“The seventeenth?” repeated Jack. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking sure. Three-oh-nine… You just checked in last night, and you already forgot the day?”
“I, uh… I’ve got a lot going on right now. Thanks for your help.”
“Sounds like you need it, buddy.”
The line went dead.
Jack hung up, moving with the speed of a man on the verge of death. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, held them there until stars flashed across his vision.
“Fuck.” Terror seeped into every bone in his body. He stumbled downstairs on numb legs.
“You aren’t scheduled to check out until tomorrow,” Boris told him, scowling when Jack tried to return the key. “You sure you have somewhere to go?”
After a long pause, Jack pocketed the key, dread heavy in his heart.
At the train station, the conductor confirmed his ticket was incorrect, and the clerk refused to fix it.
Jack spent a long time sitting on the bench, staring at the swaying trees, deafened by trains as they thundered past.
It was the seventeenth.
It had been the seventeenth for days now.
Jack had one dollar and fifty cents in his pocket again.
His notes were blank.
Boris had called at 7:03 a.m.
The muffin and candy bar had resurrected on the nightstand.
This… was the same day. Over and over again.
Jack spent a long time staring at the wall, trying to comprehend this.
“The same… day. The. Same. Day,” he said aloud, tasting the words, bitter on his lips. They hung in the air like an aerosol, stinking of panic and despair. “It’s the seventeenth.”
Thesameday.
The sameday.
What the fuck?
Jack went to the beach, wandered barefoot through the sand. Murky water sloshed over his ankles. Eventually, he put his shoes back on and returned to the hotel room. Sand flaked from his shins like glitter. He scrubbed it off. Laid on the floor. Then sat on the toilet for an hour without taking his pants off, staring at the wall.
He called work. Dan fired him again, this time with enthusiasm. Kathy didn’t remember their conversation from yesterday.
The neighbor was still going to feed Rainy tomorrow.
He called his mother, offered no explanation, and sobbed. “Jack?” she said, confused. “Jack?”
He hung up the phone and laid on the floor again. She didn’t call back.
Then he climbed from the fire escape to the roof and cried while he ate his muffin. A squirrel stole the crumbs.
He sobbed all over a bewildered Boris, who pulled a bottle of whisky from under the desk and shoved it at him. “Keep it. You look like you need it.”
