21: the pill on the counter

The refill came.

Kate picked it up yesterday. I didn't ask her to. I didn't call it in, the doctor's office called it in, the two weeks was up, let's check in, and I didn't check in, and somebody did. There's a white bag on the counter with my name on it and a receipt stapled to the top with hers, and next to it there's a glass of water, full, and next to the glass there's a pill. One. Out of the bottle. On a folded paper towel. The way she does it. She's done it every morning for two years and I never once thought about the fact that somebody was taking it out of the bottle for me.

She's in the next room. Her door's open a crack and I can hear her getting ready, the drawer, the hair dryer for a second and then off. She'll come out at 6:49. She'll say did you take it.

I'm writing this at the table with the pill about two feet from my hand. I've been up all night again, that's four, and I'm calm, and I'm going to write the corridor one more time, and then I'm going to do whatever I'm going to do, and I'm not going to write down which.

Here's the corridor.

Between the break room and the floor. Grey tile with the black flecks. Four doors on the left: loss prevention, the manager's office, a closet, the bathroom nobody uses. Two on the right. A wall clock nobody's ever set, seven minutes slow, the same seven minutes every day. A laminated sign about lifting with your legs. Red.

I could walk it with my eyes shut. Some mornings I basically do.

I looked at the photos last night. All of them. Forty-one. I hadn't looked at the early ones since April, since the lint, and I wanted to see the first crack again, the smile that isn't a smile, before I did anything. So I opened March 16th, the first photo, the Monday after the door.

Seven to one.

The crack in the first photo runs seven to one. Low left to high right. I opened the second. Seven to one. I opened all eighteen of the ones that used to be the old clock and every one of them is the new clock. There is no photograph anywhere on my phone of a crack that runs from 4:30 to 10:15. There's my first entry, where I said it curves from about the 4:30 mark up to a little past 10, and there's 05, where I said where it's always been, and there's the notebook in my bag with a drawing of a curve and the words looks like a smile.

And there's the May 5th entry, which says 4:30 to 10:15, and which I didn't write.

So the only places left in the world where the old crack exists are the words of a person who isn't sure what they've written and a drawing that at least one other person has read.

That's fine. I'm not upset. I noticed it, and I'm writing it down, and that's the rule.

Here's what I know, and it's short, and it's all I've got.

If I take the pill, the corridor will have four doors. I'll walk it at 7:40 and it'll be four doors and a slow clock and a red sign and a crack that has always run seven to one, and I'll take the picture, and it'll match, and I'll go dress the front tables, and my manager will say I seem like myself, and she'll mean the one who's fine, and I'll be that one. Kate will say good. Kate will do the pause. The store will be exactly as right as a store is supposed to be, no more, and there will be a hanger backwards somewhere, one, and I'll fix it, and I'll feel good about it, and I'll never know why. And the weather will be out there, over everybody, raining, and I'll be dry, and I'll agree to the new one. I'll agree to all of it. That's what the pill is. It's not blindness. I said that in April. It's the right amount.

If I don't, the corridor will have four doors too. Probably. And I'll know it's the corridor, one of it, set out for me like a place setting, and I'll know what's on the racks in the back and what's on the shelf, and I'll know the sign was faded and the crack was a smile and a girl with curls was fine, and I'll be the only one, and I'll be wrong, provably, on every count sheet in the building, and eventually somebody with a coat too heavy for the weather will sit on a bench and look at my hands, and it'll be me. And I'll look at somebody else's.

I don't know that it's a choice. I want to say that clearly, at the end, for whoever this is for. I don't know that I get to pick. The pill was in my pocket in April and then it wasn't. The count always reconciles. Maybe I take it or I don't and either way the rack says nine by tonight.

But it's on a paper towel two feet from my hand, and she folded the towel, and it's 6:47, and for two more minutes nobody's fixed anything.

6:49. Her door opened. "Did you take it?"

I'm not going to write down what I said. I'm not going to write down what I did with it. That's mine. It's the one count sheet nobody gets to reconcile.

5:52 pm
the 14

I'm writing this on the bus. I need to get it down before I get home, because I don't know what the apartment is going to be when I get there and I want this to exist first.

Corridor. 7:41 am. I went through the break room door and I looked left.

It ran long.

Not the back. The corridor. The one at the front of everything, the one I could walk with my eyes shut, the four doors and the clock and the sign. It didn't have four doors. It had doors. It ran past loss prevention and the manager's office and the closet and the bathroom and it kept going, door, door, door, the same four doors again, and the clock again, and the sign again, red, and the clock, and the sign, tile, tile, tile, all the way down to a point, and I stood there with my badge in my hand and I didn't do the thing. I didn't look away. I've been looking away and looking back since March and I was so tired of it. I just looked.

And I walked.

I want to tell you it was frightening and it wasn't, it was the most familiar place I've ever been, it was two thousand mornings laid end to end. Every clock said seven minutes slow. Every crack ran seven to one. I passed the fifth door, at some point, on the left, between the closet and the bathroom, and I didn't open it, and I don't know if that was the right call and I'm never going to know.

I don't know how long. There's no how long in there. My phone says I left the apartment at 7:20 and it says it's 5:52 now and I don't have anything for the middle.

There was a door at the end. Not a fifth door. A normal one, a push bar, an exit door, the kind with the alarm sticker that's never once been hooked up. I pushed it.

Daylight. Late daylight, the slant kind. Traffic. The bus shelter, the one with the cracked panel, and the bench, and the countdown across the intersection going 12, 11, 10, in order. I came out of the corridor at my bus stop. I came out of the door that isn't there into the door that isn't there and I was standing on the curb where I stand at 5:15, and it was 5:15, and the shelter was behind me.

And the coat.

On the bench. Too heavy for May. White bag in the lap. And they looked up at me, and it was the held look, steady, on my hands, on my face, and I met it, and it didn't break.

And then it moved. For the first time since April, their eyes moved off me. Not smooth. Not the slide. They went to the wall of the shelter, behind the bench, where the ads go, and then back to me.

Thing. Me.

The ping pong. Half of it. The half that points.

I looked at the wall.

There's a poster. Between the ad for the injury lawyer and the one for the community college, taped up, a little curled at the corners the way they get after a couple months. Letter size. The word at the top is MISSING in the font they always use.

It's my face.

It's the rooftop photo. The one from the fridge, from Kate's work thing, the one where I've got a face like I'd rather be at the store. Cropped. Just me. You can see just the edge of somebody's shoulder on the left, and a little shock of red, at the very edge, where her hair would be.

My name under it. Spelled right. First thing in two months that's been spelled right.

My height. My hair. What I was last seen wearing, which is my work clothes, which is what I'm wearing. A number to call. And then the line, the one they always put, and I read it and I did the thing, I looked away, at the coat, at the countdown, at the bus coming two blocks down, and I looked back.

It didn't correct.

Last seen Tuesday, March 10th.

That was the Tuesday. That was the door.

The 14's here. The doors are open. Everybody's getting on. Everybody's looking at me.