I'm sitting on Sage's couch. It's night and raining. The living room is filled with the yellow light of a number of lamps spread around, catching cobwebs and bending shadows. The sound of plates and silverware banging around in the sink and the water running.
"I'm going to fucking kill myself," she says from the kitchen.
"Why?"
"Sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"Why are you going to kill yourself?" I ask, tired of being reminded.
More banging around.
"I'm just going to order more dishes. I'm done. There's just always fucking dishes."
"You never do them."
"No," she says walking into the living room and standing in the doorway, wiping her hands on her shorts. "Because as soon as I do them there's more. You get trapped in it. Over and over. Forever." She pauses. "But not me. Not anymore."
"You're gonna break the cycle?"
She laughs. "Yes. I'm breaking the cycle. I will use dishes. I will order more. Enough is enough."
"Fuck god."
"Fuck god!"
She goes back into the kitchen. More banging. Water running. Mumbling.
I scroll my phone and wait for notifications I know aren't coming from people I know have moved on. Exhausting. A little crushing. Just another day.
The black cat, Gib, walks toward me from across the room, dragging a toy mouse on a stick. I smile at him and reach my hand out and he drops the toy in front of me. For a few minutes I swing the mouse back and forth while he dashes left to right, right to left, into the air, back down, chasing it. He's become a friend of mine and tonight while Sage and I hang out and watch some terrible show about mermaids he'll lay on my lap and smear his face into my hand, over and over.
The white cat, Rain, watches with little more than disinterest from across the room.
"Will you go find my phone charger?" Sage asks, still working away at the mountain of plates, bowls, cups, and silverware.
"Where is it?"
"I don't know. Bedroom maybe? My nightstand?"
"Sure."
I let Gib catch the mouse. He carries it proudly away to his lair (a small bed in the laundry room) and I force myself up.
The bedroom is a nest. Dim christmas lights cross the ceiling over a number of piles of laundry and shoes. A large bed with dunes of blankets between two cluttered nightstands. I glance quickly at one with two alarm clocks, a lamp, and a vibrator amidst a graveyard of AA batteries. No charger.
The other; various charging cables, a dead cellphone, one antler, and three empty American Spirit packs. No charger. I give up and walk back out.
"I didn't see it."
Sage walks into the living room. "Did you look?"
"Yes I fucking looked. Have you seen your room?"
"Shut up. It's stressful."
"Did you finish the dishes?"
"I gave up."
I sit back on the couch. Sage sits on the other end.
"You crashing here tonight?" she asks.
"I guess."
"Cool." She fumbles around in the cushions near her. "Where is my fucking charger? Oh... found it." She pulls it out from the cushions and plugs it into an extension cord draped over the back of the couch. "Thought it was over for me."
"Great work," I say.
"Thank you. Mermaids?"
"Sure."
I lean back against the cushion, kick my feet up and glance again at my phone. No notifications.
