Mike woke up with a start, which was always a bad sign. Nothing had woken him up, no noises or nightmares, so it was only his own body snapping him out of a drunken stupor. It meant that he had been in a strange place doing embarrassing things, and the sudden rush of chemicals from his militant glands made him alert and remorseful, without knowing why he had to feel either way.

Rolling over in a soft bed, he found himself looking into the face of a wide awake woman who apparently had been staring at the back of his head for quite some time. She said hello.

“What day is it?” he asked.

“Monday.”

“No . . . what, number . . . what’s the date?”

“I’m not sure. August 29, I think.”

“What time is it?”

“The sun just came up.”

Her face was something of a consolation. As he stared at the light reflecting off her skin, he realized that the sunrise was shining with an intense brightness through the bedroom window. Michael got out of bed and stood up. He wasn’t surprised when the sudden disorientation nearly keeled him over, and when he crouched down to keep from vomiting, he found out he was naked, which wasn’t surprising either.

Somebody behind him laughed. “Yeah, I tried standing up too. Didn’t work so well.” Looking out the window, which covered one wall of the bedroom, Mike discovered he was standing thirty stories in the air gazing across Lake Michigan as the rising sun reflected off the water and shot a straight beam of pure light right into the window and right into Mike’s eyes. So the sun had woken him up. He felt better about that.

“Nice apartment,” he murmured.

“Thank you.”

“It’s yours, right?”

More laughter. “Yes.”

“ . . . Where are my clothes?”

“Somewhere around here.”

“ . . . What’s your name?”

“Sandra. What’s yours?”

“Mike.”

“Hello, Michael.”

“Hello, Sandra. I’m going to look for my clothes.”

“Good luck. I’m going to take a shower.”

“Good luck.” She got out of bed, and although her figure was another consolation, he wasn’t reacting to it. He wondered what had happened last night and hoped that he hadn’t simply passed out in a pile of limp failure.

While she showered, he looked around the apartment for familiar articles of clothing. He found a shirt under the bed, but fished through the sheets and turned up nothing. As he put the shirt on, he got dizzy and tired, so he sat on the bed, then he laid down, then he forced himself to get back up. His pants and shoes were, inexplicably, arranged in a neat and orderly fashion in a corner of a hallway, with his wallet thankfully inside a pocket, and his keys thankfully inside his wallet, but his socks and underwear seemed to have disappeared. Maybe he had thrown them out the window in a confused gesture of drunken reverie and bravado, but it didn’t matter. He put on his pants, being particularly careful with the zipper, and he put on his shoes, and he was just about to leave with grace and decorum when the bathroom door opened and the person whose name he could barely remember -- Sandra -- stepped out in a bathrobe. “Wait . . .” she said, casually and confidently. She must’ve gotten a headrush, because she swayed against the door frame and burped. “We’re going out to breakfast.”

“Um . . .”

“No . . . it’s on me . . . I need someone around when I’m like this.”

“Fine. But I have to get to work in a few hours, so don’t take too long.” While she got dressed, Michael walked into the living room, sat down on a black leather couch, blinked repeatedly, rubbed his forehead, breathed deeply in and out, and thought of what he could eat and keep down.

Sandra stepped out in jeans and a T-shirt, but they were of such high quality and careful design that it seemed she had taken a long time to choose them. She led the way out a door and down a hallway. They did their best to walk in straight lines, but Mike stumbled once and smiled. Sandra smiled too, and then she stumbled for a few steps just for fun. They laughed and stumbled on their way to the elevator.

The ride down was thirty floors long. “Nice apartment,” Mike said.

“Thank you, again.”

“What do you do to afford that?”

“I have family.”

“Oh . . . where are we going to breakfast?”

“A nice, little place, a few blocks away. We could use the walk, right?”

“Do you mind if I pick up some aspirin on the way there?”

“Can we share it?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

They left the lobby, greeted the doorman, and were walking through the parking lot to the street when Michael worked up the nerve to ask, “So . . . where are we?”

“Clark Street.”

“Oh . . . I know this . . . Funny, I know this place like the back of my hand, but it doesn’t look familiar . . . we’re walking south, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well the lake is that way, right?” He pointed to his left. She nodded. “And the lake is east. Which means we’re going south. What street is that up there?”

“Division.”

“I know where we are. I spent so much time down here when I was in college . . . I still do . . . just sort of off and on . . . for old time’s sake.”

For a second he took on the hunched-over posture of a student. He stuck his hands in his pockets and lugged an imaginary weight on his back. A brief cold wind through the late-summer heat reminded him of the spring when he’d done all that walking. He could feel the humid summer when he’d revisited the spot, and then the winter when he’d gone back again.

“I used to walk back and forth from one library to another, all along Clark Street, up to that Historical Society, up where the park is.”

“Washington Park,” Sandra interrupted.

“No, Lincoln Park.” Mike paused, suddenly realizing that he was preaching to someone about her own neighborhood. But it was his neighborhood too.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“I thought it was Washington Park.”

“It can’t be,” Mike blurted. “You’ve drunk yourself stupid.” Sandra’s face dropped. “I’m sorry . . . maybe it’s me. But if it’s Washington Park, I’ve been wrong all my life.”

They came up to a busy intersection, with subway entrances on all four corners and chain stores or banks behind them. Mike stopped and looked around. His old familiarity vanished. “Where are we?”

“Clark and Division.”

He stared at Sandra, then he looked around again, pointing in certain directions to recreate a little map in his head. “This can’t be Clark and Division.”

“Why not?”

“I know Clark and Division.”

“You think I don’t?”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Five years.”

“Then you should know Clark and Division better than this.” Mike turned his head back and forth as an assortment of businessmen, vagrants, and wanderers passed him quickly and decisively, knowing exactly where they were going.

Sandra was annoyed and entertained. “What’s so different about it? Why am I wrong?”

“Well, for one thing, you see that rail?” He walked over to the subway entrance and gripped the blue railing which kept people from falling over the side and onto the stairs. “It shouldn’t be blue. It should be red. We’re a long way from Clark and Division.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“The red railing is for the Red Line. The blue railing is for the Blue Line. The Blue Line doesn’t go anywhere near Clark and Division. When the Blue Line hits Division, it’s way west of that.” The force of arguing gave his rattled head a mild rush, which kept him standing for the time being.

“No it doesn’t.”

“Yes it does. I rode the Red Line and the Blue Line three hours a day for four years just so I could get to school, and now you’re going to tell me that I can’t tell the two apart?”

“The Blue Line runs straight north and south. The Red Line goes to the northwest. It’s the Red Line which hits Division . . .” She stopped, got confused, and picked up again, more slowly so she could remember what she was thinking. “It’s the Red Line which hits Division way to the west . . . of Clark and Division . . . where the Blue Line hits it, where we are right now.”

“No it doesn’t.”

She was tired of arguing. “Look, look at the sign on the entrance. ‘Blue Line.’ Now look at the street signs. The one right there says ‘Clark,’ the one over there says ‘Division.’“ Sandra began to walk away, and then she remembered that Mike wanted aspirin, and that she wanted aspirin too. “There’s a drugstore right here.”

But Mike had begun talking to a perfect stranger, pretending that he was asking for directions. “This is the Blue Line, right?”

To be on the safe side, he had asked a man in a suit, and the man answered, “Yes,” as he continued walking towards the stairs.

“Wait, wait, wait . . . where does it run?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where does it end? What are the last stops?”

“Um . . .” The man smiled. “Hold on, give me a second . . . this is funny, I ride it all the time, but I can’t quite . . . it runs straight north and south, so Howard, Howard in the north and 95th and Dan Ryan in the south.”

“No!” Mike reprimanded, and took on a stern tone. “That’s the Red Line!” The suit looked hurt and continued down the stairs. Mike would’ve followed the man, but Sandra grabbed him before he could frighten anyone.

“You need aspirin, remember?”

“Oh, yes . . . yes I do . . . but I loved the Red Line . . . it had all the crazy people . . . what’s the point of having all the crazy people if they call it the Blue Line?” He stopped in front of the store. “And that’s not supposed to be a Walgreens!”

She was pulling him into the pharmacy just as he noticed that its sign wasn’t what it was supposed to be. “You’re beginning to embarrass me, yknow.”

“But this is supposed to be a Jewel!”

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s supposed to be a grocery store! Not a pharmacy! A grocery store!” The headrush which had kept Mike going threw him into a delirious frenzy of disbelief and blurred vision. Not being able to see didn’t worry him very much, but he didn’t know where he was going anymore. His lack of confidence made him panic, and since his hangover had already put him in a sensitive mood, he felt his panic strongly, like a child.

“Will you keep quiet?” Sandra hissed.

“I’m sorry . . . I’ll try . . . It’s just . . . I know this place. I remember once coming in here to get a Coke, and that was the first time I saw one of those machines where you can check out your own items. You scan the stuff in, the security guards and who knows how many cameras are peeking over your back, and you pay just like it was a vending machine. It was one of the neatest things I had ever seen . . .”

“Maybe it changed.” They got to the aisle, and Sandra scanned the shelves as if she didn’t know where to look, to give herself a reason not to talk to Mike.

“I saw it a week ago!” Someone at the end of the aisle picked her head up to look at Mike. He quieted down, and in a timid whisper, told Sandra he was sorry. “It can’t change like that in a few days. Even if it is only changing from a grocery store to a pharmacy.”

“Have you ever tried one of these?” Sandra held up a box with some words on them which Mike could almost read.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“But I want to change the subject.” She flickered the box in front of his face.

“What are they?”

“Hangover pills. If you take him before you drink, you don’t get a hangover.”

“Oh, cmon, they couldn’t possibly work.”

“A couple friends of mine tried em. They said they do.”

“But still . . . what’s the point?”

“I don’t see what you mean.”

“How could you possibly say you’ve been drinking if you don’t have a hangover afterwards? Drinking without a hangover may as well be amnesia.”

Sandra paid for the aspirin and they shared a few on the way out. She led the way down a thinner street to what must have been the preferred restaurant, as Mike felt the headrush fall away. Slow nausea took over instead, which forced him to shut up, hunch his shoulders, and breathe heavily with his mouth open. It was a nice day, and the air touching the back of his throat made him feel a little better, but he felt he had to keep breathing like that or else he would vomit or collapse. He closed his eyes, so he wouldn’t have to concentrate so much on seeing. Somewhere in-between his throat and his chest, Mike had the paranoid fear that if he really began to look at his surroundings, he would be completely lost. He wouldn’t even recognize the buildings, and soon enough, he wouldn’t recognize what a building was. The taste of chewed-up aspirin lingered in his mouth, and he welcomed it like he welcomed the feeling of slow nausea as it heaved up and down from his gut to his tonsils to the top of his head. He welcomed anything familiar.

She found her place, which was more of a cafe than a restaurant, and in some instances it was more of a fast food place than a cafe. People stood in line, made their orders, paid and took their food all at the same counter, which was run by one frantic young woman, who prayed that no one asked for something elaborate. Sandra and Mike obliged. They bought pre-packaged muffins and bottles of juice. They took a seat by the storefront window, which looked across the thin street to a large imposing gray brick building which had been built in a century more obsessed with grandeur and propriety than the one they were currently in. They finished the juice faster than the muffins. Mike got up to get some water bottles for the both of them. Sandra offered to pay, but Mike insisted he was a big boy and could pay for them himself. After paying, he found that his cash was running low, so he carefully stored the loose change in a pocket without any holes. She thanked him on his return. They stayed quiet while the food and especially the water kept their stomachs preoccupied. Mike began staring at the building across the street. He calmed down enough so that Sandra felt she could ask a question. “So, you said you were a student?”

“Yes I was.”

She smiled. “Were you a good student?”

“I was a damned good student . . . I got awards for being studious . . . Would you like to see my transcript?”

She laughed. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“You don’t look like someone who had been a good student.”

“Yes I do. Good students are notorious cheats and drunks . . . And even if I don’t, is that such a bad thing?”

“ . . . I guess not.”

“I used to walk from that building over there --” He pointed to the gray brick he had been staring at. “-- all the way over to an archive in Lincoln Park, and please don’t tell me it’s called anything different . . . just for the sake of research, and I did a good job of it. Or that’s what they told me.”

“So . . .”

“I got sick of them.”

“Who are they?”

“Sick of them and sick of me.”

“What do you do now?”

“Could I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“That building right over there.” He pointed again to the gray brick. “That’s a library, right?”

“I wouldn’t know, never bothered to check.” Mike stared at the building as if he were an infant, or a feather. The slightest change to his memory of that building could send him sprawling on the floor. “Do you want to find out?” Sandra asked.

“No . . . Do you remember where we met last night? Did we meet last night?”

“I think I remember where.”

“Could you take me there? I think I remember it, but . . .”

“Sure . . .” She was worried for him now, and had nothing better to do.

“Don’t you have a job?”

“I don’t care. I just want to see something.”

They walked out of the cafe, with bottles of water in their hands and in their pockets. Mike grabbed Sandra by the arm and forced her into a detour, to make sure they walked behind the gray building, not in front of it. He didn’t want to see any words on the front door. They walked along in silence as Mike kept his head down and followed Sandra’s feet. She was wearing flip-flops, and her manicured nails shone with glittered nail polish. “Can I have some more aspirin?” he asked.

“I thought you had the bottle.”

He would’ve searched his pockets more frantically, but he didn’t have the heart. “I think we might have left it on the table.”

“Then someone else will get it.”

“No . . . they’ll just throw it out.”

“Then there’ll be a few rats out there without headaches.” Sandra perked up her walk, then took a drink of water to slow down the sudden gulp in her throat. “We’re almost there.” She did her best to sound chipper. “We’ll see if you remember it.”

They walked up to a triangle of property in-between three roads which ran at odd angles to each other. The place wasn’t big, but it was just big enough to look like a trendy bar, a place that would last five years before it had to move or drastically change its look.

“This is where we met?” Mike asked.

“I think so. I come here all the time. Yknow . . . walking distance.”

“This isn’t what it should be.” He started telling Sandra what the place should’ve been, how he remembered it from only a week ago . . .

“Everything happens a week ago for you.”

“I guess.”

. . . but he had lost all the urge to fight the world that wasn’t agreeing with him, the memory that was fizzing away. It wasn’t supposed to be a bar, it was a blank piece of property with sidewalks for a border and a little brick courtyard. In the middle stood some chairs and tables, and spread throughout were stands to buy lemonade or snacks. It hadn’t been a bar, it couldn’t be a bar, no bar could fit on such a small slab, why did everything have to change like this, it was as if the two of them had gotten married and were about to see the video of it . . . but no one gives a shit . . .

“So . . .” Sandra put some pity into her voice, which made Mike even less responsive. He stood up straight and barely looked around. He was too cowed now to feel nauseous. “So . . . do you wanna look for your car?”

“I don’t have a car.”

“You don’t drive?”

“I have a driver’s license.”

“But you don’t have a car.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a reason.” He shrugged and started to walk away. Sandra couldn’t help herself. He looked like he was about to step into traffic.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I’m going home, gonna see what’s still there.”

“I hope you don’t mind -- can we exchange phone numbers? In case you need someone to talk to.”

“Sure.” Neither of them had any stationary, so Sandra bought some at a nearby pharmacy. She brought Mike in with him, to make sure he didn’t walk away, then she wrote down her number, and Mike wrote down a number which presumably was his. They left each other at Clark and Division at the entrance to the Blue Line stop. Even though the colors of the signs had gone all wrong, Mike found that the directions and the stops were still the same. Maybe his memory could still get him through this.

Or what was left of his memory. His nausea turned into a headache and a dry tongue which grew worse with every sip of the bottled water. He was beginning to feel bloated, and his bladder reminded him of all the fluids that had gone into his body. He rode downtown, switched from the Blue Line to the Red Line and headed to the northwest side, where he thought he had an apartment. From his seat on the subway car, there was no way to tell if it was his.

Despair swelled up from the same places where he used to be nauseous, but because Mike wasn’t drunk anymore, there was no chance of a sudden change of heart. He thought he had known that intersection and that neighborhood. He had claimed it for his own, and now he began softly banging his head against the thick train window, just enough for a repetitive numbness to set in. His place had blown away without him, and he was blowing away without himself, with each drunken day wiping out pieces of his past and present, each sober day reinforcing the little chunk of his soul that still told him it was necessary to drink. The train could stop in a pine forest, or rise up two hundred feet above the ground, or come to the end of the rail and screech to a close in a colorless, endless parking lot. He couldn’t be surprised anymore. He would close his eyes and in a hundred years it would all be rust and rats.

The train slowed to its usual stop. Mike bustled out. He skipped across a busy street so he could pick up his usual pace on the sidewalk. By now he really had to piss, so he ducked down an alley and relieved himself there. It felt uncomfortable to pee in broad daylight, but he could either go there or in his pants. The line of houses ran into a line of apartments, which began with a beauty shop and its multilingual signs. Instead of the usual MÓWIMY PO POLSKU it read SE HABLA ESPAÑOL, and instead of pretty pale girls, the place was inhabited by pretty tan girls. He hardly noticed. Mike was thankful that the key in his wallet worked in his apartment building, and he became intensely tired once he walked up the stairs and successfully opened the door to his home.

A message waited for him, from his boss. He hadn’t come to work, and the boss kindly reminded him that he wouldn’t take this shit much longer, that one Monday every month was one Monday too many, and so on. Mike overcame his weakness to make one call.

“So where were you?”

“I had a bad weekend.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t come in.”

“There’s a lot of paperwork you’re not doing and a lot of phone calls that someone else would be more than happy to take in your place . . . Things have to change.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry . . . can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How does the Blue Line run?”

“The Blue Line?”

“Yeah.”

“How does it run?”

“Yeah.”

“It runs north and south, pretty much along the lake.”

“It stops at Howard.”

“Right.”

“Thanks. Just checking. I’ll be in tomorrow.”

“That’s what you’re paid for.”

“Bye.”

He hung up the phone and fell asleep. It must’ve been for a very long time, because when he woke up again it was dark, but he was still tired. He took off his shoes and his pants and arranged them neatly in a hallway, for no particular reason, then he threw his shirt under the bed, in an attempt to regain his sense of humor. He fell asleep again, and this time he dreamed. He sat in a chair, with a woman. The back of her head rested against his left shoulder. She had his left arm and held its hand up to her face. She chewed just slightly on the fingers of that hand, but it didn’t feel all that sexy. If the dream were about sex, he would have leapt on her and lost the dream in a haze. It was as if she were examining the hand in a gesture of comfort and familiarity. The gesture calmed him down, and even though the entire dream felt like nothing, like the harmless dream of a eunuch, he woke up with a tremendous erection.

The telephone was ringing. It was Sandra, in the early morning, when it was still dark, but maybe the sun was rising where she was. “What’s the matter?” Mike asked. “I thought I was supposed to call you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I just got back from a walk.”

“That can’t be what’s the matter.”

“But . . . “ Sandra appeared to shudder, although Mike wasn’t sure how he knew that. “Everything’s different.”

“What’s different?” he asked.

“The Blue Line is the Red Line, and the Walgreens changed to a Jewel.”

“It did?”

“And I went to the bar, and it’s an empty piece of pavement with food stands and chairs and tables.”

Mike let out a breath of air, audible through the phone.

“Everything’s changed,” she said. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Don’t think,” Mike answered. He let out another breath of air, with a little more emotion to it: not relieved, but satiated. “This kind of thing happens all the time.”