The Dripping of a Faucet

On those nights when sleep doesn’t come, or comes reluctantly, as intermittently as a summer rainstorm, we hear things differently. Sounds take on new dimensions, and the commonplace crunches and squeaks and groans that define our lives become benchmarks that measure the drift of time.

Willie Meadows turned to his side and rearranged his pillow. He kicked down the covers that he had pulled to his chin only a few moments before, then, realizing once more the coldness of the night, pulled them back again. From the bathroom came the drip of a poorly sealed faucet. The drip became his metronome, a gauge for his heartbeat, a tempo for his breathing. Perhaps he could seduce sleep through trickery, through the counting of the beats. It was worth a try at least.

Most nights Willie could sleep it off. He could sleep off the too-many drinks, the evening’s lost adventures, the fallen potential of the random meeting. He could sleep off the sad and regular fact that he entered his bed alone, and that the conversations of the hours just past amounted to nothing.

Tonight had shown little departure from the other nights. A Friday it was, the end of the week, and Willie respected the ritual. He would rotate between a few of the bars in and around his northwest neighborhood, sometimes meeting a friend, sometimes going alone. If with a friend they would drink and survey the scene, scanning for what his friend Jeffrey would call ‘interesting conversations with interesting quarries’, and the quarries were always women of various levels of attractiveness, of different ages, but always giving off a sense of openness, of being willing to engage a new friend. Or maybe it was all just a mutual loneliness. All a game.

Tonight Willie had gone it alone, and sitting alone at a small table in an upscale bar near Adams-Morgan, he had spotted a woman who fit his criteria. She seemed about his age, and even in the bar’s dimness she shone brightly. Her hair was blond, her eyes were blue and her face radiated unspoken confidence. Even better, she seemed to be by herself, seated there at an adjacent table. Willie approached her.

“Is there any chance I could buy you a drink?” Willie stood next to her table and summoned what he thought was his most charming smile.

The woman turned her head as she laughed. “Oh my God. Is that all you’ve got?”

“Well, I’m not a big believer of contrived opening lines. I prefer the direct approach.”

She smiled up at him. “I appreciate that. What line would you have used if you were being,” and here she swung her arm around, “like many of the men here?”

“I would have told you that I’m a reporter for the Post and that I’d like to interview you. Off the record, of course.”

She said nothing and continued to smile at him until Willie continued, “It would have worked, too. You see, I am a reporter for the Post and I would like to interview you.” Again she said nothing behind her smile. Willie stammered on. “For a story. On the ways lovely women fill their weekend evenings.”

The woman nodded her head. “Makes sense. So many women take to the bars hoping to find something out there they don’t have. Someone to hold,” and Willie’s heart softly quickened, the way a fisherman’s heart might flutter when he feels the first tug on his line.

“But I wouldn’t be able to help you,” she continued. “I’m waiting for my husband.”

And with that the line broke and the fish swam away. “I see,” Willie said. “I’ll just take my battered and embarrassed self back to my table. Have a lovely evening.”

As he turned away, the woman touched his sleeve. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t feel bad. Enjoy the game. You’re a sweet man. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. I hope you come away a winner.” Willie knew exactly what she meant.

But he had not won that night, nor on the nights before, and so he lay there, alone, unsettled and listening to a faucet’s drip meter out the time. He could sleep away the lingering buzzing of the scotch and the ache of a body’s fatigue. But Willie Meadows could not sleep away the bitter draught of failure, the draught that had no flavor but the acidity of loneliness, and a life frittering away without purpose, without aspiration. Without a pulse.

‘No use,’ he thought to himself. Willie sat up in his bed and switched on the lamp beside it. He reached for the book on his nightstand, but there would be no reading of it. Instead, he flung it against the far wall where it bounce off far enough to knock a porcelain figurine of an angel, something his mother had given him, to the floor, where it shattered apart.

Another night. He would sleep late tomorrow, then get up and see if there were any pieces he could salvage.