I shrug and take another sip of my drink. “I dunno. I have to talk it over with Lily.”
“It’s your decision, though.”
“Is it?” I look around the deserted bar. “Where is everyone?”
Trent turns around and flinches, like it’s the first time he’s noticing the emptiness. “Don’t know. I guess it’s a later crowd.”
The bartender must be eavesdropping because he chimes in. “It picks up after eleven.”
I take out my phone to check the time, but it’s not rebooting and I plunk it down on the bar. “Great. Fucking Tuesdays.”
“What’s wrong with Tuesdays?” Trent asks.
“Everything. Monday’s always Monday, but at least it’s the start of something new. Wednesday is hump day, Thursday’s almost Friday, and Friday brings the weekend. But Tuesday? Nada.”
Trent looks at me and shakes his head. “What difference does it make? You work at home.”
“I work from home,” I say, but I don’t know why it makes a difference to me. “My phone is fried, my parking spot was too small, I stepped in”—I look down at my shoe—“urine. I don’t know what to do about Lily. Should I go on?”
Trent puts his hand on my shoulder. “We need to get you laid.” He surveys the room again, but the prospects are dim.
“Oh, I got laid.”
“When?”
I reach for my phone to check today’s date before remembering it’s dead. “I don’t remember. Recently.” I guess there’s life in me still.
“Recently?” He sounds skeptical.
“Yes. Recently.” And then I’m forced to concede, “I think it was recently.” Time runs together.
“Well, we need to get you laid again. At least some uncommitted lip.” That’s what he calls casual kissing.
“Maybe after eleven.”
Why did I have such a distaste for Tuesdays, now that I freelance from home? Trent has a point. If I hated Tuesdays for their sameness when I was part of the world, a member of a more traditional workforce—their lack of anything to help them stand apart—wouldn’t it make sense that I hate everything now? Every morning I rise at eight. It takes a little effort to wake Lily, but not much. I throw on some clothes, usually something that I can wear to the gym as a motivator to go. We head outside for the first of the day’s walks. The morning sun feels just right, not too hot or oppressive. I know this in part because Lily only starts to pant when we round the corner in front of our house, and the panting goes away after she has just a few sips of water. I give Lily her breakfast and I have one (always one) cup of coffee sweetened with Stevia. I bring my laptop from my desk where it has charged overnight and sit in the kitchen in the spot where the glare from the window misses the screen. I write for an hour or maybe two and then have a bowl of Kashi covered with half of a sliced banana (the other half goes in the fridge). Then I allow myself the day’s procrastination: I read the news, I argue with dumb people on websites, I stalk random crushes online. Sometimes I actually make it to the gym; lately not as often. In the afternoons I try to get out of the house, but even then the errands and the distractions have a sameness to them. Groceries for the night’s meal, coffee on Larchmont, a movie at the Arclight I don’t particularly want to see. I get in the car, I park the car, I get out of the car. The driving, the destination, I don’t always remember. Lily and I take a second walk, an evening walk, where we enjoy the soft haze in the sky except at the height of summer when it is still quite bright, or the turn of the winter solstice when it is already dark. Lily gets dinner and a rawhide chew. I have a glass of wine and something to chew on myself, usually dried mango or apricot, but the unsulfured kind that doesn’t give me headaches. I write for a spell. It’s only the evening activities with Lily, game nights and movie nights and pizza, that provide a small respite from the monotony. At night I put my laptop back on my desk, and my phone back on its charger. Lily and I go out one last time. I never set an alarm before bed. I don’t have to: my insides are as tuned in to the sameness as my everything else.
Someone has taken a seat on the barstool next to Trent and the two of them are talking. Trent gestures back at me. The guy leans in to see past Trent, looks at me, then holds his hand up as if to say “not interested.” Trent turns back to me and shrugs.
“Who did you hook up with?” It’s an obvious attempt to keep the conversation on my successes.
“Massage guy. The one who came to my house.”
“Theodore,” Trent says disapprovingly. He calls me Theodore instead of Edward when he wants to full-name me, because he knows it gets under my skin.
“Not my name.”
“Isn’t that like paying for it?”
“No,” I say with four or five o’s, partly in defense of my reputation and partly in defense of massage guy’s. “I paid for a massage. Then we got to talking, I offered him a drink, we each had a few while we continued our conversation, he’s a writer, too, a librettist . . .”