Chapter Text
Bobby wakes up tired.
Not the regular kind of tired. Not the kind that comes after a heavy night at Tyler's, where the bartender pours bourbon with a free hand and the jukebox plays the same Springsteen track until somebody pays it to stop. This is different. This is the kind where you open your eyes and your body's already exhausted, like it spent the night running errands without you. Like you've been doing things while you weren't looking, and the bill's coming due.
October light pushes thin and pale through the bedroom blinds. Bobby lies on his back staring at the ceiling and tries to assemble the day. It's his birthday. He's thirty-five. Joanne is throwing him a thing at Tyler's, which Joanne does for everyone in the bar at least twice a year because Joanne loves an excuse for cake. Larry will buy the first round. Marta will sneak in something stronger than the bartender allows. April will worry about him while drinking too much. The whole crew. His friends.
His friends he's known for about six weeks.
Bobby presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. He's been doing this thing lately where if he holds still long enough, he can almost catch the dream he's been having. Almost. The edges. He can see the edges. Big empty room. A circle of chairs. A spotlight. Doors. Behind the doors there's other rooms, other people, and the people aren't waiting for him so much as they're aware of him in a way that makes the backs of his eyes itch. There was a man last night in the dream. Green eyes. Sharp suit. Sharp expression. Bobby had been about to walk toward the stage and the man had stepped into the spotlight first, mouth open like he was about to scream, except no sound came out. He'd just stood there. Looking right at Bobby. And in Bobby's head, perfectly clear, perfectly his own voice:
You're sitting in my chair.
Bobby gets up.
The apartment is in a building uptown he can't quite picture from the outside. He's lived here, what, a year? Six months? He knows the rooms. He knows where the coffee mugs are. The good ones are on the second shelf, the chipped one is on the top because he keeps meaning to throw it out. He just couldn't tell you the floor number off the top of his head. Couldn't tell you what color the front door is. Couldn't say with confidence whether the place looks out on the avenue or the side street.
It's fine. It's fine. People don't stand on the sidewalk staring up at their own buildings every day. People are too busy to think that way. Bobby has too much going on to think that way.
He makes coffee. The coffeemaker is one of those expensive Italian ones, all chrome and dials. He doesn't remember buying it. He bets he saved up.
In the closet there's the tie again.
Navy. Silver pinstripes. Soft as water. It's still hanging there from yesterday, when he found it for the first time and couldn't make sense of it. Bobby pinches the silk between his thumb and finger and pulls it through. He doesn't own a tie like this. He owns three ties. They are all various shades of black, all polyester, all bought at the same midtown discount place from a man named Sergio who once gave Bobby a free pocket square because Bobby looked like he could use it. This navy thing has a label on the inside. Italian. Hand-stitched. He could spend a week of rent on it and not have any left over.
It smells, faintly, like a cologne Bobby has never worn.
He hangs it back up. He doesn't think about it.
He showers. Standing under the water with his eyes closed, he gets that feeling again, the dream-feeling, the empty room and the chairs and a sense of being watched from inside his own head. The water beats down on his shoulders and somewhere in the steam he hears, or thinks he hears, a voice that isn't his.
"Pendejo, you're going to make us late."
Bobby opens his eyes. He's alone in the bathroom. The tile is white. The shower curtain is blue. There's a bar of soap on the dish that he doesn't remember buying.
"I'm losing my mind," he says out loud to the empty bathroom, and he laughs at himself, and the laugh sounds normal coming out of his mouth, the laugh is fine. The laugh is fine. He's fine.
It's his birthday.
He goes back to the closet to get dressed. He pulls on a pair of jeans that fit perfectly. A t-shirt that says TRASH WOODLOUSE in fuzzy block letters across the chest, which he's pretty sure he bought at a show last year, except he can't picture the show. He can't picture any show. The leather jacket is on the hook by the door. He doesn't remember buying that either. It fits him like it was made for him. It probably was. He probably picked it out and tried it on and paid for it and walked out of the store wearing it, and the fact that he can't picture that just means he doesn't pay close attention. He doesn't pay close attention.
That's all it is. That's all.
By eight at night Bobby is at Tyler's with the paper crown on his head and the first bourbon under his belt and Joanne is on her second husband-related rant of the evening, and the candles on the cake are dripping wax onto the chocolate, and somebody has put on the jukebox and somebody else has put a hand on Bobby's shoulder and somebody else is at the back piano picking out the opening of a song that isn't quite right.
April leans across the booth, eyes wide.
"Make a wish, Bobby."
He looks at the candles. Thirty-five little flames. He's about to blow them out.
He hesitates.
The hesitation lasts a quarter-second. Just enough for him to feel the shape of the room from the inside, just enough for him to feel like maybe he has been here before, or maybe he hasn't, or maybe there's something he should know about himself that he doesn't. The dream is at the back of his throat. The man with the green eyes. You're sitting in my chair. Bobby closes his eyes and wishes for something he can't put a name to. He wishes for the answer to a question he hasn't quite worked out how to ask.
He blows out the candles.
The table cheers. Larry hugs him too hard. Joanne is already cutting the cake. Marta puts a glass in his hand. April is taking pictures on her phone, the flash going off in his face, and Bobby is laughing, he's laughing, his head is tipped back and he's laughing in a way he doesn't usually let himself laugh, big and open and a little bit goofy, the way you laugh when nobody in the room knows you well enough to make fun of you for it.
It's a really good party.
He doesn't see the man in the long coat come in through the front door. He doesn't see him stand in the entrance for a long moment, looking at the booth, with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his face doing something complicated. Bobby doesn't see him.
The man sees Bobby.