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FOCUSING ON THE EMERGING, UNTRADTIONAL, AND INDEPENDENT. 

It was difficult for Sarah to say where she was other than that she was south. More south than she had ever been, in fact. There was no familiar town or city she could name––the last one that she knew, Richmond, she’d passed through an hour ago––nor was there any landmark, waypoint, or familiar geological structure she could point to and say, There I am. There were signs designating places and things, sure. One would say Macon, or Cumberland, or Shell, or McDonalds, but these all added up to the same thing in her head: just names of places she did not know or could not know. You couldn’t really know a McDonald’s beyond that it was just a McDonald’s, could you?

This had been her experience since moving to Virginia: once you ventured outside of the couple cities of note, you quickly arrived at the feeling of being nowhere in particular. It was not like being north in places like New York or Boston or Philly, where everywhere seemingly related to some fixed center, and the further you ventured outside of the center the greater the pull you felt back to it. Like some strange gravity; like some vague tide. It was not like this in Virginia. There was no tide pulling you anywhere. The waters were completely still and without current here. And if you went out far enough out into them, you’d soon come across the feeling of being a sitting duck in some dark and murky fluid.

The sun was setting. That was worth noting probably. Sarah thought that if she was better equipped for what she was doing––if she was better equipped for being in the south––then she would be able to look at the time displayed on the dashboard clock, compare it to where the sun was in the sky and then know exactly, with like numerical coordinates, where she was. But she didn’t know how to do this. All she knew was that it was 6:17 PM, the sinking sun was turning the sky an incredible orange, and that she was supposedly fifteen minutes away from her destination in Farmville. She looked to her passenger seat and then the backseat to confirm (for the fourth time this drive) that she had everything she needed and that she wasn’t going to blow it like she had at nearly every other new job she’d ever had.

It was all there: the soft case containing many 50 ml vials of Ketamine solution sat safely on the front seat––this she had been instructed to not take her eye off of; to take with her inside if she stopped for the bathroom or food or anything else––as well as the number of informative pamphlets she was to provide the patient upon her arrival at his home. In the back was the surplus of other things necessary to get the job done: bags of sodium chloride injection fluid, two boxes of syringes with attached cannula and valve, a collapsible rolling IV stand with attached small foldable table for prep, a folder containing a number of legal documents which the patient was supposed to sign before the treatment began, overhead, bluetooth compatible headphones, a zipper bag containing ten or so sleeping masks, some blankets of variable density and fabric, as well as an overnight bag containing four different changes of clothes, a bathing suit, four pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, and the many various toiletries necessary for Sarah to feel clean and comfortable when away from home. She would be out in the field, as they say, for the next two days. Then back to Chantilly for a week. Then back down to this area of central Virginia for another two days for follow up sessions.

She could not access the trunk of her car. It had been injured in a recent car accident which collapsed the opening latch upon itself and would require some kind of mechanical surgery whenever she got around to doing it. Thus everything sat in the back seat for all to see. The broken trunk reminded her of a part of herself she did not like being reminded of: the part that was lazy and put things off for weeks or even months at a time. She wasn’t sure when it started––perhaps it had always been a part of her and had just gotten worse since she moved down to Virginia and started her new job and new life and left all her friends and whatever else behind in Montclair, New Jersey––but she had recently developed an inability to do anything that wasn’t absolutely pressing. If it didn’t have to do with her job or the most basic of needs, she could rarely muster the energy to get it done. Thus the trunk stayed broken. Lightbulbs flickered all about her apartment. Her laundry bin piled high. Her refrigerator stank with old and rotten vegetables. Her life, she suspected sometimes, much like the vegetables, must be also slowly rotting into something awful.

But those were bad thoughts. Unproductive thoughts. She did her best not to think those thoughts. And she was getting better at doing so because she was retraining her thought patterns. The people from her work were helping her do this and the infusions she’d begun undergoing six weeks ago were helping her do this too, but, okay, when she was on the road, just herself, in wherever-the-hell Virginia, it was hard not to entertain some old and unproductive thought patterns. Because maybe there wasn’t comfort in their unproductiveness or negativity, but there was certainly comfort in their oldness. Like friends from years and years ago, all more or less alcoholics now, but charming nonetheless in their disregard for themselves and others––it took the pressure away of having to try so hard to be something. Or like an unhealthy snack once enjoyed through the bliss of a child’s metabolism now delved into on a lonely and stressful night. Or, simply like, in a general sense, Montclair, New Jersey.

The navigation system on her phone told her to turn left into a neighborhood. She did as she was told. It told her to drive straight for half a mile and then turn right and continue on for four miles and she did that too. The neighborhood slowly turned more rural. The yards grew in size and their shapes became unruly. Houses became more private seeming: they sat far back on their property and were adorned minimally. Eventually she stopped seeing houses altogether and just saw mailboxes and driveways leading deep into the woods somewhere. This was the country, she thought. I am in the country.

The navigation system now told her she had arrived at her destination. She stopped the car and looked at a mailbox and long gravel driveway leading to who knew. She wanted a cigarette but did not have any because they were unhealthy and stress inducing so she had stopped. She turned the car down the driveway and went on, her small sedan being abused every inch of the way down the road.

Not many words passed between parties for the first hour or so. She explained the procedure as she got everything set up in the living room as the patient, Martin Winslow, an old, gray man, with petite features, a certain southern femininity to his voice, and a large, Roman nose, sat in a worn, plaid recliner, drinking water out of a black sweating plastic cup with the words Marla’s Last Call – Cumberland, VA painted across the front in a chipped and cheap kind of cursive. She had provided him the pamphlets and he had looked at the first page of one and then passed them to a young, black woman who must have been some kind of homecare assistant, who took them off to the kitchen somewhere and placed them, Sarah heard as she fidgeted with the IV stand, in a drawer. He’d signed all the documents she provided him without reading them or asking questions.

“Have you been here, long?” she asked as she rolled the IV stand and dangling bag of fluid over to his chair.

He nodded. “Mhm.”

“That’s nice.”

He nodded again.

“Do you mind pulling your sleeve up for me?”

Martin did as instructed, revealing a pale and freckled arm with many visible veins and a tattoo that said Billy and another one that was a tiger. The skin was surprisingly taught for his age. She felt about his arm until she found a vein of her liking and then began rubbing about it with an alcohol swab. She did this for thirty seconds. Then she went to her table and got her needle and cannula.

“Slight pinch,” she said and then pushed the needle into his arm and got it into the vein and with her other hand she advanced the cannula forward until it was snug and fixed in the arm, and then she removed the needle. “Good,” she said. She attached the extender and taped the cannula in place. She flushed the cannula and applied another dressing to it with a clear window over the injection site. “You’re feeling okay?” she asked.

Martin nodded.

“Do you mind giving me a verbal yes?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

There was a pause. Sarah stood there and looked at him and felt herself growing annoyed––stupid fucking joke––took a breath, and then finally he smiled and said, “Yes.”

“Good.”

She returned to her small table and pulled out the IV bag and hung it from the stand. She pulled out the administration kit and spiked the bag of saline and fluid suddenly began running through the set and onto the floor. “Shit.”

Martin looked at the solution running from the cord onto his floor and said nothing. Like it was a fly or ant that he was simply too tired to do anything about.

Sarah quickly closed the valve on the administrator. She said sorry and Martin did not respond. Perhaps he was nervous, she thought. Maybe he didn’t notice. He’d closed his eyes. Sarah went back to preparing the administrator and then Martin shouted “Imani,” and it startled Sarah so much she almost knocked everything over.

“Yes?” she said from the kitchen.

“Could you bring a couple rags in here? We have a spill.”

“I can. You ain’t gotta yell.”

“I’m not yelling,” he said, his eyes still closed.

“That’s what you call an inside voice?”

“Well I know you’re hard of hearing sometimes. When you choose to be.”

“You gonna be smart with me now too?”

He opened one eye and a quick smirk emerged at the corner of his lip. “You know I don’t mean to offend you, Imani, but, frankly, it’s the only thing I know how to be. You know, being so smart and all. Can’t just turn it off all that easily.”

Imani emerged from the kitchen with a handful of white rags and came over to where they were seated. “Yeah, you’re a real genius.” She bent down and pressed the rags into the damp, tan carpet. She worked her palm against the pile of rags like it was the chest cavity of someone whose heart she was trying to get started back up.

“Sorry about that,” Sarah said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Imani said. “Sure old numb nuts had plenty to do with it.”

“Numb nuts?” Martin said.

Imani rose and held the pile of damp rags in a ball. “Well it wouldn’t be the most honest thing to call them lively would it?”

“You don’t worry about my nuts,” he said. “Or their liveliness.”

“That’s real nice,” Imani said. “You got a guest in your house and that’s how you talk?”

“I’m not the one talking about my nuts.”

“Well you’re sure the only one making a big fuss about them.”

“I’m not fussing.”

“This what you call being cool and calm?”

Martin shook his head to himself. “I’m not fussing.”

Imani nodded her head, satisfied seeming. “Y’all need anything else?”

“We’re fine,” Martin said sharply.

“Sorry,” Sarah said one more time.

“Don’t apologize to her,” Martin said. “That’s how she gets her hooks into you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself Mart. You’d know if I put my hooks in you. You’d be humping my leg.”

“Goddammit, will you get out of here? Can’t you see we’re doing something important? I have an arm full of needles and you come in here talking about my nuts and all other kinds of crazy shit. Don’t you have any sense to you?”

“Pumping yourself full of dope? That’s the important thing you’re talkin’ about doing?”

“It’s not dope! You know that.”

“Spend two hundred dollars have some pretty woman come out here and fill you with dope. Shit Mart, I coulda done that for eighty you give me enough time to call some people. Could do it for sixty probably come to think of it.”

“Goddammit it isn’t dope. Now will you quit fucking with me and just let us be?” He had begun talking with his hands, flailing them about with each word.

Imani shook her head and smiled. “You let me know if you need anything.”

“Yeah, need something from you,” Martin said. “I’ll need something from you like I need a bullet in my head.”

She smiled and shook her head again. “I’ll be down the hall doing laundry. Just holler.” Then she walked off down the hall to somewhere else in the house that Sarah had not seen. No one said anything for a bit.

“She’s a good person,” Martin then said. “She’s very good to me.”

“That’s nice,” Sarah said.

“It’s something I guess.”

Sarah returned to preparing things and soon the solution was flowing down the administrator and into Martin’s arm.

“You haven’t put it on yet, have you? It hasn’t started, has it?”

“No, it’s just saline right now. I’ll let you know when I inject the solution.” He nodded.

She went to her bag of things and returned with a sleeping mask and the headphones. She powered on the headphones and held one to her ear to make sure it was working. “We have a playlist prepared for you already,” she said. “But you’re also welcome to listen to whatever you want. We just suggest you pick something slow in tempo and instrumental. Lyrics might make it difficult to focus.”

“I’ll listen to whatever,” he said. “Well actually last time they were playing this spacey thing. Or like faux-buddhist. I don’t want any of that. Just play Mozart.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “I’ll put on classical playli––”

“Mozart,” he snapped, then looked at her and offered an effortful smile. “Please.” 

“Mozart.”

She handed him the sleeping mask and he placed it over his eyes. She placed the headphones over his head. “Okay Martin I’m going to start to play a little music.” She began playing the first Mozart playlist she could find.

Martin slid off one of the headphones. “Nothing from twenty. It’s too, I don’t know, it’s been listened to too many times. Play number nine. I like nine and I haven’t filled it with any memories. It’s blank for me.”

She scrolled about her phone until she found something with a nine on it. “John-homy?”

“Jeunehomme. He wrote it for a young woman. Another pianist. Victoire Jenamy. Her father invented modern ballet more or less.”

Sarah did not say anything. She smiled and attempted to look like the words meant something to her.

“Oh what a useless thing to say to someone,” Martin then said.

“No.”

“Blah blah blah. Did you know this? Did you know that? Listen to me. I’m just trying to seem impressive.” He smiled. “Because I have to be liked by everyone.”

Sarah nodded and tried to be pleasant. She assumed he was referencing the screening survey he’d filled out prior to treatment being prescribed to him. Which she had not seen and did not have access to. It seemed like strange protocol for the treatment administrators not to know that information but that was the company procedure. Discussion of findings were to be handled during the scheduled video chat the day after treatment sessions with the patient’s designated mental health professional. The administrator should do their best to refrain from discussing findings during the session while remaining comforting and calming. Think of it as running a puzzle room of some kind, she was told: you aren’t there to give any answers, but rather just make sure no one freaks out and starts breaking things.

“I’m going to inject the solution now,” she said.

“Good, that’ll shut me up.”

“You can go ahead and put the mask and headphones on. The effect should start soon.”

“Onward.” He placed the mask and headphones on and lay back in his chair. She injected the ketamine solution into the IV bag and watched Martin for a moment. She went to the other side of the room and turned the lights off. She walked back to her bag and grabbed a clipboard. She made note of the time of injection on the sheet designated for administration times and signed next to the box. She would need to present this to her superior along with all of her gear upon returning home. She went over to the nearby couch and sat for a while and periodically looked up at Martin who lay still with a slacked expression on his face. She looked to the window behind him and there were many trees and very green grass and the sun was just about gone. The home was quiet and still and you could hear bugs chirping and even some birds singing outside and it was all very calm and nice and for a moment she thought that she could live out here in this county and be fine with that. And in the next moment she was reminded how quickly she would grow unfine with it. How quickly she could grow unfine with anything. Even good stuff––great stuff. How she would get bored or feel closed in. How she would get frustrated with the people and their manners and what they didn’t know about the world. How she would leave it behind and tell anyone who asked what a shit hole it was. Nice to visit though, of course.

A while later Imani emerged from the hall with a basket of sheets and towels. “You want something to drink? I was going to make some coffee.”

“I’m fine,” Sarah said. “I have to stay here and watch him.”

“How about I bring you a cup when it’s ready?”

“That would be nice.”

Imani nodded. “Sure.” She headed off to the other side of the home and then Sarah soon heard her messing about in the kitchen. She returned ten or so minutes later with two cups of steaming coffee and sat down next to her on the couch. “Black alright?” she asked, handing over the cup.

“Black’s fine.”

Imani took a sip from her cup. “Sorry if you’re used to something nicer. We only keep cheap stuff in the house typically.”

Sarah sipped. “It’s nice.”

Imani nodded, then looked over to Martin, whose mouth now hung wide open and whose body had sunken deep into his chair. “You been doing this awhile?” she asked.

“Half a year,” she said. “But I’ve been a nurse for some time so, I don’t know, it’s very similar.”

“Have you ever done it yourself?”

“What? This?” Sarah pointed to Martin.

Imani nodded.

“I started six weeks ago.”

“Does it work?”

Sarah thought about it. It was difficult to say. If by work, she meant did it have an effect on her, of course. When she took it she felt at ease and able to look at herself without judgment and view her mistakes as part of learning process and those that had come in and out of her life as sharing a common learning process––this was how her mental health professional had helped her understand it––and because of that they were all sort of connected to each other in this really essential way when you really thought about it, in their learning processes, and if they could learn to understand that then they could learn to look at each other less judgmentally as well and be connected even further. But if by work, she meant had it changed the way she went about her life in some positive fashion, that would be much more difficult to parse out. She’d begun exercising a little more, but that was more out of shame for her declining figure and a desire to develop a rounder and perkier ass then it was out of maintenance of some inner peace or something. She still got very overwhelmed very often; two times a day at least. She dwelled on stupid things for way too long. Grew offended at things she knew were unintentional and unimportant, and let actual large offensive things roll right off of her. She had trouble sleeping most nights as well. “It’s hard to say,” she said. “It takes some time for it to take effect apparently.”

“Why did you start it?” Imani said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I was being really negative with myself. And I, well, I was in a very dark place a couple years ago and I’ve been attempting to get out of that. Trying to expand my perspective beyond that painful time, if that makes sense. Retrain my brain.”

“Are you still being negative with yourself?”

“It’s getting better, I think.”

Imani nodded. A silence passed between them.

“So how long have you been doing homecare?” Sarah then asked.

“Hm?”

She pointed to Martin. “Homecare. How long have you been working here?”

She laughed. “I’m not working,” she said, smiling in a sort of cruel way. “I live here.”

Sarah felt embarrassment rise up in her throat. “Oh my god,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Imani laughed. “You see a black woman lurking around a white man’s house doing laundry, I guess there’s only one thing to think. ‘Least down here.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She laughed again. “I’m just fucking with you.” She sipped her coffee and seemed unphased by anything; like they were just talking about the weather. “We’re an odd coupling, sure. Strange for us to be roommates maybe. And I do take care of him to some degree. Help him with things that have grown difficult. So I can see it. Coming in here and cleaning his mess up like I’m some mammy.”

Sarah said nothing. She felt the hot embarrassment that had become so common in her when she spoke to black people about anything. She was always saying something stupid. Something racist was always happening and she was always helping it happen in some way and when she spoke to black people they all knew this and thought this and then she said something stupid and confirmed it for them.

“Do you know why he’s doing this?” Imani then asked. “What did he say?”

“I don’t have access to the records. I’m just the administrator.”

Imani sipped her coffee and thought to herself about something. “You know he’s famous, don’t you? You know he used to be a big deal?”

“For what?”

“Writing. He wrote some things that got really popular. Couple novels. A few plays. In the eighties he was very popular. Won awards and all that. They teach him at colleges sometimes. Depending on the college of course.”

“Oh.”

“You read much?”

“I should more.”

“I wouldn’t bother. Not much out there anymore. And what good is a book gonna do? The world is burning up. What’s a book gonna do? And the people that used to write good stuff are all like Martin. Old and dried up and just trying to make it to the end already. What good is a book gonna do?”

Sarah said nothing.

“You know why he told me he wanted to do this?” Imani said. “You know what he told me?”

“What?”

“He said he hoped it would give him an excuse to stop writing. That he hoped it would take the urge away to do it and he could just try living normally for once.”

“Well.”

“I know you’re just someone with a job. I know you didn’t come here for all that. But I just thought you should know what he said to me. I don’t know what he said to y’all––and I guess you don’t either––but that’s what he said to me.”

Sarah said nothing. She stared at the small man who sat slack jawed in front of her and watched him twitch slightly. He’d begun to move his left hand around as if it were in water or hanging out of a car window, dancing in the air. He seemed peaceful and pleased and his lowered jaw now rose up and he smiled in a way that seemed kind of dumb. He mumbled something to himself.

“I have to go out now,” Imani said. “Have a class.”

“You’re in school?”

“I teach. Over at the boy’s college down the way.”

“What do you teach?”

“English.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay.”

“Or make you feel bad.”

“It’s alright.”

“I just thought you should know. It felt like something you should know.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Okay.”

“Alright.”

The next week went by with little friction. She finished her other visits and returned home to Chantilly and went about her life there. She went on a date that was boring and taxing and when she was home, thinking on what exactly was so boring and taxing about it she could not name anything specifically so maybe it was just her, she thought. Maybe she’d give him another chance.

She attended her own treatment session and it went decently but the effect seemed to be muted. She did not feel herself expanding or falling away from herself but was instead very frustratingly there in her chair for much of the experience. When she relayed this to her mental health professional he then asked her if she had been watching any horror movies lately or if she had experienced something emotionally discomforting in the prior week. No, she hadn’t, and nothing specific came to mind. Maybe the date thing? Well, was she taking any other antidepressants? Yes, she said, she was. Wellbutrin. The mental health professional looked down at his desk and, Sarah thought, noted something on a sheet of paper but she could not know for certain because she could only see him from the chest up on her screen.

“It might be that,” he said. “Sometimes that can offset it.”

“So what should I do?”

“Pardon?”

“What should I do?”

“Oh, well, nothing. Keep going about things as normal and see if it happens again.”

“Okay.”

The mental health professional, who was a licensed clinical social worker, and who attended Virginia Commonwealth University for his graduate degree, which did not mean much to Sarah because she did not know anyone that went to school in Virginia and the only school in Virginia that people from New Jersey even spoke about was called Virginia Tech, did not say anything for a long time. They shared a silence for five or so minutes during which Sarah thought of all the things she needed to get done before the day ended and how her stomach sort of hurt. Then the mental health professional, whose name was Josh Andrews, asked, “Have you been journaling?”

“Some. I’ve been missing days.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. Some. Here and there.”

“Out of the last seven days how many did you journal?”

“Like two?” Sarah said. “I don’t know.”

“You have to be consistent with that. It’ll help.”

“Okay.”

“How’s the homesickness?”

“Hm?”

“Are you still missing home? Your parents? Last time that was a big subject.”

“It comes and goes I guess. Some days are worse than others.”

“What are the bad days like?”

“Well I feel very alone. I’ll wake up and say to myself, you are alone. Completely alone. And no one knows you or cares to know you.”

The mental health professional nodded and said nothing.

“But I left for a reason, right? I couldn’t just stay in Jersey.”

“Just stay, what do you mean?”

“As in there. In Jersey.”

“But just, that word, why did you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“The way you said it.”

Sarah didn’t say anything. A long silence passed and they both sat there looking at each other, or, looking at the projections of each other. It occurred to Sarah that she actually didn’t know where the mental health professional lived. Maybe near Richmond, she thought. He’d said something about Richmond one time.

The mental health professional then nodded again and said, “It looks like we’re at time, unfortunately. We’ll pick this up next week. Please, do your best to journal.”

“Okay.”

“Next week.” The screen went black before Sarah could say goodbye.

Dread began to texture her days as she got closer to having to go on the road again. It would start around midday, a slight flutter of the heart, a little difficulty focusing on one thing, and by late afternoon her mind would grow basically useless. She did not want to get back on the road. She did not want to go to Farmville and fill that man full of whatever because she didn’t want to be doing something bad. She had taken the time to look up Martin and read some of his writing. He’d won the Pulitzer in ‘91 for a novel about AIDS. They’d made a movie about it in ‘99 starring famous people and the movie had won awards too: best adapted screenplay, best supporting actress. He’d seemingly been everywhere in the world. He was gay and had been married once. His husband, Billy, had died of AIDS––that’s what the book was about. He’d seemingly put out a book every two or three years since then. She assumed he had a lot of money. He moved from New York to rural Virginia in 2018. There was speculation that he was working on something about that strange and hot piece of Virginia––the last to desegregate its schools in the country––but no one knew for sure. No one, online at least, seemed aware of the possibility that there was no new book. That he was in rural Virginia explicitly attempting to not write books––or perhaps everyone was aware of the possibility but no one wanted to talk about it.

She did not want to help this man self-destruct and she worried that she was going to ruin his life. That his desire really would come true and he would stop writing and that would be her fault. She thought to express this to her superior at the treatment facility who was also a licensed clinical social worker and who, everyone knew, was not alway super understanding about technicians complaining and had basically made life really uncomfortable for the last technician that complained by reassigning her patients way far away from each other so she would constantly be on the road, and also by talking to everyone in the office about how lazy she was until everyone turned on her and she just quit and went back to working in restaurants as she had before going to nursing school. Sarah did not want them to fire her or think she was bad at her job or to be reassigned to patients super far away, or just simply be unliked, and she had never worked at restaurants but she assumed she did not want to do that either. So she just sat with the dread every day until it was time to get back on the road and there she went, her heart beating very very fast and her armpits sweating very very much.

Imani had not been there when she arrived at the home this time. Martin greeted her at the door and seemed in a very good mood. He hurried her to the living room and got into his chair and basically rushed her through the whole process saying, yes, yes, yes, to whatever question she asked until the needle was in his arm and the drip had begun and then, with his Mozart playing and his little sleeping mask on, he slumped his head back in the chair and let his mouth go slack and Sarah watched him from the other side of the room and felt bad about it but didn’t know what to do because it was her job and she needed it so she scrolled on her phone for a bit and then bought a pair running shoes online.

Imani arrived about twenty minutes into the session. She walked in the front door carrying two large bags of groceries and did not say anything to Sarah as she made her way to the kitchen. Then, ten or so minutes later, she returned to the living room and handed her a hot cup of coffee and sat down next to her.

“How’s this going,” Imani said.

“Fine,” Sarah said. “He seemed very eager to get going today.”

“That’s because we’re fighting.” She blew at the top of her coffee and then took a sip.

“Why?”

“Because he’s an asshole.”

Sarah sipped her coffee.

“He donated all his money.”

“All of it?”

“A whole hell of a lot of it.”

No one spoke for a moment. Sarah sipped at her coffee and burnt the tip of her tongue. “Was there a lot?”

“Of what?”

“Money.”

Imani rolled her eyes. “More than anyone could ever need.”

“Where did he donate it?”

“Some AIDS foundation. The Elton John one.”

“Um.”

“Do you know how much money actually goes to research at places like that? Or to, like, actually helping people?”

“I don’t.”

“It’s not much.”

“Oh.”

Imani shook her head. “Well I don’t know that for certain, I guess. I haven’t looked into the specifics of that one.”

Sarah nodded.

“But the point is he didn’t give a shit where he put the money. It could have been to fund NASA. Or Greenpeace. Or the fucking Navy SEALs. He could have just buried it out in the yard for all he cares. It wasn’t about charity, is what I’m saying. Or doing the right thing. Or even simply doing a good thing.”

“What, um, was it about then?”

“Being an asshole. Proving a point. I got on him one night last week and I said, Martin, you’re fucking your whole life up and you won’t accept that you’re just having a big fit because you have this voice in your head telling you that you’re doing some good thing acting like this. That you being down here, wasting away in this stupid little house, is some big heroic thing. Where you could have done just the same in New York. You could have sat around and gotten doped up and done nothing for four years in New York. And it would have been better for you to be doing it in New York because at least those people expect something out of you up there. And they would say, Martin, you’re fucking up. You’re wasting away. Not here though. All you got here is some damn assistant professor roommate who really likes your books and who is leeching off your house and who, until right about now, has been too uncomfortable with the whole situation to say anything. But four years is four years. And I don’t give a shit now. I don’t give a shit if you kick me out. Be good for me anyway not to be using someone like this. Eats away at your soul living like this.”

“What did he say to that?”

“The same thing he always says. How I could never know the type of pain he’s been through. How could I ever understand? But I can understand, I told him. Martin, you made a whole fucking career out of making people understand. And what’s worse, so did a bunch of other people. Maybe you have to believe that no one understands in order to keep writing the same book over and over, but, listen, we understood it the first time. That’s why we kept reading. That’s why you had a career.”

Sarah nodded.

“I shouldn’t have said that to him,” Imani said. “I was too upset, maybe. Fuck it though.” She sipped her coffee. “Who gives a shit. Anyway, the next day I come home from work and he’s sitting in that stupid chair with this big smile on his face and goes, ‘I gave all my money away.’ I said to who and he said this charity. Said they’re gonna throw him a dinner. How it made a massive difference and all that.” She sipped her coffee. “Fucking asshole.”

No one said anything. They both watched Martin in his chair and Sarah felt nothing in particular. The story had not moved her and she felt fraudulent sitting there, pretending to be concerned. She didn’t understand any of it. What was so bad about charity? Or giving money to AIDS research? She didn’t get it. What was the issue?

The treatment session ended an hour or so later and she returned to her hotel room for the night and watched TV and thought of nothing in particular. Thoughts here and there: how her dating life was going, her parents, how their dating life might have been back when they met, how she might make her apartment a little nicer, hobbies she could get into that might make her a little happier. She knew a girl in college that was very good at knitting and made hats for all her friends and maybe she could start knitting. Or something like knitting. She had another close friend from college kill herself in 2017 by taking a bunch of pills her dad still had around from a back surgery and she thought of the funeral for a moment and how she did not know what to say to anyone and how she just felt inept and emotionally distant and all she could think of was how uncomfortable her dress was and how maybe it was too short for a funeral and how, like six months later, she had broken down crying looking at an old baby picture of herself, and how tucked in and cared for she was and she could not imagine ever feeling that cared for ever again and so she cried a lot––sobbed right there on the white tile floor of the bathroom of her childhood home––and eventually she told the story to some guy she was seeing for a couple months who was nice but whatever, it wasn’t going anywhere for whatever reason, but he had asked, Well do you think it’s connected to the friend? The friend that died? And she didn’t know but maybe because who the hell starts sobbing when they look at their own baby picture? No moment ever meant what it was supposed to. No feeling ever felt like it should. It was all a big fucking mess.

The next day she woke early, went to the hotel gym, and jogged for half an hour. She took a shower and washed her hair and watched TV for an hour before getting back on the road to see her last patient before getting to go back home. The session went by easily and the patient was nice and interesting––a tattoo artist whose family was from Egypt and who had an apartment full of books and interesting art––and at the end the patient, whose name was Alexis which didn’t really sound like an Egyptian name, had told her that the treatments were changing her life. That they had literally saved her life and Sarah said that’s amazing. Sarah said, “It’s really nice to see it making such a positive impact.” And then Alexis hugged her which was unexpected and perhaps not allowed but it was nice still. And then she left and was back in Chantilly by 8 PM and she ate dinner and tried to go to bed early but couldn’t. So she sat up in her living room and watched TV for four hours and thought the same thoughts, and dreaded the same things until she was completely exhausted and then she passed out there on the couch, in the cool luminescence of her television.

She skipped her treatment session that week. She just didn’t have the energy to go. Instead she lay about her apartment for the entire day and ate one meal around seven PM and then returned to her couch and lay some more. The three days at work all blended together and she maybe ate two times in those three days and at some point she found herself speaking with her supervisor

and felt, out of exhaustion, that she was just watching someone else live her life for her. That she’d been pulled out of her skull and replaced by an actor who had lines already prepared for her so all she had to do was sit back and watch the show.

“You missed one of the injection times,” her supervisor said. They sat in his office which had an abstract and boring painting on the back wall in it and a box of Kleenex on his incredibly tidy desk. There was a square cup of pens and they were all the same type of pen and the same color and this annoyed Sarah to some degree.

“Hm?” Sarah said.

He showed her a piece of paper and pointed at a blank square where there should have been a time of injection written as well as her signature. “Martin Winslow,” he said. “You didn’t write anything.”

“Oh.”

“Did you inject him?”

“Yeah.” She looked at the painting and thought it was stupid and then looked back to her supervisor. “I guess I just forgot.”

“You know it’s important to log, right? That we can get in a lot of trouble if we aren’t keeping a tight record.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “I do.”

“Yet you didn’t do it.”

“No,” Sarah said. “I didn’t. I’m sorry, I guess.”

Her supervisor grumbled something under his breath. Then he looked up to her. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes.”

“Because you seem a little off.”

“I’m fine.”

“This is me as a, like, friend asking. Someone who cares.”

“I’m fine.”

“Have the infusions been helping you?”

“So much.”

“I see.”

Sarah pulled her phone out and looked at the time. “I have a session coming up. I need to be downstairs.” 

Her supervisor nodded. “You’re allowed to tell me what’s going on with you. I don’t want you to be scared to say how you feel.”

“I need to go downstairs.”

“Okay.”

She left without saying anything else and entered into the session and performed her job probably better than she’d ever done it. So much so that when done, and walking out the patient to the waiting room she told her, taking hold of her hand, that she made her feel very at ease. And Sarah nodded and wanted to tell her to shut up and it was probably just the drugs making the patient feel like people actually gave a shit about her, where in fact no one did, but instead said, I’m happy to hear that. The patient squeezed her hand and smiled big at her. “You all are doing very important work here.” 

As she pulled into Farmville and began weaving through the many back roads on the way to Martin’s, she realized that she had not been using the navigation system for the last forty or so minutes. She was going by memory and this made her feel proud and excited in a way that was difficult to parse out––she felt like she was going to see a friend, sort of. She arrived at Martin’s gravel driveway and drove down it confidently and quickly, dodging the large lumps and dips in the road that had jerked her car so violently before. When she pulled up to his house both him and Imani were sitting on the porch steps drinking beer. She parked her car on the side of the house and went to the porch and saw that there were many empty cans surrounding them, and that there was a half empty bottle of tequila on the porch, and someone was playing folksy music from their phone, that they were both very drunk and laughing about something.

“Sarah!” Martin said. He rose up from the porch and hugged her and held the hug for sometime. He rubbed her back with his fingers and said “I’m so happy you’re here. I’m so happy to see you. Genuinely.”

Sarah smiled and felt uncomfortable and said, “It’s good to see you too.”

“We’ve been having a little bit of a party,” Imani said from the porch.

“Yes,” Martin said. “A little party. Just for us. And for you. If you want. But a big celebration nonetheless. The size doesn’t matter.”

“Martin!” Imani said.

He placed his hand over his mouth and laughed to himself. “Oh get your mind out of the gutter. Sarah just got here and you want to talk like that. Let her settle in. You’re going to scare her away.” He placed his arm over Sarah’s shoulder and it was the first time she realized that she was slightly taller than him. “Here, come sit with us.” He led her to the porch and she took a seat. “Let me get you something to drink. We’ve moved onto beer but we’ve been everywhere this afternoon and I don’t want to limit your journey. So you name it I’ll make it. Martinis? Do you like Martinis? I make a very good one. Or however many you want. Or have you had an Aviation before? That’s a great drink. That’s a really good one. Oh, let me make you one of those and if you don’t like it I’ll drink it and you can have something else. How about that? But you’ll love it, Sarah. It’s the perfect cocktail for a hot evening like this one.” 

Sarah looked to Imani for some kind of guidance but she did not meet her eyes. She had lit a cigarette and was looking out at the property. “Are you––do you still want treatment tonight?”

Martin tilted his head for a moment and seemed confused. “Oh, that. No, not tonight. This is no night for drugs like that. Unless we all take them together. That could be interesting, I suppose.”

“I’m not taking that shit,” Imani said.

“Oh hush,” Martin said. “But, no, not tonight Sarah. Tonight we have to be awake so we can celebrate. I would do cocaine if you had some. This is a cocaine kind of evening.”

“What are you––what’s the celebration?”

“I sold the house,” Martin said. “I sold the property.”

“To who?”

“Perdue Farms! You’re sitting right in the middle of the county’s newest hatchery!” Imani put her hands in the air. “Woo!”

“Can’t you see it, Sarah?” Martin said. “All those little chickies chirping?” 

“Getting pumped up on whatever,” Imani said. “Never seeing the light of day. Getting ready to be sent down the line to a processing plant. Where they get debeaked while they’re still living and then ground up into chicken nuggets.”

“Oh you don’t know that Imani. You just heard that from someone who heard that. Or you saw it online or something. Some angry teenager posted about it online and you read it as truth. But, yes, the house is sold. The acreage is sold. We are rich.”

“We are homeless,” Imani said.

“Imani is homeless, yes. And I suppose I am as well. But we’ll figure it out. We always figure it out, don’t we, Imani?”

Imani made a sarcastic face and nodded her head. “ Always. Would bet my life on it.” Sarah looked at the two and did not know what to make of them. She did not know what to make of anything. Also, what was she supposed to do in regard to work? Just leave? Go back and tell her supervisor, yeah, he wanted to get drunk instead?

“Or a Paper Plane,” Martin now said. “Sarah, now that is a cocktail. You would be very happy with a Paper Plane, I know it.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Have a drink with us,” he said. “And if you want to leave after that, fine. But just have a drink with us.”

“Okay,” Sarah said and was surprised to hear the word come out of her mouth with such conviction. Then she said it again. “Okay,” she said. “Yeah.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “Why not?”

The evening moved on and the sun slipped away until it was night and they were all drinking and drunk and Sarah slowly revealed some parts of herself that she had not revealed with anyone, including her parents or mental health professional and it was unclear why––maybe it was the fact that she would never see them again and so why bother holding anything back? She told them she was having difficulty adjusting to her new life in Virginia. That it didn’t feel right, but she didn’t want to go home either because that hadn’t felt right either, and that she found herself angry most days. That a rage sat on her heart, she felt. And no amount of breathing exercise, infusions, and calls from home seemed to be fixing it. And sometimes all she could think was that people doing these things should just get over themselves and learn to fucking deal instead of trying to have so horse tranquilizer do it for them and she had a friend that killed herself because she couldn’t deal and Sarah didn’t even know what, like, specifically she couldn’t deal with, but maybe the fact that the mental health practice was turning in this direction didn’t exactly help her friend’s case.

“Yes,” Martin said.

“Mm,” Imani said.

“Do you think you’re gay?” Martin said.

“What?” Sarah said.

Martin stared at her and said nothing for a moment, thinking about something. “Is that something you’ve thought much about? People get so angry when they find themselves floating about like that. Not feeling like they’re lining up with the right people. When I was younger, I remember feeling like that.”

Imani nodded.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I don’t think so. Or probably not.”

“Hm,” Martin said. “Well then you might just be fucked.” He started laughing and so did Imani. Sarah laughed too. They sat on the porch and laughed together like old friends and took turns drinking tequila straight from the bottle. Soon they got cold so they moved inside and Imani lit a fire in an ancient seeming fireplace and Martin disappeared to the kitchen for some time and began clanking about with pots and pans. Imani and Sarah sat by the fireplace. Imani looked out toward the kitchen and smiled. “I think he’s finally breaking all the way down,” she said. “Maybe for the first time in his entire life.”

Sarah nodded and felt like she was hearing news about someone she had known her whole life. “I could see that.”

“All those books. All that life. It was all just a way not to break down. And now he’s here, and there’s no book to hold him up, and he’s finally just letting it go. This could be a breakdown from twenty years ago for all I know.”

“You think people hold onto things like that?”

“I do,” Imani said. “Yeah, I do.”

Sarah said nothing.

“I think the body or mind or whatever it is that decides that you’re gonna break down holds onto everything. Even things that don’t really belong to it. Wrongs committed by that body or on its behalf. It holds on. And for most people nothing will come of it. When the body asks them to pay up, they can easily ignore the request. The body isn’t loud enough and they can just tune it out forever. But for people like Martin that’s not how it is. That’s why he is the way he is. Because he’s known all along that eventually the body was gonna come calling for his bill and he would hear it loud and clear so he would have to pay it. So he tried to keep moving the best he could. Until he couldn’t. And now here we are.” She sloshed her half-full beer can in front of her. “And this ain’t helping either. This’ll get him right to breakdown before he knows it. That’s why he’s getting rid of all his stuff. He’s throwing off the attachments and getting ready to run. Hoping that by the time the body comes for him, he’ll be gone down the road.”

Sarah watched Imani but she would not meet her eyes. She continued looking out toward the kitchen, watching nothing in particular. Her skin glowed by the fire and her jawline had taken on a startling sharpness. “What do you think the treatments were all about then?” Sarah asked. “Why do you think he’s been bothering with the infusions?”

“Because they take that feeling away for a second. But it ain’t stopping it. It’s just holding it up for a second longer. But you can’t stop it. Things like this have to happen to some people. Whether you want to or not.”

“Where will y’all go?” Sarah asked. “When you move from here?”

“I’ll get an apartment in town or something. I’m not worried about it. I have money. Just not someone who can turn down the type of deal that Martin offered me. Plus I like living with him. I like him.”

“And Martin? Where do you think he’ll go?”

“It depends how big the breakdown is and how quickly it gets here. And if he’s willing to take it. If he can get out in time, who knows. But if it shows up before he’s expecting it, which it might, he might just have to take it. Then he’ll probably just stay here if that’s the case. Be no reason to leave at that point.”

“What debt does he have to pay? What is he so worried about? Did he do something wrong?”

Imani lifted a brow. “It’s the same debt that everyone has to pay down here. Eventually. Sure, Martin has his own shit. He’s lived a life surrounded by people he knew could never get close to him. And he dumped all his personal shit into books and made a bunch of money off ‘em and so he lost much of a chance of ever being close with himself too. But the debt is the same. It’s always the same. At least down here it is.”

Martin emerged from the kitchen a short while later holding a large pot in two oven-mitted hands. He placed the pot on the nearby kitchen table and went back to the kitchen. He returned with three wine glasses and placed them on the table and then darted back to the kitchen. “Dinner,” he called out and soon returned with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. He placed the loaf on the table and pulled a corkscrew from his pocket and began working on the bottle. “Chateauneuf Du Pape,” he said in an affected French accent. “Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe. 2019. Maybe not the most delicate bottle but it’ll be good with the food. That’s not to underplay it. This is solid stuff, but––” he pulled the cork from the bottle and tossed it, still attached the corkscrew on the table, then he poured a small mouthful into one of the glasses. He swirled the glass and smelled it and then sipped. “Yes,” he said. “Very good. I don’t mean to underplay it. It’s good. It’s expensive. It’s from a vineyard of great history and reputation.” He poured some into the other glasses. “There’s no reason to blabber about it. Just come taste it.” He then poured some more in his own glass. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s eat.”




Jake Hargrove is a writer from North Carolina who lives in New York. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Cult Magazine. You can find all his writing at ceramic-horses.com.