eight days ago, he brought me a cup of water with ice when i was sitting on the dead cigarette-covered floor, shaking and convulsing. he tried to focus his attention elsewhere, but watched my hand quiver from the corner of his eye. the antithesis of the leech who refills the empty glass of beer, he refills my cup of water, like it's some elixir that will magically heal me.

four months later, i allow myself to be enveloped in his room, never leaving, for a week. rhythmic typing, clatter, until he grabs my nalgene bottle and we rent a rowboat. we lay on our backs in the bottom of the boat, ignoring the dirt and water that trickle in, looking up at the sky, rocking in the waves, until night. it would have cost us $100 to return the boat, so we pulled it up onto the beach and left, running along the shore. it was only my driver's license, i need a new one, anyway.

three months before this, i killed myself with the remnants of medication from a knee injury. painkillers. it doesn't make any sense to him; he visits one last time, picking through my belongings, deciding to keep the frogs, the care bears, and when he's looking through old photographs, another man arrives. "i told her to wait a year" he says, distraught, but then he explains "i don't think it was the same thing." they pick and choose my belongings, courteous and succinct with who will get what, here, you take this cowboy hat, and this picture frame. they were yours, anyway.

a month later, i see him at the airport. he's drinking water, he gets in my car and we open the sunroof and listen to gomez, he hates gomez, and turns off the music. he asks what i'm doing here, but he isn't surprised to see me. we had planned this, like this, all along, and we get away with it.

tomorrow, i will fill my claw-foot bathtub with steaming water and light candles, and make sense of everything that's happened, and that will soon happen. my assistant will bring me pages to read while i soak, i'll apply my toenail polish and call for gin and tonic. he'll be nearby, burning the edges of his papers with his cigarettes, which he swears he wants to stop smoking, but doesn't. he complains to himself softly that i should be with him, forgetting that i'm just across the way. he looks at the photographs on his walls; "in each one, she looks so different," he thinks to himself, and he can't remember when they were taken.