Grip

I'm under a table when I wake up and she's holding my hand. I don't remember taking it before I went to sleep, but then again I don't remember going to sleep. I remember making a gin and tonic and someone opening the curtains and the sun pouring in and realizing that somewhere something got away from me. In darkness you lose track of time. The beds were taken up, I've slept on harder floors. 

I tried to get it out, my hand. But she had a grip on it, like she'd never felt a hand before, like we were on an ocean raft and it might slip away forever. And maybe that was a real concern of hers. Maybe she was hoping I'd wake up and see that and think, well, why not, time is fleeting and short and the more experiences the better. But I know better than that, and she's got a grip on me.

I thought maybe, like a tablecloth, if I pulled quickly that would leave everything else in place, her fingers in the same position. So I tried—one, two, three—and knocked her knuckles against a leg of the small dining table. She woke up, confused, seemed no one could remember this table decision. But the hand was a decision she could remember, I saw that. And she saw me, looking at her, and realized what I'd done. How desperate I'd been to get out.

The clock showed a red, ungodly hour. That sun I'd seen hadn't been up very long. Someone had closed the shades. I threw them back open, threw the light in people's faces. A lukewarm watered gin drink was my breakfast. Everybody hugged and went their separate ways. She was stiff to the touch and I understood why. I make people stiff. I'm stiff. And they wonder why I drink until the sun comes up.