"Well, that seemed uncalled-for."

She was jarred awake from a heavy, hot, late-afternoon sleep with fireworks in her eyes. The phone rang loudly and unnecessarily a foot from her head, all the lights inside its '90s transparent plastic shell flashing against its primary-colored component parts. She blinked. Her heart raced and her blood turned to adrenaline as she looked around and tried to return her breathing to normal. She had been dreaming about nothing and about everything. She followed roads that went nowhere, walked into room after room only to find no one with whom she needed to meaningfully make eye contact. This was not dissimilar to her waking life. If you had asked her, she may have been unable to say at which point she had fallen asleep. Even the real world felt like dreamland to her these days.

Sitting up blearily, she realized she had napped in absolutely all her clothes. Her hair still held its pins and her hook earrings remained securely in place. She hadn't moved a muscle as she slept, worming her way through labyrinths only internally.

He was there.

She was alone and he was there and it only took her five to ten full seconds before her mind reached him and a weight descended upon her. So much admiration and resentment simultaneously occupied her thoughts, it was almost impossible to fill her head with anything else. He was there. She wondered in spite of herself what he was doing at that moment, and her frown deepened. She had so much that was all her own - was none of this good enough to hold her attention, to make her independently happy?

Her body ached from the hours of inactivity and she stretched, rolling her head from one side to the other, maybe hoping just a little that some of these excess thoughts would fall accidentally out of her ears as she did so, and be kicked under the bed and forgotten. These ideas certainly should have been disposable ones, expendable and the equivalent of extra cargo. They were simply that - baggage.

A loud dial tone issued through the answering machine in the other room and echoed around the house, bouncing off all the same hard surfaces that made it an ideal spot for musical acoustics. The clock ticked and the fan whirred and she tried to will alertness into herself, letting the sleep haze wash away gradually, eroding like waves lapping at a seashore. It was odious to return to a reality she was so ambivalent about, to re-realize where she was, who she was, and what she didn't have.


[title from "A League of Their Own"]