The Adderall Diaries Read Online Free PDF Page B

she was in a polyester sleeveless brown shirt, without makeup, reading a paperback. She was like everybody else on that train, coming home from work, except she had better posture. I sat next to her, reading over her shoulder, and she ignored me until I started to poke her. Then she turned and we started to laugh.
    “What in the world,” she said, shaking her head and smiling, closing the book on her lap.
    She looked lovely, but not as lovely as she would have looked if she had known she was going to see me. If she’d had her lipstick on and some blush, I don’t know what I would have done. As it was, she was working as a lawyer for the labor relations board and getting married to Tony, who was one of my best friends from college. We were no longer on speaking terms.
    I convinced her to get a drink with me and we went to a bar where the pipes were broken and water poured from the ceiling into buckets set across the floor.
    “This is wonderful,” I joked. “We’re having a drink inside our metaphor.”
    Eventually Tony came and by that time I was very drunk. He was still tall, muscular, and strikingly handsome. I considered hitting him but that was unlikely to turn out in my favor.
    “Why didn’t you tell me you were dating her?” I asked Tony. “I’d have gotten over it eventually.”
    “It was you or Jo, and I picked Jo,” he said.
    After a little more talk Tony said they were considering a move to North Carolina.
    “Why would you do that?” I asked.
    “Property’s cheap,” Tony said. “And there’s less crime.”
    They lived in a condominium Tony’s parents owned in a run-down building at the end of Lake Shore Drive. The neighborhood hadn’t changed in years. There was no more crime now than before, but they were talking about something else.
    Earlier today I talked with a woman I know in Virginia. I locked the door to my office, turned on the camera in the computer, and took my clothes off for her. She told me to turn around and I did. Then I sat naked at the computer and typed. It was ridiculous. I also spent the day preparing for class. If I can keep teaching I’ll be fine. Not really, but I’ll have enough money to make it for a little while. The classes are ending in a couple of weeks and I have nothing new scheduled. If I agree to move to some small town that needs a professor I can get on the tenure path. I could buy a house and teach people how to write. I’d have to sleep with my students then. Away from the big city it would be my only option. But that’s not really open to me. It’s not really what I want to do. Which is what got me on this track to begin with, arranging interviews with murderers, hoping to make sense of somebody else’s crime. There’s a woman missing. Her husband says he didn’t kill her. There’s a man who says he’s killed eight people but won’t say who they are. There are so many unanswered questions. It’s been a long time since I knew what I wanted, since I had something to strive toward. I keep floating, head poking above the waves, waiting for a purpose to arrive like a boat in the middle of the ocean.
    I never did meet anyone like Josie again. Women like Josie don’t make it to their thirties without getting married. If you’re going to meet someone like that you’re going to meet her in your early twenties. And if you’re like me, that’s going to be a time when you’re making your living selling drugs out of your freezer, living in a squat a bullet away from Cabrini Green. You’ll have to represent something, like the other side of the tracks, but safe. Someone who, when the time comes, when the party’s over, she can turn around and guide to a place where life is a little more predictable. But when the party was over I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want to go to law school or get a real job or love only one person forever though in many ways she was the most loveable person I was ever going to meet. It didn’t matter. I had to