Page 9 of Stay Awake
On my lap is a paper bag with the remnants of an orange poppy seed muffin and an empty coffee cup with dried milk froth on the lid. It’s my standard take-out breakfast. All that’s missing is my phone, which I usually leave at my desk before heading out here so I can chill before being bombarded by work calls for the rest of the day.
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the light, I notice there’s not a scrap of blue in the gunmetal sky. As I look around, I absorb other incongruencies.
People crisscross the pathways of the park in buttoned-up coats and scarves, or sweaters in bleak colors that match their somber faces. There’s no lush summery foliage on the trees. Quite the opposite. The dogwoods and elms are a mass of brittle branches in the final throes of fall. Piles of dead leaves scatter across the pathway, blown by a wind infused with the unmistakable chill of approaching winter.
I’m baffled as to how it could almost be winter when my last memory before waking on this bench was sitting at my sun-streaked desk by the office window, typing on my laptop on a perfectly beautiful summer day.
My desk phone had rung abruptly. “This is Liv,” I said into the receiver.
Next thing, I woke up here, on this bench.
I blink to clear away the cobwebs of sleep that must be to blame for my confusion. My hands feel numb from cold. I open and close them into fists to get the blood circulation back. As I do, I notice they’re covered with writing.
I used to write on my hands as a kid until Mom married husband number two. Unlike me, Randal’s daughter from his first marriage, Stacy, always came home from school pristine. Stacy never jotted messages or scrawled pictures on the back of her hands. Her ponytail was never askew.
“Why can’t you be like Stacy?” Mom would say, sending me to the bathroom to wash my hands clean. “Try not to write on your hands again, Liv. It’s unladylike,” she’d tell me in the Southern accent she’d affected so she’d fit in with Randal’s snooty country club set.
It was a far cry from her previous life as a single mom waiting tables at a Jersey restaurant that claimed to serve the best steaks on the Eastern Seaboard. That was where Mom and Randal met. He cameto the steak house for a meal during a business trip. Mom served his table. Three weeks later they were married. I was the flower girl. I was the flower girl at all her weddings.
Despite Mom’s efforts to cure my tendency to doodle on my hands, I’ve apparently returned to the habit. I stare at the swirls of blue-and-black ballpoint writing decorating my skin. The writing goes all the way under the sleeves of my sweater. There are letters written under each knuckle that form the words:S-T-A-Y A-W-A-K-E.
Near my wrist it says:DON’T SLEEP! I FORGET EVERYTHING WHEN I FALL ASLEEP.
I’ve underlined it twice for emphasis. I fell asleep right here on this park bench. I can’t help but wonder what I’ve forgotten.
A rustle in the bushes sends pigeons squawking into the air in a tumult of flapping wings and falling feathers. Amid the fracas, I feel someone is watching me with a frightening intensity. Whoever’s there has vanished by the time the birds have flown away. I’m in danger. I feel it in my bones.
I get up and rush out of the park, stopping only when I’m on the sidewalk outside the entrance of my office building. I pause to watch people rotate like spinning tops through the revolving glass lobby door. I don’t join them. I’m reluctant to go up to the office feeling so dazed.
Down the street is the café where I often buy lunch. I decide to get a coffee to calm my nerves. When I reach the corner, I find the café is closed down. Its windows are boarded up.
Next door is my hair salon. I drift inside, drawn by an inexplicable desire to see a familiar face.
“Can I help you?” asks a woman with blue-tipped hair, folding salon towels behind the counter.
“Is Stevie here?”
“Stevie moved to Miami after the wedding.”
“Stevie got married?” I ask, surprised. I consider Stevie a friend aswell as my hairdresser. “Stevie never mentioned anything about getting married the last time she cut my hair.”
“That must have been some time ago,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because it looks like it’s been a while since you had a haircut.”
My eyes drift toward a long-haired woman standing behind the hairdresser. For a split second, I’m shocked at this woman’s sudden appearance, seemingly out of nowhere. Then it hits me that this woman is me. I barely recognize myself. I’ve lost weight. My hair is very long and shades darker than my natural color. I run my fingers through it uncertainly.
The hairdresser misinterprets the gesture. “I have an opening now if you want a cut.”
I like the idea. Maybe if I go back to looking like me, it will pop the surreal bubble that has enveloped me since I woke in the park.
She leads me to a chair by a salon sink where she pulls back my head and turns on the water with a hiss. Geometric patterns from an overhanging chandelier flit across the ceiling, mesmerizing me while she rubs shampoo into my wet scalp with long nails. I close my eyes and try to relax to the gentle splash of water.
“We’re done,” she announces, turning off the faucet.
She rubs my hair dry with a black towel and wraps another around my head like a turban before escorting me to the closest chair.
