Perhaps it was my dad who brought me here. He would have stared ahead of him, hands like bunnies on the steering wheel. He stared ahead in the taxi, he stared ahead on the airplane, he stared ahead in the rental car, he stared ahead as I fetched my tiny turquoise suitcase. Did he look down to find the lever when he popped me the trunk? I don’t know. I walked round to the driver’s side window, and I gave him a dry kiss on the cheek. He drove away.

Sometimes in my bathroom the tiles jump up to meet me.

This is the story Lennie, a boy here, told me on the smoking patio. Dying I’d been to have a cigarette, this is what happens off Prixamil, and Lennie said "Smoking kills." I didn’t know what he meant. The orange glow in your hands is enough for me. He said in his quick brown voice: "This buddy of mine, his girlfriend won’t let him smoke in their apartment, okay? Her cat’s allergic or something. So every ten minutes he’s out on the fire escape to smoke. Sneakers, jacket, snow, he sits on the iron grille legs poking out between the bars. He sees the backs of houses. Garages, vegetable gardens, the ash drops down between his feet four storeys down into puddles. His landlord’s got a friend in the City, landlord sends this guy a crate of oysters every Christmas; so his landlord doesn’t really do much in the way of upkeep, okay? Sometimes the balcony creaks and shakes in the rain. He hears it rattle. But he doesn’t think anything of it. Plus he’s got to smoke, okay? But one night he’s out there and the wind blows and the screws give out and the whole damn thing collapses boom and he falls four stories and the ironwork falls around him onto him and there you are."

I like oysters.

"Smoking kills."

I asked him, True story?

You open the curtain and pull it back. You fill your hair with conditioner. You wash your top half then your bottom half. Then stand under the water then stand under the water then stand under the water. Watching scenes in the warm water from last night’s movie you saw half of. Waking up is a process of asking yourself questions, Dr. Frink says. Sometimes the questions don’t come. The water’s soft on my forehead, it runs down over my breasts and down over my thighs. A woman is banging on the door. An hour’s passed.

Dr. Frink my shrink says I should engage with my surroundings. Otherwise I may persist in this belief that I am the sole moral arbiter of the universe. I don’t really believe that, Dr. Frink, I’m pretty sure that you exist; I am just tired occasionally. My surroundings. There is a watercolour painting in my room of a boat tied to a very clean dock with a pebble beach in the background and a clubhouse and in pencil in very thin small caps beneath it is entitled "A Snug Harbour," 121/450, Mary Fitzgerald. I have stared at it for hours trying to work out what in god’s name. The rest of the building, oh, I don’t think I have patience for the rest of the building.

• • •

The rest of the building is also like a golf club. My dad would like it. Fat vertical lines of green and red and cream paper the walls. The couches are patterned with ducks and the one in the near social area is the least comfortable. There are corridors between the two social areas. One of the social areas has a television, the far one has a pool table. Off the corridors are everyone’s rooms. It doesn’t look like a hospital. No, it is not an asylum. There’s too much wood here. But near each social area is a nursing station, just in case. Sometimes walking down the corridors you find pieces of medical apparatus that you’ve seen before but can’t place. The men shuffle and hack. The social areas are very large like a swimming pool and divided into areas – dominoes, magazines, Monopoly – by wooden slats. Day and night I spend in my room. All my possessions fit into the top left drawer of the white dresser. There is an 18-inch screen television on it. The closet is empty. I do not have my own bathroom. I do not have a window. I feel tired all day and so woozy and I think probably I’ll never have that feeling again of feeling awake.

Once in college before I dropped out the first time I was doing the dishes. I always did: I liked the chocolatey smell of yellow gloves and I’d put on the radio in the living room loud enough to hear over the water (Classical 93) and fill the sink. I liked it because I was washing up but also I was somewhere else, grocery shopping, talking to my sister Becky, making a list in my head of the clothes I would buy if I had money. Sploosh-ing the sponge over the soup bowls, working, thinking of Lena Horne and my Portuguese chemistry teacher. Then Jennie my roommate was yelling and only when she slapped me I woke up and the water was overflowing, there was foam all down my front and worst of all nothing was clean.

Lennie has big huge eyes that sit in wine glasses in his cheeks. He has dark insect hairs on his cheek but no stubble. He doesn’t know how to laugh only a little; when he laughs he laughs with his whole chest. I think just possibly I am falling for Lennie.

I got pins and needles all over, I lost the sight in my head. I almost fainted again, thinking of that.