I want to keep all this air for myself.
Mindy’s house is a small ranch, brown with no shutters. There are two identical flower beds out front but all the flowers are dead and what remains are brown shoots sticking up through a week old layer of crusted snow. I sit in my car, letting it idle, and I stare at the house and I try and figure it out. If I go in here, it’s decided. I can turn back now, I still have my fucking foot on the gas pedal, but once I’ve rung that doorbell I’ve rung that doorbell and there’s no going back. There’s no deciding I’ve made a mistake and there’s no deciding to turn and run and there’s no deciding anything. It’s just Mindy and it’s just this house and it’s just sex. It’s just cheating on my girlfriend, sure, but this is what I wanted, this is what I’ve told myself I wanted. I am sick of Arc and his coma and I’m sick of Maura and her aloofness and I’m sick of Leslie and her laugh, Leslie and her eyes, Leslie and her loud voice, her blonde hair, her hips and her big boobs. I’m sick of myself and I’m sick of what I look like in the mirror and I’m sick of what I think I might look like to other people. I’m sick of breathing and I’m sick of exhaling. I want to keep all this air for myself. I want to store it up inside my lungs and I want to grow fat with it and I want to make everyone else choke to death on carbon dioxide. I want to have so much of it that I explode in bits of flesh and bone. I am sick of living and I am sick of waking up each morning and I am sick of walking from one place to anther place. I am sick of all of it. I am sick of it all.
