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“Your breakfast, sir.” I heard a tray set down. “And a package has arrived for you. Just this morning.”
I held out my trembling hand. “Show me. Please.
“Of course.”
A cool, dry hand took mine and led me to the tray, to a square package wrapped in paper. I tore it open and a bottle fell out, rolled onto the table.
“What does it say?”
“Az…Azapram…”
“Fine, good, thank you. Go. You can go now.”
I sat on the bed for a long time while my breakfast grew cold, turning the bottle over and over in my hand. Twelve capsules. That’s all they’d give me at a time. But if the migraines kept up at this rate, I’d be out in two weeks.
Quit. Just quit.
But I didn’t. Charlotte had never quit on me. Never.
I got up and ate my breakfast.
I persevered through that breakfast, and dozens more after, but the writing was on the wall: I was breaking apart just as I had predicted. The raging anger in Rome had degenerated into desperation in Barcelona and worsened through Nice, Paris and Brussels; a terrible erosion that left me feeling hollowed out. I was below anger, somewhere. Under the stairs in a lightless basement. A dusty crawlspace. Or in Sylvia Plath’s bell jar, maybe, where everything was airless and stale.
By the time I hit Amsterdam, I was about done in.
It was around nine in the morning when the train from Brussels arrived at the Centraal station, and a hand jostled me from a shallow doze. I dragged my bag off the train with help from someone—the conductor, maybe—and then dragged myself into the terminal.
“Information desk?” I demanded of someone I felt walk past me.
I called it going fishing: I’d cast out a line—my arm—hoping to snag someone who could give me the information I needed. It had been humiliating to do it at first. Now, I didn’t bother with niceties. Niceties were too tiring.
“Uh, yes,” said the guy I’d caught. A young guy, maybe my age. “Okay, this way.”
He led me to the info desk, and from there I was guided to the cabstand with a waiting taxi. Cab rides were usually a reprieve. Mustering the willingness to exit the known space and safety of a taxi for the unknown of a street or some hotel rattled my nerves and left me drained. But I was already drained, and my nerves seemed to have fallen asleep. I rode in the cab. I paid the fare. I got out, que sera, sera.
In my deluxe fucking luxury suite that I couldn’t see or appreciate, I found the king bed and wanted to face-plant straight into it and not move all day. But I discovered I wasn’t really tired. Mentally exhausted beyond all reckoning, yes, but mostly I just didn’t give a fuck.
I unpacked my bag and went about my process—not because I needed or wanted to, but because I couldn’t think of a reason not to. Or anything else to do. Just one mechanical step after another.
I laid out my suit for Charlotte’s show the next night; the VTO had the night off which meant I did too. I arranged my devices, set up my laptop, and then wandered the perimeter of the room to get its dimensions and orient the bed to the bathroom.
I took a hotter than usual shower, wondering if that would kick-start my body. It didn’t. By then, it was noon, and I decided to head out for lunch. I had to. If I lay down in the bed, I wouldn’t get up again. Not for days, maybe, and when Lucien called, he’d hear it in my voice that I had to stop.
After eating lunch, I sat at my table at the café and vaguely wondered what I should do with the rest of the day. I had been to Amsterdam in my past life. A beautiful city of canals with bicyclists riding over the stone cobbled streets; important landmarks and history. The Anne Frank House was here, but what would I get out of that? A small and dwindling voice urged me to go and just experience it as I was. That I’d feel the momentous history of that place, even if I couldn’t see it, and to miss out would be a terrible waste.
I opted to miss out.
Then there was the Van Gogh Museum. Priceless art not three feet from my face, and it may as well be chicken scratch.
It may sound like I was feeling sorry for myself, but in actual truth, these losses had no effect on me. Just facts I had no way of changing and couldn’t be bothered to care about in the first place. Was that progress? Or acceptance of my fate? I told myself it was, but that same little voice whispered it was the furthest thing from it.
I had to get out of this funk. It was so deep; it wasn’t even depression. Just nothingness. I asked the waiter to give me the name of another café. A different kind of café that sold more than food. If I couldn’t change my reality, I’d bend it a little and just let go ofthinkingso damn hard.
My waiter gave me a name and helped me hail a cab.
“Café J,” I told the cabbie. Nope, no Anne Frank or Van Gogh for me. I was going to get high, and fuck it all, that sounded like the best idea I’d ever had.
It was early afternoon. The streets were all but empty when I got out of the cab. It sounded like the café was tucked into a sleepy little corner of the city. But people—not me, but real people—had jobs and worked and didn’t smoke pot at 2:04 in the p.m. on a weekday. Inside the café, I expected some tourists at least, but couldn’t tell from the muted conversations if there were any other Americans there.
