set off to make her morning tea.

I want to say I felt guilty and I did, but not about lying to her. I felt guilty the way you feel when you find out you've been on camera. Like the lie was already known and just, allowed to be.

Work was fine. Rule one, kept. Corridor, four doors, photo. Nothing. Day one is nothing, I know that, day one is the collar getting bigger. I did the walk and I dressed fixture 31 with the fruit card, the one with no basket, and I put it in the sign holder and it slid in clean, nothing caught on the lip, and I stood there with my hand on the header card and I thought, “I miss the corner.” I think that's probably the strangest sentence I've written in this whole entire thing so far. I miss the corner of a basket that never existed. I shoved my hands in my pockets and stood there, staring at the new old card. The pill settled against the nail of my left middle finger. I hadn’t taken it. It just rolled around my pocket, like a gazelle in the glade free to frolic about, undigested.

I got home at 5:40. Kate was out. I went to the bottle on the counter first thing, before I put my bag down, because I'd been thinking about it all day, and I opened it and I counted.

Nine.

Good. Nine is right. Ten this morning, one in my pocket, nine in the bottle, the math works. I actually felt something loosen in my chest, like okay, the bottle's just a bottle.

Then I put my hand in my pocket.

Front left. Work pants. I put it there at 6:46 am and I've had my hand on it all day, I checked it at the register, I checked it in the break room, I checked it on the bus, a little flat disc against my thigh, I'd have told you I could feel it through the fabric. I put my hand in and there was pocket. Just pocket. I turned it inside out. I turned the other one inside out. I took the pants off in the kitchen and shook them. My gazelle had escaped.

It's not in the pants. It's not on the floor, I looked, I got down and looked. It's not in my bag. I didn't take it, I know I didn't take it, I drank a glass of water at the sink and put the pill in my pocket and I did not at any point in the day put anything in my mouth except a granola bar and coffee.

Ten this morning. Nine in the bottle. None in the pocket.

The math still works. That's the thing. That's the exact thing. Ten minus one is nine and the one is gone and that is precisely what the world looks like if I took my pill at 6:50 am like a normal person. The bottle says what it's supposed to say. The pocket says what it's supposed to say. Everything reconciles.

I don't think it fell out. Kate couldn’t have gone through my pants, I was wearing them and she was out. I think the sheet said one pill taken this morning, and the rack didn't match, and something fixed the rack. The way the blouses went from eleven to twelve, except this time, I’m the rack.

I’m going to document this and then follow the rules and then eat the plate. There is now absolutely no proof I didn't take it. None. The bottle agrees I did. My pocket agrees I did. Kate had asked this morning and I said ‘yep’. The only place in the entire world where it says I didn't take that pill is this entry. Which is a blog nobody reads, on a server somewhere, in text.

Just like the sign.

I ate the plate she'd left in the fridge, rule three, and I sat down to write this, rule two, and my hands were fine, my hands were completely steady, and the apartment already feels about four percent bigger than it did this morning. I know where this goes. I've read 05. I know I'm going to be that person again in about four days and that person's going to be embarrassing and that person's going to see things and say things.

Good. That’s the point. Let them.

Fri 4/17, 6:46am, kitchen. Ten. One to pocket.

Fri 4/17, 5:40pm, kitchen. Nine. Pocket empty. Correction: sometime between. I wasn't watching.