I woke up late in the morning, my brain banging against my head, and looked around a room I couldn’t recognize. Dark bar, hazy car ride, strange apartment—these things came back slowly.

She was sitting on a plush red chair on the other side of the room under a very large window. Reclined in a chair and legs dangling over the armrest, the sun on her hair lit up the whole room. She was reading a book with a pinched face.

My clothes were strewn all over the floor and I sat up to find my pants. I was much too sober to be that naked. She noticed me moving and looked at me with iceberg eyes. Her face softened as she said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” I offered, while pulling my pants back on backwards and starting over again.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, her lips turning up to a slight smile.

“Not good,” I said, fighting with my strange pants. “You?”

“I felt like shit when I woke up,” she said, reaching down to the floor and picking up a water bottle and after taking a deep drink, “but I’ve been drinking.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Good.”

“Do you want some?”

“Sure,” I answered sheepishly.

“Here,” she said while holding the bottle out to me with a surprisingly clean and pink hand.

I shifted slowly to the foot of the bed, took the bottle, and drank the water. “Thanks.”

She nodded, looking back down at her book. “What are you listening to?” I asked. A folk-sounding acoustic guitar came from two large speakers that sat on the bare floor and a woman was singing gingerly, as if anymore loud noise would break the world apart.

“But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother, we don’t like to make our passions other peoples’ concern, and we walk in the world of safe people, and at night we walk into our houses and burn,” she sang lustfully.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Dar Williams,” she said. “That’s what’s playing.”

“Oh. Where’s the bathroom?”

“Out in the hallway, second door to the right.”

“Thanks.”

I got up and walked out into the apartment littered with empty beer bottles and cigarettes, and stepping carefully, made my way to the bathroom.

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