I stumble for miles in the rain and wind, trying to damp down a sense of outrage, and what is even harder, trying to stifle my self-loathing. I've paused twice in the first half hour to vomit in the bushes. And now I notice my shirt-front, blood-stained from my still draining nostrils. What a night.
But I have to keep moving: if I stop I think I'll go mad. I don't want to think anymore about anything. I don't want to feel anything. All I have is my old stand-by therapy: strenuous exercise into exhaustion. Run then walk. Run some more and walk some more.
Once I stumble off the curb and fall into the flooded gutter. I lie there in the deserted street, letting the water stream under me. I listen to my ragged panting and feel some comfort as it subsides.
I'm suddenly aware of the heavy symbolism of the scene. If I'd read it in some fiction I would have found it too farfetched, too self-conscious, too unbelievable. And yet here I am, supine in the gushing gutter, and I'm almost able to smile at the picture I must present.
Maybe I pass out for a while, right there in the street: I can't account for several long periods in this wild, catastrophic night. I begin to run again but soon stop. A dizziness comes over me and I have to sit on the curb. It occurs to me that I haven't eaten anything in sixteen hours, but food doesn't interest me. I doubt I could sleep either: my ultimate soothing, life-restoring therapy stolen from me as well. But suddenly I have the urge to try.
I cannot stagger my way through the city indefinitely. Sooner or later I have to pause and get on with something resembling a life, even if it means facing agony and humiliation head-on for a while. But where to go? My own bed is occupied by a rutting female and her current stud. I don't want to bother Connie or go to a hotel.
So where do I go instead? Which haven in this storm-tossed night? If the lunatic scene in the gutter wasn't unbelievable enough, how about this: in less than an hour I find myself in the bleak lane behind Dana's apartment!
Her car isn't in its usual space and the lights are out. She's obviously still entertaining her new friend at my place, so why shouldn't I avail myself of her facilities in exchange? Brilliant thinking, Mason, the ultimate in rationality. You've outdone yourself this time.
I clamber up the rotting woodwork of the garage for the second time in less than a week. I cross the roof and haul myself up onto the rain-slick deck. Her floor-length glass doors are open only three inches on a screw bolt but I know the trick of opening them: she has demonstrated several times her foolproof way of never locking herself out.
In seconds I'm standing in the half-light of her bedroom, gazing at her unmade bed and a flashing red light on her bedside answering machine. The blood is pounding in my ears and my heart is lurching. The sound of my breathing fills the room.
It occurs to me suddenly that this is madness, that this is the behavior of a lunatic. But I make no move to leave. I stand in the center of the room trembling and panting and dripping. I can't take my eyes off the bed. I reach down to touch the coverlet but withdraw my hand as if from a flame.
Instead I snatch a half-slip from the floor and hold it to my face. With my free hand I press the playback on the answering machine and a series of voices begins. Most of them are male and several don't identify themselves by name. The only one I recognize is Glen.
"Dana I need to see you. Call me."
Before the next message is over I remove the slip from my cheek and begin tearing it apart. The shredding sound triggers something in me and I step to the closet and pull out items at random. I shred a blouse, a shirt, another blouse. A dress gives me trouble so I toss it aside and grab something lacy and delicate. I rip it apart and let it fall to the floor with the rest.
I realize that I'm making strange whimpering sounds. I continue in desperate silence, selecting items of lightness and delicacy: all the lovely feminine pieces that she wears so alluringly. I discard all the sturdier fabrics and find the low-cut top she wore the night she left the concert with her tattooed friend, and this I take special pleasure in destroying.
But the very next piece I take hold of is the simple, girlish dress she had on the night she and I had dinner together for the first time, and at once I am undone. Something weakens in me and I sink to the floor midst all the debris. I run the garment through my fingers in the dark. My trembling has stopped and my breathing is almost regular.
The senselessness and futility of what I'm doing suddenly overwhelms me. I sense the depth and power of my feeling for this woman, intact still, immovable for the foreseeable future. Once again - how many times is this now? - I know beyond a doubt that a relationship has ended almost before it's begun. Yet once again I have to face the fact that months will pass before my emotions catch up: months and months of raw misery and longing.
Will I never learn? Will this agonizing process never get any easier? The sense of outrage I feel doesn't make it any more bearable. I know I can shred Dana's wardrobe till there's nothing left intact and it won't alter a thing. I could trash her place, set it on fire, and it would do no good. The tenderness is still there and will be for a long time, in spite of everything.
