Out of Focus

She’s done too much coke and she lays awake, cocooned in blankets watching infomercials on the TV and flinching at shadows on the ceiling until light starts to come in through the blinds and her eyes finally close.

When she wakes she feels heavy and her throat aches and there’s this pressure in her sinuses.  She drinks some water and rubs her temples and she picks an orange out of the mini fridge and starts to peel it before changing her mind and putting it back.  She pulls on a rumpled pair of jeans from the floor and her leather boots and opens the door and outside it’s dusk.

She remembers passing a gallery walking home the night before, she was drunk and scattered and isn’t sure where it is, but she turns down Ocean and it’s right there.  She loves art galleries and museums and frame shops.  They always have the most beautiful light.  Clean, white, halogen bulbs.  Tiny, focused spotlights.  Sterile, scrubbed walls.  Everything in order.  She walks around the outside of the room first, studying Van Dykes of children and Polaroids of sandy beaches, a panorama of spiraling smoky plumes.

Large panes of glass hang from the ceiling in the middle of the room, suspended from thick metal cords and splinter her reflection and she sees how thin she’s become and the sharpness of her cheekbones startles her and she realizes she hasn’t really eaten in three days.  She folds her arms across herself and walks further into the gallery and a portrait done in blue cyanotype draws her attention.  The contrast has been exaggerated and the girl’s freckles stand out individually against the pure white of her skin and her wide, unnatural eyes stare into Emily’s with indifference or maybe judgment and tears bloom in hers and she wipes them away with her fingertips before they can fall.  Her vision is blurred and she bumps a ceramic vase with her hip, it sways on its stand and she holds its sides until it steadies and then leaves, her quick footsteps echoing around the room.  The glass panes shake and rattle when she passes and the cowbell on the back of the door clangs as she pushes through it, out to the sidewalk, into the fog.

She trips back through the door to her hotel room and locks the chain behind her.  The light from the TV makes everything look sort of sad and lonely and the bed is rumpled and the fan in the bathroom is whirring and she catches her reflection in the mirror above the dresser.  The blue light flickers across her face and her hair is tangled and glowing in a halo around her head and she tries to find her eyes, hoping to see something, a confirmation maybe, but they’re hidden in shadows and she can’t.  She slams her bag down on the table and pushes through loose change and crumbled receipts and pulls out a prescription bottle.  She tries to open it with shaking hands, but the cap won’t come off and she screams and throws it across the room and the pills rattle inside as it slides across the tiled floor.

Her cell phone vibrates in her pocket and she jumps.  It’s a text message from Des,

How is your trip going?