before I go to sleep1

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Part One
Today

The bedroom is strange. Unfamiliar. I don’t know where I am, how I came to be here. I don’t know how I’m going to get home.

I have spent the night here. I was woken by a woman’s voice- at first I thought she was in bed with me, but then realized she was reading the news and I was hearing a radio alarm- and when I opened my eyes I found myself here. In this room I don’t recognize.

My eyes adjust and I look around in the near dark. 

A dressing gown hangs off the back of the wardrobe door- suitable for a woman, but someone much older than I am- 

and some dark-coloured trousers are folded neatly over the back of a chair at the dressing table, but I can make out little else. 

The alarm clock looks complicated, but I find a button and manage to silence it.

It is then that I hear a juddering intake of breath behind me and realize I am not alone. 

I turn round. I see an expanse of skin and dark hair, flecked with white. A man. 

He has his left arm outside the covers and there is a gold band on the third finger of the hand.

I suppress a groan. So this one is not only old and grey, I think, but also married. 

Not only have I screwed a married man, but I have done so in what I am guessing is his home, in the bed he must usually share with his wife. 

I lie back to gather myself. I ought to be ashamed. I wonder where the wife is. Do I need to worry about her arriving back at any moment? 

I imagine her standing on the other side of the room, screaming, calling me a slut. A medusa. A mass of snakes. 

I wonder how I will defend myself, if she does appear. The guy in the bed doesn’t seem concerned, though. He has turned over and snores on.

I lie as still as possible. Usually I can remember how I get into situations like this, but not today. 

There must have been a party, or a trip to a bar or a club. I must have been pretty wasted. 

Wasted enough that I don’t remember anything at all. Wasted enough to have gone home with a man with a wedding ring and hairs on his back.