Wednesday, July 18, 2007

551 days, 8 hours, 31 minutes, 40 seconds

551 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes, 19 seconds

Au Bon Pain. Pain, he calls it. Bread, she corrects him. There's no such thing as good pain. A chain in every airport, and he hates chains. But she can always find something to eat here, and he finally admits he likes the bread. Just a block from their favorite computer and music store, convenient on Saturdays when most of that area's locked down. Pain. The bone pain. The shot yesterday to get her white blood cells moving again. Like there's a ghost inside her.

551 days, 23 hours, 1 minutes, 9.2 seconds

If he's asleep already (without any pills tonight), and she takes a shower, and she borrows his nail clippers, as she's done so many times this passt year, does that mean she's trying to cut herself off from him? And then what?

551 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes, 29.7 seconds

The kitchen faucet drips. Few sounds, if any, drive her so crazy. And this time her husband doesn't even hear it. But this was earlier tonight. His brother was visiting. He's probably the one who left the faucets on. Both of them. Hot and cold. Luke warm. And he came all this way to see her.

Elsewhere in this city, there are office buildings hauling in tanks of ice, storing four floors of ice to take the place of air conditioning during the height of the summer. Or at least pump it through the building so the energy won't be taxed as much. And in New Orleans, two years after Katrina, they're finally melting down tons of stored ice FEMA thought they'd be needing. No other locality would take it off their hands. Drip. Drip. Even this far off she can hear it.