I walked to the ground floor loft she shared with one other woman at about seven in the evening. The winter night gave the neighborhood a downcast air that most likely didn?t leave with a morning or afternoon sun. Cigarette wrappers, beer cans, and the occasional broken umbrella rolled across the sidewalks in the wind. I didn?t see any cars pass, or pedestrians walk by, and there was barely a sign of life in any of the apartment buildings. Only a few windows had lights on, the rest were boarded or covered up by children?s bed sheets and ragged curtains. I walked past their empty stoops, lit by streetlights which long ago lost the brightness that would make a street seem well lit and safe at night. I walked by all these things and didn?t feel safe or afraid.

This woman, Koka, had invited me to her apartment after we met at a friend?s Halloween party three or four months before. Neither of us wore costumes, and I used this as an excuse to talk with her over a couple of drinks. She had dark skin, a heavy, though clear Indian accent, and long black hair. I can?t remember what she said, she didn?t care to drink that night, but after a half hour or so she led me into the bathroom, pulled a make up mirror from her purse and a small straw cut sharp at one tip. The two of us hit it off in the bathroom, I thought.

?Turgenev is my favorite Russian. He doesn?t preach like Dostoyeovsky does, and Gogol?s name shouldn?t even be mentioned around him,? she said.

?I think I read Father?s and Sons in high school, but I don?t remember much of it.?

?I am going back to India in December. My sister is coming down from England to visit for awhile and then I go back with her. She studies at Oxford, and she?s pretty straight, none of this,? she pointed to the mirror, ?I?m going to go insane when she comes down?. I liked the way she had said that ? in-sane.

?Do the British still occupy India??

?No, they left in 1948.?

?Right. Since I got out of school I must have forgot most of my history, I mean I should have known??

Koka cut me off, grabbed my shirt, and kissed me. She saved me from digging a deeper hole into historical awareness, or, the lack thereof. I reached for her shirt, her arm went down below my waist, the mirror fell off the counter, shattered to pieces on the tiled floor, and the moment broke. We left the party without saying goodbye to anybody, the friend that had invited me was locked upstairs in his bedroom with his girlfriend, about six years younger than him. I never understood why he had these parties if he just went upstairs with her halfway through and didn?t appear again till dawn. Both of them?d be better off if every Halloween, Christmas, or New Year?s at eight or nine o?clock he could just say ?It?s time to go upstairs. And this time, when we wake up, you won?t have to walk into the bathroom and see one of my lowlife friends passed out in the bathtub?. The last Christmas I was lucky enough to sleep in the bathtub of the upstairs bathroom. My girlfriend and I had stashed a bottle of sambucha in a cabinet underneath the sink for a small and private celebration after everyone else had left, or fallen onto the couches. We liked to stay up late at these things past everyone else, sit at the kitchen table, and pretend the house was our own. However, that Christmas we got into a bad fight; an old boyfriend of hers came back to New York for a weekend. The last time she saw him was the year before in bed with a roommate of hers in her old apartment. I met her two months after this, she had moved in with her parents immediately after that day. I knew that guy set something off, she yelled at me for being too impersonal, or inconsequential, or something along those lines. I stopped listening after awhile because her blood was too hot with memories, gin, and downright anger to make much sense. All that came out were scattered insults, she was angry and unintelligible. I wanted to leave, but she left first, so I stayed. I stumbled up the stairs to the bathroom and by myself finished the sambucha, or at least as much of it that didn?t spill onto the floor or on my clothes each time I turned the bottle upside down. I alternated my position standing in front of the mirror making faces at myself or sitting on the toilet wondering what was wrong. I guess I ended up in the bathtub because that?s where my friend?s girlfriend woke me the next morning screaming his name. I remember I opened my eyes and picked up my head a little. I guess she had not seen me right away, but all of a sudden there I was and there she was, and there was my friend rushing in, taking her out and calming her down on the other side of the door. I felt a steamroller of a headache coming on and closed my eyes again.

Koka and I headed back to my apartment and spent the night snorting more cocaine. We talked until seven or eight in the morning when I pulled the curtains up and saw some garbagemen and a few trucks working their way along the street. I pulled the shades back down and mentioned that maybe it was time we had gone to bed. We slept together, I told her I had a girlfriend, but I don?t think she heard me because she was fast asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. I stayed awake and stared at my stucco ceiling. My vision was shot, making the stucco move in concentric circles. Eventually I fell asleep. I dreamed of nothing that night, that day rather, and I don?t care what people say about having dreams but never being able to remember them the next morning, I didn?t have any.

I stirred against Koka around three in the afternoon. I gave her a towel and a spare toothbrush. We showered separately, got dressed, and headed to a diner across the street for lunch. Conversation was difficult, I still thought about not having any dreams at night and thought of something else funny - a person walking around throughout the day, naturally assuming he?s awake: maybe there was more to being awake than he thought, more than just walking around and doing his day to day things, and maybe his mind didn?t know whether it was dreaming or not in that absent minded state, or maybe it was just my mind that didn?t. I began to count the nights in the past week that I didn?t have any dreams, and found it as impossible as counting those that I did. I also thought that maybe I should call my girlfriend and see if she was doing all right. I looked across the table at Koka, tucking into her hamburger with a passion which struck me as odd at first, but then seemed perfectly natural. We said an awkward goodbye after splitting the bill. She gave me her phone number and address and told me to call in December because she was staying in India until then.

That November I worked very hard at a job I had in a publishing house reading and editing manuscripts. The company did better than usual, even though the stories being put out were becoming more and more obvious, and more personal, too, which sounds like a contradiction, but really isn?t. That was my take on it at least, but what did I count for anyway? Nevermind. The girlfriend I attempted to tell Koka about that night had left for Pittsburgh sometime in August and almost every day there was a new message on my answering machine. ?I?m calling to say ?hi? and that everything?s fine?, ?I miss New York?, ?Jacob says ?hi?, you remember Jacob, don?t you??, ?I?m writing a column in the Observer on film and television?, et cetera, et cetera. All the ?I?s? in the messages began to remind me of all the ?I?s? in the manuscripts and I began brooding at home like I did at work wondering why people felt their stories were so important and so interesting. I stopped listening to the messages and pressed the erase button each time I came home to a blinking red light. December had brought on not much change beyond that in temperature and a maybe little more snow. I visited home for Christmas and stayed a few nights, but got restless and came back before New Year?s. That same friend of mine was having another party. He called and asked me if I were coming. I went, but stayed sober the entire night. I sat on a couch smoking cigarette after cigarette listening to a girl who found out I worked for a publishing house tell me about the ?new work? she was doing. ?I am writing about everyday life, you know? Just because it?s so illogical, and if life is illogical, then why should my work be logical? Have you ever read?.?

?No, I haven?t,? I answered, ?I heard he wasn?t?logical.?

She took me back to her apartment where I spent the night. She didn?t give any reason to believe we had anything between us and apparently that was the case. Our goodbyes the next morning were awkward, cold even, and we didn?t exchange phone numbers, or mention any plans to see each other again. It was time to call Koka, I thought on the subway home. She wasn?t at the party as I think I hoped when I accepted the invite.

Koka sounded glad that I called and told me to visit that night. I slept for a bit, woke again around two or three and fried some eggs. I ate and watched a comedian on television attempt to arouse laughs from a difficult audience. He failed miserably of course, even to the point where he made jokes of his own bad routines. I checked the clock and saw that it was only four. I lit a cigarette, smoked, and stared at the clock wondering what Koka?s idea of ?night? was and how much time I had left to kill. I lay down on the couch and dozed off counting each breath I took before passing on. I made it to seventy-seven, or eight, and fell asleep.

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Koka?s apartment was the ground floor of a warehouse turned loft space. Her floor was divided into halves by a long, narrow hallway. The front door was unlocked, I don?t remember what prompted me to check, but it opened with a satisfying ?click?. The floor was covered in piles and piles of old newspaper, books, a television here, a kid?s tricycle there. I hoped the tricycle belonged to the other tenant. I turned left and walked down the hall, Koka must have heard my steps creak on the hardwood floor and gave a yell to let me know which room she was in. A woman popped out from a door on my right hand side. She had her hair done up in curlers, a pink bathrobe, and shook her nails which gleamed with paint. She didn?t seem surprised to see me. I nodded, her eyes widened a little, and she stepped back into the doorway from where she came.

The left side of the hallway opened up into a dimly lit kitchen area with a refrigerator I remember now as being an ugly, faded lime green. The stove was covered with old pots and pans that appeared to have been sitting there unused for ages.

?Koka,? I whispered to myself.

I walked past the kitchen area to the first doorway on the left and recognized it as the room where I?d probably find her. The instinct was right, I looked in and saw her lying on a bed. She was wearing sweatpants, but no shirt and her breasts were larger than I remembered. Much larger, in fact and I didn?t think my memory was that bad. She told me to come in and I did, we didn?t say a word until we heard the click of the latch on the door. Koka pulled out a small .38 revolver, checked the chamber, and clicked it back into place. ?I always keep the door unlocked,? she said. She handed the small pistol over. I took it and was quite prepared to use it. I opened the chamber, checked it, clicked it back into place, and listened to what sounded like roller skates thundering against the wooden floor of the hallway. A tall, skinny black haired girl rolled in on skates. I recognized her as my friend?s girlfriend, the nineteen year old herself. I was going to apologize to her for that time in the bathroom, realizing that I never did, but held back when I saw something different about her, as someone I had no history with whatsoever.

?Who?s she?? I said out loud.

The girl rolled around, Koka and I followed her with our eyes while she babbled on about nothing in particular. I remembered the .38 and handed it back to Koka, she placed it on a shelf next to the bed, but never let her eyes leave the girl on the skates.

?I hope you don?t mind me stopping in like this,? the skinny black haired girl said addressing Koka and not at all acknowledging me, ?do you have any?? she pressed her left forefinger over her right nostril and sniffed a couple of times.

?Sure, yeah, take what you want.? Koka reached to a shelf behind the bed and pulled a small jar from it. She untwisted the cover to reveal a very large amount of cocaine. The black haired girl made some small, barely perceptible gestures of gratitude and regret for not having any money, stuck her small fingernail in, raised it to her nose, and sniffed hoarsely. She did this a couple of times, Koka and I did the same before a couple of men walked into the room each with a beer in their hands. There were three, I remember, dressed in old khakis and thick sweaters.

?Hey Koka,? one of them, the ringleader, I thought, said, ?we took some beers out of the fridge. Hope you don?t mind.?

?They?re his, actually,? Koka said pointing to me.

And indeed they were. It sure as hell felt like it at least, though I didn?t at all recall buying them on the way up there, or even putting them in the refrigerator.

?No, go ahead,? I said. Apparently it didn?t matter one way or another to me. I was sitting next to Koka on the bed watching these characters talk and drink away and that skinny girl still rolling around on skates.

?Why do you let them bum around like this? Why don?t you tell them to get the hell out?? I asked her.

?No, no,? Koka laughed, ?I can?t kick anyone out. They?re lowlifes,? she said and turned to me. ?And I?m one of their essentials. I can?t kick them out because I?m one of their essentials. What else would they do?

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The issue was settled. One of their essentials. I lay on the couch and stared at the stucco through bleary eyes again, but there were no designs. I didn?t make it to Koka?s apartment that night, I wanted to call and apologize, maybe set another date. I stayed awake all night that night, all night, and saw the morning creep in to the apartment through the cracks in the shades. I heard the garbage trucks and bread trucks, and a couple of late night drunks laughing as they walked down the street. I decided I wasn?t going to work that day, but it wasn?t much of a decision really, I had to sleep at some point. I had to dream as well.