Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

“This was fun,” I said.
He was lying in bed, one arm stretched out as though I were still in the cradle of his arms. His
hand lifted in the casual, shrugging gesture of a person who hasn’t been given a choice.
“Good-bye, I guess,” he said.
I closed the door, and the click of the lock’s tongue in the groove brought me such relief. The
sound of a narrow escape.
I was on my way to the elevator when I realized: I did not have my purse.
WHEN I SAY I did not have my purse, I didn’t give a shit about my actual purse, a black vinyl bag with
stitching that had already started to unravel. But I did not have my wallet. I did not have my passport.
I did not have my money, my driver’s license, my room card, the keys to my loft back in Brooklyn.
I did not have my way back home.
I turned around and stared at the line of doorways behind me. Shit. They all look the same. Which
one? It was powerfully unfair. Forgetting something that just fucking happened.
It made no sense. A woman can spend half her life haunted by a sixth grader’s taunt that took place
in 1985. But she can have absolutely no idea what happened 20 seconds ago.
Stop. Stay calm. Think. I retraced my steps. Had I passed five rooms on my way to the elevator?
Or four? I searched for pointy heel indentions in the red carpet, which was covered with whorls like
the forked tongue of a snake. I found nothing, but I kept searching for any trail of string. Did I pass
that Emergency sign? What about this room service tray sitting by the door?
Deductive reasoning suggested I had come from the corner room, because his window was larger
than mine and the room more of an L shape, so I walked back down the hall. I took a deep breath and
knocked on the door. Mine was the tentative knock of the thoroughly unconvinced. The “pardon me”
knock. The “I know you’re busy” knock.
Nothing happened. No one came.
I looked at the door beside it. On second thought, maybe it was this one. Perhaps the room wasn’t
L-shaped, so much as the furniture was rearranged. Another knock, louder this time.
Nothing, no one.
I wondered if he was in the shower. Maybe he had already passed out, snoring in the same
position I left him. People who’ve been drinking can be so hard to rouse.
I went back to the original door. I took a deep breath, and I pounded on it. I pounded with both
fists, and I tried very hard not to think about what might happen if I had the wrong door. A guy staring
through the fish-eye while his wife asks, “Who is it, honey?”
Nothing happened. No one came.
I looked down the hallway, at the doors lined up before me. Was it me, or did they stretch into
infinity? I clutched my hair, then doubled over in a silent scream.
I slumped down the wall and sat in the patch of space between two doors. I closed my eyes and
stayed still for a very long time. I wanted so many things in that moment. I wanted to call Anna. I
wanted to call my boyfriend, but he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore. I wanted Bubba, and the calming
way he curled up on my chest, paws barely touching my neck, so I could feel the tiny patter of his
heart and the boom in my own rib cage. Almost like our hearts were having a conversation with each
other.