I Couldn't Sleep Just Yet

A Story by Andrew

A work in progress

I Couldn’t Sleep Just Yet by Andrew Foster

“Where are the f*****g croutons?” His tone was humorless.

“Hell, I don’t know.” Mine followed suit. “What are you always on about food for?”

“What are you always on my a*s for?”

“Oh, I found them.” I handed him the bag. It felt cold and unusual, as the ocean.

He accepted it, coughing. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

“Set me up with Roslynn.”

“She’s a hag.”

“I’m lonely.”

“Alright, one date then.”

“Just one? That’s hardly a romance.”

“You hardly deserve that much.”

“You’re very harsh tonight.”

“And you’re very ugly.”

“Fine.”

A few seconds of silence.

“All I mean is one date from my end.” He coughed again, shifting his feet around against mine.

“From your end?”

“I mean I’ll set you up once. I think you can take it from there, cowboy.”

“Don’t patronize me.” I gestured for him to return the croutons. He complied.

“I would never.” They were warmer now.

We were situated comfortably under his blue covers in his blue bed, blue lights strewn across the ceiling like thrown dice, hung from end to end of his room. There were shapes dancing around on the ceiling, drunk off their asses and I was the same. It was a great party, I suppose; a night like any other only I wasn’t alone. An attempt to capitalize on this company:

“Did you get anywhere with um… J…”

“Jan? Hardly.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Hardly.”

“She was nice.”

“She was small.”

“Small?”

“She wasn’t a lot to look at.”

“There’s more to a-”

“Or talk to.”

“Fine.”

My hands began to twitch again and he noticed. Conversation dwindled; the bag dwindled; we dwindled, thinning, birch against blade. The shapes eased into rest. My eyes closed and I thought about my mother. For all I knew she was in the hospital somewhere, wheezing out her last breath… and wow, here I was, drunk as the ceiling and rummaging around the bottom of a bag of croutons. Pitiful behavior, really. The Gods frowned through the roof, permeating our mortal infrastructure, their grand disappointment seeping into his bedroom like Zyklon B. I hoped she was well.

“You’re boring when you’re lonely.” Sam broke the silence.

“Well then set me up with Ros.”

“Do you really like her? She’s awfully quiet.”

“No, but if it’ll entertain you I’ll do just about anything.”

“That’s cute,” he delivered dryly.

“If the bag’s empty we’ve nothing to do between conversation.”

“We’d better spice this up then I suppose.” He coughed again, this time it was grosser and louder and seemingly more dangerous.

“You go first, I’m exhausted.”

“There are the Olympics.”

“Oh, to hell with the Olympics. F*****g elitists. To hell with Switzerland.”

“Well, I’ll meet you on that much. They haven’t done any good since Einstein.”

“Speaking of elitists.”

“Speaking of olympians, more like.”

“You’re fond of Einstein?”

“Everyone’s fond of Einstein. It’s God damn Einstein.”

“Ugh, but he was so self-assured.”

“He was right, too.”

“Well I say to hell with him. All the Swiss can burn.”

“That’s horrible.”

He got up. “I’m going to go downstairs and look for more food. We argue without food.”

“No we don’t.” I grinned; he didn’t; he disappeared. I was then left with the frowning Gods and the raucous ceiling. Turmoil. Hell. I counted the cracks in the walls: seven. It wasn’t as many as home but it was close enough and the Gods were momentarily distracted or so I thought. He had left his pages and I took them; it was gibberish to me, a wash of numbers and phrases and there was a very well-rendered graphite sunrise at the bottom but what the hell did that have to do with the rest of it? I moved on the second page and it was more of the same. Then he returned with three bags of cheap chips and the Gods read the paper or something; they adjusted their pipes and snapped the paper open. Or something.

“Are you reading my s**t?”

I tossed the notes aside. “I would never.”

The bed was warmer now as he joined me again, a graphite sunrise; far away but I could reach over and there he was. I could rub his skin, draw grease from him like pigment from paper. He spoke again and I forgot the distance. He asked about Eloise. I asked not to ask about Eloise so he didn’t ask about Eloise anymore. Jesus raised his eyebrows over the headlines and Zeus scoffed and I opened my bag of chips. They were stale and tasted only of salt, no potato in there really and hardly even any grease.

“You’ve brought us garbage.” I complained.

“But enough about the Swiss.”

It was an alright jab, but it went unacknowledged nonetheless. I stared at the ceiling some more and he worked at the chips, finishing two bags with astonishing vim. It was near midnight, yet he gobbled away like a madman on death row, like it was the first or the last of something marvelous and he just had to have as much as possible - and as quickly as possible, too. As he picked and prodded around his meal with prize-fighter veracity I noticed that his black hair had begun the transition back to its natural brown. Ugly.

“There’s something wrong and it’s on your head.” I tossed our wrappers aside as he popped the last chip into his mouth.

“There’s something wrong and it’s in yours.”

“That is evasive and insecure.” I sounded awful, like one of those boys in high school with leather jackets, just pining to be misunderstood.

“I’m tired.” He sounded awful, too.

“Me too.” Worse.

“Goodnight?” Worse.

“Goodnight.” Horrid - tragic, really - nasally, and thin.

He sighed at my final remark and tugged off the light as Jesus and Zeus put down their pipes with a slight knock, folding the paper and giving up on the crossword. My mother possibly tossed and turned in her hospital gown and the sun possibly rose somewhere, etched loosely and surrounded by phrase after phrase, equations and loose numbers, appearingly random.

But even with the world tugged dark I could not sleep. He was out cold. I tried to replicate his breathing as if that could put me to sleep alongside him, which was foolish. I nearly laughed as I thought about it, as I tried to sneeze myself sick like a lunatic…. WelI got bored with the ceiling and moved my focus to the walls of his bedroom; what struck me was how terrified I was by them. Even with my routine anxiety and the occasional nervous breakdown, this seemed off-kilter, unusually aggressive. The Gods fast asleep, I perused the various offerings hung; a poorly painted pumpkin in a harmless green frame; black-and-white lovers lined up for a family shoot, a linen heart atop poor collage, the dog, Henry, on his deathbed… I gazed at all this, sleepless and terrified, my heart pounding with prize-fighter veracity even at this hour. Suddenly, the passive display pounced; The pumpkin gaining masterful form and breaking with a great hollow noise over my head, seeds flying here and there; The lovers bloomed with color and clawed at my eyes, screaming obscenities; The linen heart tore itself in two; The dog rose from its deathbed as a zombie from the crypt, stronger and fiercer than ever. And now I was on my deathbed, and I thought the dog must know the irony here, the hilarity in my fate - I wondered if the pumpkin was in on the joke as well? As all of this clattered and crashed over me, a relentless storm at synthetic sea, I heard a far-off, familiar voice.

“Murray.” It was Sam, I realized, and then a bit more reality came into focus; I was not at sea, that pumpkin was s**t, and poor Henry really had passed. Sam shook my shoulders.

“Yes, yeah, I’m fine. Stop it.” I wriggled free and turned onto my side, away from him. Tears peered out over the bottom of my eye socket. I told them not to dare.

“You were shaking like a damn fool.” He criticized, coughing..

“I’m fine.”

“Was it my mentioning Eloise?”

“No.”

“Well I’m sorry if it was.”

“Well it wasn’t, so don’t be sorry.”

“Alright, fine.” A moment passed. “At least she knew how to f*****g handle you when you’re like this,” he muttered, turning onto his side, away from me.

“How f*****g dare you.”

“What?” We turned to face each other at once. “Do you disagree?”

“You know my stance, you know my stance!”

“If I know your stance so well, if we’re so acquainted, then how come you’re seething at me?”

“I’m not seething, I’m just-”

“You’re damn near foaming at the mouth.”

“Well you’re damn near sensele-”

“You know it’s not hard for me to figure why she left.”

He had gone too far. “It’s not hard? A bit of a breeze, is it?” I bellowed.

His voice raised in tandem with mine, “yeah, a right walk in the park! And you know why you’re upset? Because it’s not terribly difficult for you to figure, either.”

“Leave this bed,” I said firmly.

“What?”

“Leave this bed. Now.”

“It’s my bed! It’s my house!”

“Well we clearly need to be separated, and you’re in the wrong, so it seems that our only option-”

“Oh I’m in the wrong? As you wake half the neighborhood with your ranting and sweat up my bed? I need reprimanding?

“Yes, you!”

“Well I think I’ll be judge of that, what with us being in my f*****g bed-”

I clocked him one right smack in the nose. He took my neck into the crook of his elbow and squeezed. There, the ceiling began dancing again. Splendid, I thought. I tried to rake at his back but my position gave me very little leverage and I was weak to begin with. The ceiling filled up with black, drifting yet determined like ink dropped into a glass of water, rushing to the center. The sun was setting. Sleep no longer eluded me, and I joined the Gods in their righteous slumber.