Sometimes I think maybe she has just been waiting for the right moment. Maybe she needed some time to realize how much she missed me. Needed me. Maybe she needed some Starkslessness to scare her back. Maybe today could be the day.

But it isn’t.

It never is.

The knowledge creeps up on me like, well—like a thief. My life isn’t getting any better. This is it for me. There is no clean getaway for me except oblivion. The more I think about it the more luxurious it feels. And the more sense it makes. My whole life has been hurtling toward this moment, hasn’t it? All that time in cryptlike rooms. Those deadly drugs. My anchoritic seclusion from life.

I cheated death by being at a sleepover when my family was murdered.

And ever since then I have been training for death.

Over the next few days the thought keeps pressing on me. I fantasize about the ways it can go. Being stricken dead by heartache is reasonable, but, incredibly, it doesn’t happen. I’m so prone to staggering around it makes sense that I would fall out of a window, but I’m too scared of heights to attempt it. The idea of becoming a luck-pushing vigilante is attractive. I could use my senses for justice in an unwise way until someone offs me. That is plausible, and it has some altruism to it, which is nice, but what would people call me? The Ear? Captain Hypersensitive? No, that’s no good. Besides, my heart isn’t in it. I’m not a hero. I’m a criminal.

I consider a gun but cannot obtain one.

I try to will myself into the East River but can’t. It seems sacrilegious to Pink.

I rub my Swiss Army knife over my wrist a few times but only manage exploratory, cursory strokes. I’m like a novice violinist still afraid of the bow. My effort lacks conviction, and results. All of my attempts do.

It seems I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live.

The next best thing is senselessness.

A brief scouring of the apartment reveals a potent little bouquet of toxins. I scrape the most contraindicated ones into a bowl, sit on my julienned couch, and slurp them down. It takes a lot of swallowing and a long time waiting, but eventually, thank God, I go out. When I wake up I have a hangover that’s like a grease fire in my brainpan, but, still, I have wasted six hours of my life. Six hours when I didn’t have to remember anything. Or smell or touch or hear or see or taste anything. For six hours, all my senses were dead to the world.

Perfect.