All Around Atlantis by Deborah Eisenberg

Author:Deborah Eisenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 1997-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

There are some things, Rosie thinks, that she ought to have dealt with long before she did. To be fair, of course, she’s had her hands full just standing upright. Just trying to work up some traction. Just dealing with the fact of herself, which pops up in front of her every day when she awakes, like some doltish puppet. So certain other worrisome items have just slid right off the agenda.

Jamie didn’t make a living from his paintings, it was true. He did other kinds of painting, Rosie learned, to make money. From time to time he’d spend a few days or a week on the job, getting up early in the morning and going off to work in some rich person’s home. But when he wasn’t making paintings in his studio, Rosie noticed, Jamie became very…distant. Estranged…How long would it be before he got sick of her and tossed her out? It was a miracle he’d taken her in in the first place.

What on earth was she going to do when he didn’t feel like taking care of her any longer? She hadn’t meant to just throw herself in a heap on his floor. On the other hand, she hadn’t meant not to; she hadn’t meant anything at all—she was just scrambling. And now she was going to have to get some money together, herself. And fast, too—she’d almost gone through her savings.

Maybe the best thing about drugs, Rosie thinks now (or, on the other hand, maybe it’s the worst), is the way they unhook you from that stupid step-by-step business—first one moment, then the next, then the one after that. No skipping, no detours, no time off. Which is what she’s had to live through for all these long, recent months, and what she’ll have to live through, now, every day until she dies. No wonder she hadn’t particularly minded working in an office before. Beginning of day, end of day; pure-white time in between. The hands of the clock might sleep or twirl—that was discretionary.

But the laws of human time must have registered on some template lying around in Rosie’s brain, because, facing the prospect of going back, Rosie remembers herself as a miner, hacking her way through the stony mass, instant after intolerably boring instant.

And if only boringness were the whole problem! Again, Rosie’s memory offers up things Rosie didn’t even notice at the time: the sadness of herself, the sadness of all the others—the secretaries and clerks, working away like mice in their little cubicles, at their endless, miniature tasks, their careful clothes and clean hands, Good morning, good morning, how was your weekend? And Mr. Gage and Mr. Peralta in their horrible suits and ties, appearing at the doorways of their offices with sheaves of paper, the light from their windows flashing into the fluorescent light over Rosie’s desk.

How polite everyone was, and how cheery! Their cheerfulness lay like boulders over geysers of misery. Have a nice night. See you tomorrow. By five in the evening you were abrim with filth.

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