Shit shit shit.He knows this—prodromal pain. This isn’t just a headache, it’s the start of a migraine. He needs to get home.
By the time he reaches Gansevoort, the sun is an assault, and the peculiar lights have arrived, distortions and auras that make everyday things seem bizarrely psychedelic. At the narrow door of the tenement,he staggers. Getting to the third floor becomes complicated when the risers under his feet begin to look doubled.
Once inside his apartment, he closes the door with his back, dumps his bag of laundry and his coat, fumbles his way to the bathroom. Gulps four Vicodin and—from another packet—one Valium. It won’t stop what’s about to happen, but it might alleviate the pain to come. He feels spacey, and time has started jumping around. Slippage is about to occur, and there’s nothing he can do to prevent it.
Nomi asked about his amnesia, about his headaches and weird symptoms, but he didn’t give her the whole story. He didn’t explain how he worries that one day, he’ll wake up from a migraine to discover everything gone, his mind once more wiped clean. Rebuilding himself five years ago took almost everything he had: The idea of starting from scratch again fills him with a kind of cosmic dread.
His vision is starting to fracture. He kicks off his boots, puts a towel on the floor near the bed in case he throws up. Crawls onto the mattress with his eye mask, waits for the drugs to take effect. The pills usually take about fifteen minutes to come on. One day, he’ll run out of medication, but not today: He has a black market American script pad, all the scripts prewritten and signed by Flores.
Flores had been hopeful. “Maybe when you get to America, you will discover more about your condition, find ways to resolve it. Maybe they will have some new treatment. These medications are drugs of dependence, you understand. You should not take them as often as you do.”
Simon doesn’t give a shit. Because now his teeth click together as the real pain arrives. Like orgasm, it climbs up his body, gaining strength and heft. Everything above his neck goes numb: his lips, cheeks, eyelids. Tinnitus screams like a buzz saw in his ears. The pain is a chichicaste vine that colonizes his insides, thickening and expanding, extruding wicked thorns. His hips and neck stiffen. His legs prickle, and his hands lose coordination—
The pain crests, slamming into his left temple and the backs of his eyes, and he’s gone.
When Simon comes to, he’s on the floor.
The apartment is dark; it’s night. Moonlight filters through the curtains. Little twitches and tremors are rippling through his body, muscle spasms. His jaw hurts, like he’s been clenching his teeth for hours. His mouth tastes disgusting; he must have thrown up. He rolls over and realizes he’s been lying on a book. All of his books are on the floor, spread out around him.
But he remembers his name. He remembers who he is. This is his apartment in New York City. It’s Tuesday evening.
Getting up is doable, if he moves slowly. His head is throbbing. He’s shirtless. There’s sticky dampness at his left wrist. He fumbles his way to the bathroom, flicks on the light, winces. His own face in the mirror—eyes, hair, bone structure—looks slightly off kilter. Not unrecognizable, but definitely unfamiliar. This is the postdromal phase, when everything feels strange. The dampness is blood, running down his left arm from a shallow, narrow-edged gash on the pale inner skin between his elbow and his wrist. Dammit.
He runs the sink faucet to rinse off the wound, then gives up and runs a bath. While the tub fills, he inches around the apartment, straightening things, wiping up his mess, restacking his books. The apartment seems a little wonky—some objects appear to have been moved or rearranged. He can’t figure out how he cut himself. He’s shaking, but it’ll pass.
Simon smokes a cigarette in the hot bath and does a personal inventory: His head has a heavy thrum, and he’s lost some time. Objects still have a faint aura. He feels slightly stoned: That’s not just aftereffects from the migraine; he took a lot of medication. Rubbing at his cheeks, he feels a residual numbness. His emotions feel out of whack. But the firestorm in his brain has banked and cooled.
As he’s brushing his teeth, the hammering in his head is superseded by hammering at the door of his apartment. Wonderful. He spits, rinses, pulls on his terry cloth robe and his sunglasses before answering.
“Hey, I was going to suggest—” Nomi suddenly stops and examines his face. She’s wearing a tank top, and Simon feels a hot lick of interest from somewhere inside his mind at the sight of her bare shoulders. “What’s wrong with you? You look worse than me. You got another headache?”
“A migraine. Yes.” There’s a difference.
“Fuck. We leave for the club in thirty minutes. Are you going to be okay?”
The nightclub—goddammit. Is he going to be okay? What an excellent question.
“I don’t know,” he says finally.
“Shit. But you’re up. Can you function?” She pulls his sunglasses down a little, peers at his eyes. “Oh man, you look baked.”
Without the dark lenses in the way, Simon can see she has a purple aura. He watches how it curls around her. His left forearm itches as blood seeps toward his wrist.
“Hold on,” Nomi says. “I know what you need. Wait here.”
She spins and walks off, leaving the door open. He leans on the wall, listens to the sound of her boots clomping on the wooden stairs.
Is it really nine thirty at night? He’s lost nearly five hours. The soft doubling of everything—the banister, the dark skylight, the door across the hall—is still affecting his vision. He pushes his sunglasses back up. He’s naked under his robe. This is insane. Is he really going to a nightclub? What is he doing? He picks his way back to the bathroom, applies a Band-Aid to the cut on his arm.
As he emerges, Nomi returns with a bottle of some clear liquid and two shot glasses. She stomps to the kitchen and turns on the light, goes to the breakfast table and fills each glass all the way.
“What is that?” Simon wobbles closer and stares at the liquid, suspicious.
“There weren’t many benefits to having an upbringing like mine, but this is one of them.” Nomi hands him a shot glass. “It’s schnapps.”
He sniffs, recoils. “It smells like medicine.”
“It is.” Nomi raises her own glass at him. “Drink it fast.”
