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: : : THE BOLT RETRACTS AND SHE wakes up. Johnny's home. The clock says two-fifteen, which means he's probably drunk. She hears him knock the coat rack over. She hears him go fuck.
She keeps listening, following his movement through the apartment. He runs the kitchen sink for a minute. Then he heads into the bathroom. She hears the fan come on. She hears him retch, twice. A third time. Then everything is quiet except for the fan's dull thrum.
She wonders if he's OK. It is easy to imagine him passed out on the floor. In danger. Dying. She thinks the word choking. She thinks the word coma. Just go and see, she thinks to herself. Just go and make sure. But she doesn't move. She's just so tired. She's tired of being the person who has to gather him up off the floor, pour water into him, lead him to bed. I can't take this shit. I can't take this shit every night. I have to go to work in the morning.
But what if he's not OK?
That isn't your job, she thinks. It isn't your job to take care of him.
There are certain people, Denise thinks, who just can't exist out in the world. The world is too hard for them. It breaks them, and breaks them again. She can recognize these people: sometimes, at the store, somebody will come in and she'll look at this person and see something in the face that hints at fracture and she'll think there's one. She doesn't know what happens to most of them. She imagines that some of them find someone to love them, despite their brokenness, despite everything. They find someone and in this way they end up protected from the reaving world.
They find someone or they die.
It is noble, she believes, to be a person who saves another person. It is noble because it entails sacrifice. That is part of it. That is a necessary part of it.
It is January. She promised herself that she would kick Johnny out in January. She is tired of living this way, of sacrificing so often. She could kick him out, she has the power to do it, she knows she does, she has learned that about herself.
But where would he go?
He could go stay with Rick and Gerhard, she tells herself. This is the answer she always gives. But they wouldn't take care of him. Not like she does. And then what would happen?
Is it selfish of her, to turn him out? To let him go out into the world to hurt, perhaps to die, just so she can get a good night's sleep?
Where would he go?
She hears the toilet flush.
She does love him, in spite of it all. She does.
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