The Intrusion

Thirty

[Jordan]

I wake up from a much needed nap and check my phone. It's 4:38pm.

My headache is finally gone, but I still feel groggy. I groan as I stand up, impulsively checking the time again because I have already completely forgotten what time it is.

I do that sometimes—look at my phone for the time and then forget what I read two seconds after putting it away.

Actually, my mom and I found ourselves in a conversation about this exact thing last December when I was visiting the family on Long Island for Christmas. We stood out on the porch in front of the house watching a flurry of snow on Christmas Eve and chatting while my mom smoked a cigarette. We had both drank a fair bit of wine at dinner, so the two of us were giggly. Somehow, the topic of checking and forgetting time came up.

My mom told me that she thinks the reason we forget what time it is immediately after checking is we're not looking to find out what time it is in the first place. It's not the time itself we're interested in. What we're actually checking for is to see if it is a specific time yet. Once we see that it is or is not that specific time, we forget the numbers we read because we were never interested in that information in the first place.

It's funny. Sometimes, I feel like we have less control over our minds than we think we do.

I check my phone a third time, because that second time didn't even register.

It's 4:40pm.

It's time to finally do what I took this nap to put off doing in the first place: it's time to go to Andy's apartment.

I go into the bathroom and take a look at myself in the mirror. I look like I just woke up.

No shit, Jordan. That's because you did just wake up.

I splash water on my face, comb my hair out and give myself another look in the mirror. I look better, but still not awesome.

Oh well, it will have to do.

I head to the front of my apartment, slip on my boots and shrug into my jacket. After heading out, I lock the door behind myself. I make my way down the hall and get into the elevator (where I am reminded to not flush kitty litter), and finally arrive in the lobby. The desk attendant and I both make a conscious effort to avoid any sort of awkward eye contact. I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm out of my mind, but there's nothing I can do to change what he thinks about me, is there?

(And also, there's a small part of me that's worried he may be right...)

I don't want to think about it, so I push it out of my head as I leave the Lion's Gate Building, heading out into the sun for the first time since I woke up this morning.

When I get outside, the skyscraper across the street looms over me like a monster with teeth made of metal and broken glass, staring down at me with its haunting mirror-eyes. As I cross the road, it's oppressive shadow sinks into my skin—sinks into my mind. The corners of my vision darken like blinders on a horse. A force like gravity
tugs at me. As I approach the building, the force grows. I'm being sucked to a wall by the centrifugal force on one of those rusted, spinning rides you find only at a boardwalk pier in the mid-summer heat of night.

The intense tugging grows as I approach Andy's building. The sense that something is converging washes over me, like two magnets finally finding themselves in each other's fields. They pull towards each other until they touch, merging together and becoming one.

I shake myself of the haunting idea as I enter Andy's building.

The girl sitting at the front desk barely glances at me. I head over to the elevator to go up to his floor.