She had had a terrible day. She was exhausted. She had been working all day long. She had gone to different places looking for something that could help her in some way. She hadn’t found anything. Still she kept expecting something. She felt her head terribly heavy. She felt her heart terribly empty. Maybe because of that she had decided to take a bath instead of a shower. She filled the bathtub with hot and clear water and added an apple salt bath. She kept there for a long time. She had taken a magazine, but she kept into the water doing nothing. Not even could she think a single word. After that she put her robe on, played Foreign Affairs, her Tom Waits favourite record and lit a cigarette while she turned in. She smoked it calmly despite her tiredness.
Meanwhile Bette Midler was singing “your life is a dimestore novel, this town is full of guys like you and you are looking for someone who takes the place of her”
She turned off the table lamp. She tidied the pillow and put her head there. She felt her body so heavy. The only thing she could think about was to get asleep. She kept with her face focused on the ceiling while her eyes began to close. She could feel her bones sinking into the bed. She couldn’t think anything. Her head was very confused. Suddenly she was going to fall asleep, surely. So she turned over with her face focused on the wall which was close to her bed. Yes, all of her was over. It was time to turn over again. Now her face was focused on the pillow. She took it and put it over the wall. Everything was in the right place. She would be able to sleep. A few minutes later her common world was going to vanish and she was going to find herself in another kind of world. But suddenly her heart began to pound wildly. How was it possible? It was not the right time to get nervous. She had taken her time to do everything in the way she had to. Nevertheless it was happening. At first she couldn’t recognize her thoughts clearly. It was a body sensation. But a few minutes later she realized she couldn’t stop thinking about that kind of things she could work out the following day, or month, or year, or life. Whatever… None was a very important one. Yet they had been taking up her head as if they were the most important things in the whole world. She didn’t understand what she was doing. How could she stop thinking? She would have wanted to put her head away. Instead of it she thought to get up and to prepare a cup of tea. What kind of it would she prefer? She had a lot of different ones, jasmine tea; black tea; mint tea; and also a cheap one. But tea could be a very stimulating thing for her, wasn’t tea precisely, but she could forget to turn the flame off. If it happened a burning could be possible. Could she work it out on her own? She wasn’t sure. Maybe she couldn’t do anything and she would die among the flames. Someone would find her too late. Maybe it had been difficult to recognize her face. She didn’t want to die in that way. She had always thought that her death would happen in another way. She had imagined her body laying among a lot of roses. Many people would go to say to her goodbye, someone would say a few sensible words, Kentucky Avenue would be the perfect song for that occasion. Her eyes were opened again.
Too much time had went on since Tom Waits had replied “you’re bitter cause he left you, that’s why you are drinking in this bar” That song was wonderful. It was a perfect dialogue between a man and a woman. She had never had anyone like that. Not even someone a little similar. Even her own and privates dialogues which she thought while she used to try to fall asleep were poorer and more boring than that. She used to think about a lot of different things when she went to bed. It was not an easy work to get asleep. Every night the same thing happened. She couldn’t remember when it had begun but she was sure it had been some years before. During a long time she had been a perfect dreamer. She turned in and she fall asleep immediately. But things had changed. Unaware of something when she went to bed she kept perfectly awake. She had developed a hard process to reach the sleeping. Every night she turned the television on and lit a cigarette. After that she turned it off, light as well, and kept looking at the ceiling, it was a common white one, with nothing particularly interesting. After that she turned herself over to her right side looking, every night, at the same wall. At last, she turned herself over again looking at the pillow. She didn’t use to sleep with a pillow, because of that she used to take it off when she arrived at that time. When she was in that position, another work began. She tried to think nothing. If it weren’t possible, she used to remember something about Yoga-relax. She had practiced it some time before. Now she practiced it in her mind. It wasn’t the same thing, of course. However it could help her depending on circumstances. When Yoga exercises were finished she used to imagine a peaceful landscape, for instance a lonely beach, with a cool breeze. Sometimes if she could stop there she could reach her sleeping. But it didn’t always happen. Some kind of wishes could mix themselves with the image. Obviously it stood for a trouble. When it happened, a lot of different circumstances showed up and went up in spite of her efforts to think nothing. Generally they weren’t as cool as the breeze. Many feelings covered her head and also her body. Sometimes she had to lit a new cigarette to reach the calm again. When her feeling and thoughts began to be confused and she could feel her heart pounding calmly, she could get rid of herself plunging into a dream.
Tom Waits was playing his piano. A brief introduction before his voice showed up. . “…is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing it will only be parlayed into a memory”.
It was the last song and she knew that. However she went on awake.
