ChapterOne
She Needs The Room ToBake

I had no point of navigation but Iwas hell-bent on finding my way to Ordinary. I didn’t know what I hoped to findon that voyage or, God forbid, at the end of it, but I knew there was nothingbut bilge rats and bullshit on the course I’d beenfollowing.

I still awoke at night as if in midthought. Thatcopy of Emerson’s Essays … did Norman keep it? I’d becompelled to run downstairs to the storage room and root through the boxes Ibrought back from Kentucky with me. First, though, I had to rouse Ginny to findthe key. Ginny tolerated these wakings only twice, and then, griping aboutdelusional roommates, she had a copy of the key made and hung it by the condo’sfront door.

It’s a physical deficiency you feel in the middleof the night after a breakup. Oh shit, you lie there thinking. It’snot the books or the brassieres—I’ve left my thighs in his sparecloset.

Along with my ex, Norman, and possibly somemissing-inaction body parts, I’d abandoned my creative spirit in Kentucky too,left it disintegrating underneath a tree beside the Barren River (symbolicallyenough), buried alongside the last paintings I swore I would everdo.

Ginny had left the newspaper on the kitchen table foldedopen to the employment section, alongside a conspicuously placed red pen. I satdown at the table and wriggled in the chair. Ginny’s condo is the Shrine toDesign: titanium white walls, ebony floors, leather furniture, and none of theclocks had numbers. I could never tell what time it was, not that I hadanything to be late for. The two kitchen chairs were Bertoia Wire Chairs, sanscushions. The wire frame was incredibly uncomfortable and my butt would bedented like a reverse waffle when I stood up. If the other items in the roomand I were featured in a certain Sesame Street game, I’d beone of the things that’s not like the others.

I unfolded thepaper and turned past the help-wanted ads to the furniture-for-sale column. I’dbe getting my own place again, someday. It didn’t cost anything to look and Iwanted to feast my eyes on the cost of a nice flat-bottomed kitchenchair.

Underneath the amazing queen mattress & box, costover $1100, sell $495, there it was:

B EA U T I F U L old phonograph for sale. 78 record player.
Excellentcondition. Gladys doesn’t dance anymore.
She needs the room to bake. Bring offer. Ph. 254-9885.