Restless Night

Who: Evelyn
Where: Her place
When: Early, early morning

Evelyn groaned.

It was late. So so so late. Hell, it was technically the next morning and she still couldn’t sleep! Earlier, she was blaming Dodge: running into him so unexpectedly brought a whole host of concerns that had made her restless. But right now? Right now she was blaming that Zhen girl.

Evelyn glared at her closet door. Behind it, tucked away far to the back, was the model plane set still in its shopping bag. She thought she had been able to do away with the encounter the moment she shoved the bag back there. And throughout most of the day it seemed she had succeeded. Until now. It seemed just as she was able to stop worrying about running into any more acquaintances and plop her head on the pillow, she remembered things Zhen had said. And then she started questioning… well everything. Choices she had made, where she was now, where she was going… she had started second-guessing and over-analyzing every decision she had made since fuckin’ high school – and even some before then.

But none of these questions were providing any answers or epiphanies, only more exasperation and a greater need for sleep. Fucking. Hell. Evelyn rolled over and opened up her nightstand drawer for the umpteenth time that night. The same sight of an open tin box with an empty pill container greeted her. She scowled and slammed the drawer shut. Where the hell was her roommate? She hadn’t seen the girl all day – which, really, wasn’t all that unusual. But her roommate’s absence was particularly inconvenient now.

Besides helping keep her lies and secrets, Evelyn depended on the girl for a supply of less-than-legal sedatives. The drugs helped her sleep when she was plagued with violent nightmares, which happened fairly often (although she told her family otherwise). But her current stash was depleted, and she was still waiting for her roommate to drop off more. Although she wasn’t the, er, purest or most personable girl around, her roommate had always been dependable. And the fact that a new stash had yet to be provided was worrisome. Evelyn wasn’t under any delusions that sedatives were the only drug that the girl dealt with; she had seen her deliver paper bags and ‘newspapers’ and such to other girls in building as well. But the girl’s delivery schedule had always run like clockwork.

A disturbing feeling came over her as Evelyn thought back to the morning’s headlines… she wondered if the mob troubles and her roommate sudden lateness weren’t a coincidence. She frowned, troubled, and turned her head to the side, her body following suit. Thinking of the newspaper brought to mind the cop. She had tucked away his card in the nightstand drawer, and the irony of Mr. Straight-and-Narrow’s number lying next to her stash wasn’t lost on her. Normally she didn’t usually keep the hotel customers’ cards, but his might prove useful one day… although Evelyn sincerely hoped that day would never come. And – Jesus Christ this thinking was not helping her fall asleep!

Letting out another frustrated sigh, she flipped her body again onto its other side – it was going to be a long night.