I'm not saying that I'd gotten a handle on my life or anything. It's just that there was something much more lively about forcing myself to get up at seven every morning, and then dashing out of my apartment and bullying my tired heart and mind and body all day, than there was in the pain I felt when I stayed cooped up in my apartment, bathed in sleep. I was so worn out that I couldn't even talk, and only managed to keep up my end of the conversation about once every three times my boyfriend called, yet the extent of my exhaustion was such that even this didn't concern me. The thought that when these six days were over I might go back to being nothing but a sleeping woman scared me so much that everything would go black. I did my best not to think about it. There were even times when I wouldn't think about my boyfriend, not at all. It was pretty unbelievable. Then, as time passed, I began to sense that the sleepiness I'd felt—sleepiness so fierce it was almost amusing—was gradually, ever so gradually, draining from my body. My feet were swollen, my room got all messy, dark pockets formed under my eyes. I didn't particularly want the money, the work was pointless, and so it was extremely difficult.

The strange dream I'd had at daybreak that morning in the park was the one thing that kept me going through all this. Each morning at seven o'clock my alarm would go off and my stereo would switch on and I'd lie there in the midst of all that noise thinking what a pain everything was, and how I was so tired I could die, and that I might as well give up now . . . and then my thoughts would wander back to that daybreak, and I'd get this vague feeling that I was betraying that girl, and then I felt like I just couldn't give up. For someone as cowardly and as lazy as I am, I think I did a pretty good job of hanging in there. But those eyes, those ever so distant, sorrow-filled eyes . . . however hard I tried, I just couldn't forget them.

Come to think of it, I met my boyfriend on the job.

The place was this sort of office, really big, that designed things. It took up an enormous amount of space in this huge building, a whole floor, and there were all sorts of different sections. I didn't know much about what they were doing or how they were doing it or anything—basically my job was to answer the phone and type out stuff and punch data into the computer and make copies and deliver messages and so on. I think there were probably more than ten of us doing the same kind of work.