Book Club

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Callie Hyde Part 2

There is no good cure for insomnia. None. Not a one.

I say this with a fair amount of confidence as I'm currently counting the spots on the ceiling tiles in my bedroom of which there are 14, 756. Another fact I can state with a fair degree of certainty.

Whatever sure-fire cure your cousin's friend's neighbor swears by, its hogwash. I apologize for dropping the "H-word" but that's how peeved-off I am right now. Sleepy-time tea – tried it. Watching TV – tried it. Counting sheep – has that ever really worked for anyone? Because it didn't work for me.

And before you suggest sex stuff, you should know off the top that is a subject I am not comfortable discussing. I mean, I'm as sexual as the next girl, just not in practice. But I notice men. And yes, the occasional impure thought crosses my mind whenever I see Derrick Simon at the office. Of course, after the embarrassing speech incident I caused, I won't have to stress out over that happening in my lifetime.

But I've never found it easy dealing with men, especially when it comes to the romantic arena. A point made all too clearly by my use of the phrase "romantic arena."

So, as always, I turn to my one true love – books. Books have never let me down. Books have always been there when I need them. Books will not judge me for my love of books. Mostly because they are incapable of sentient thought but also because if they did, it would be more than a little hypocritical.

Right now, I'm ensconced in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. I've read it dozens of times, but I always seem to come back to it. There is just something about his prose that sings to me. When I need the literary equivalent of comfort food, nothing does it for me like that sweet D.

Yes, I heard it, but I don't care.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

And as beautiful as that text is, it's not helping...me...get...to...

The next thing I know I'm bolting upright in bed at the sound of my buzzing alarm clock. Maybe there is a cure for insomnia after all.

It's no secret what's keeping me up at night. I need to find a way to win a seemingly unwinnable case. A lawyer once told me that the key to winning any case can be found in precedents. However bizarre the circumstances of your particular case may be, at least 20 other people have gone through the exact same thing before. Although something tells me he never had to find a precedent for an energy drink that caused a clown to throw haymakers with a bunch of nine-year-olds.

My first stop when I arrive at work is the resource library. I can't stop thinking about it and I know the key lies somewhere in these stacks of case law. The great thing about arriving at 7:45 on a Saturday is that I will be the only one he-.

"Oh my God, stop it!"

Why am I hearing voices? And no, I'm not hearing imaginary voices, I'm hearing the sound of actual voices coming from somewhere in the library. Well, one voice to be exact. It's a female voice I've heard several times before, but I can't quite place it. Maybe if I maneuver around...

"You're so bad!"

It's her! Francine "The Queen" Rodgers. Francine The Queen is a nickname she gave herself which, next to genocide, is the worst thing a human being can do.