When Gretchen returned home, she ate the simple supper that she’d planned earlier. It didn’t really matter that the predetermined macronutrient proportions were now not in synch with the paltry exercise she’d actually done. She just didn’t want to waste any ingredients. She never did. Her weekly meals were calculated according to nutrient variety, produce seasonality and metabolic requirements. It sounded like a lot of work but it was worth it because it was important. And besides, once you’d refined the algorithm, it basically ran itself.
As she methodically chewed her way through the meal, her eyes kept drifting to the door, beyond which lay the hall. The notebook was there. Resting on the slim table, underneath the mirror, next to her keys. She didn’t know what it was yet, so it followed that she didn’t know where to put it. It was in a holding pattern for the time being. Lezka Ivkam was just a dream, wasn’t she? So what was she doing in someone else’s notebook? It didn’t make sense. The only thing that Gretchen felt sure about was that the writer wasn’t Lezka Ivkam. And seeing as the author was a self-declared man (unless he/she/it was lying), he couldn’t be the tea-room girl either.
Gretchen placed her knife and fork down, closed her eyes and frowned. It was too much for her; a total sensory overload and now a migraine was threatening. Despite the tightening behind her right eye, there were a myriad of flow charts and mind mapping flashing through her brain. It was no good though. She couldn’t process anything with such random, unpredictable firings taking up bandwidth.
Eventually she decided that the next course of action would be to find the tea-room girl on the pretext of returning the notebook but really, the subterfuge was that she would find out who had written it. With that, Gretchen loaded the dishwasher, sat on the sofa and concentrated on her breathing exercises. 30 minutes later she went to bed.
She lay on her back with the duvet pulled taut and smooth across her body like plush restraints. Her physical form made only the slightest undulations under the fabric. She focused again on relaxing. Lips tightly closed so that she could only breathe in and out through the nose. She tended to hyperventilate if she breathed through her mouth—gasping, desperate inhalations that just reinforced the fact that she couldn’t breathe. She heard the occasional piercing buzz of a lone mosquito as it checked her out, assessing her suitability as prey. She weighed up the pros and cons of dispatching the insect but when you factor in the whole ‘getting out of bed, fetching a magazine to roll up, finding the mosquito, balancing on the bed or chest of drawers to reach and kill said-mosquito’ versus staying in bed, there was no competition. She pulled the duvet up around the side of her head so that her ears were covered and only her face exposed and concentrated again on breathing and listing words which begin with the letter ‘G’. Galleon, gigantic, gardener, gyroscope, ginger, gorilla, gastroscopy…
It was a building that I knew but didn’t. A public building; maybe an amalgam of previously visited school, library, university, town hall. It was 19th century with broad sweeping staircases and shallow, marble treads. I ran up them easily, almost like flying and, catching hold of the newel post, swung myself around in a perfect arc before continuing the ascent. There was a freedom here. A physical unfettering that meant I could do anything. But it didn’t last. It never does. I pushed through the double glass doors on one of the landings and found myself in a long corridor, the floor a polished oak parquet. At the other end, I exited back into the opposite stairwell. Up or down? And now I felt the panic, because he was here somewhere. In this building, prowling around, hunting for me. And when he found me and got me, that was it. So where do I go? Up or down? It was quiet. Silent other than my own footsteps. Best to keep moving. Or was it? What if I ran straight into him? I went up then exited back onto the landing, back in the other direction. My feet slid over the wooden floor; I was skating. And then I noticed the corridor here extended further away. I slowed then crept forward, around a corner, straight on, then turned again. The corridor getting narrower; the ceiling lower. Until I reached a door at the end. I pushed it open then… What now? I was at the top of a huge, wide stairwell but the staircase in front of me was practically non-existent. It was derelict with only a few jutting treads poking out from the wall. I was going to have to take this very carefully. As I inched down, pressed tightly against the wall with fingers gripping onto pieces of torn wallpaper, I finally stood on a more solid, red velvet landing and looked down. There was a figure below me. Shadowed and in black, combat gear. It looked up, directly at me but I felt no fear. I watched as she gestured at me with her hand—‘Come on!’—then pointed ahead of her. She left. I wanted to follow but the staircase now went back up.
Day 8
Gretchen looked at her phone. 2:54. She paused for half a minute then swung her feet out of bed and went to the pad on her desk. She added the words: ‘Who is combat woman? Where does she want me to go? Why?’
The Absence Of Sleep 