She sat at the table for almost three hours, her food untouched after the first unsuccessful attempt, a cigarette clutched periodically between her fingers and stubbed out in the ashtray when it had burned down to a butt. She didn’t have anything to do or any place to go.
She still didn’t feel much in the mood for sleep. But she realized that the combination of no sleep and no food had exhausted her enough so that she would pass out readily enough. She took her dishes and piled them on the tray, then carried the tray to the conveyor belt that would carry them back to the kitchen. She left the cafeteria, walking back to her dorm in a stupor, not answering the people who talked to her as she walked. Back in her empty room she collapsed on the bed fully clothed and slept.
She slept for twelve straight hours. At ten that night she opened her eyes and sat up. She was instantly awake, her eyes unclouded and her mind alert.
She felt worse than before she went to bed.
Her mouth, to begin with, tasted like a sewer. She had slept in her clothes and they felt as though they had been lived in for at least three months. Her arms and legs ached dully from the awkward position in which she had slept and her stomach was protesting audibly at the fact that it was nearly empty.
But this was nothing compared to the way she felt inside. The sleep, instead of curing her depression, had made everything just a little bit worse. She sat up on the edge of her bed and stared across the room at Ruth, who was reading a book. She sat there, her eyes studying the back of Ruth’s neck, and she felt like reaching for the razor blade.
Instead she reached for the bottle.
The bottle was two-thirds full of gin. The first swallow was properly medicinal in flavor and properly alcoholic in content and she felt better the instant the liquid reached her stomach. She was tilting the bottle to her lips for another jolt when Ruth turned around in her chair, her lips parted slightly and her brow wrinkled into a disapproving frown.
“Linda—”
She took the second swallow.
“Linda, I wish you wouldn’t start drinking like that. Honey, I’m awfully worried about you.”
“Don’t worry,” she said.
“Linda—”
“Don’t worry,” she repeated. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
She nodded.
“Honey, you’re killing yourself. You’re letting one little fling with a smooth bastard named Don Gibbs turn you into a living corpse.”
“More than one fling. He was only the first, Ruth. There have been plenty of others since then.”
“Honey, they don’t matter. None of this would matter if you’d only buck up. And for goodness sake put down that bottle — do you want to turn into an alcoholic?”
Linda put the bottle down on the floor. She stared at it for a minute, then picked it up again.
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “There are a lot worse things to do than to turn into an alcoholic.”
“Linda—”
“The life of an alcoholic,” she continued with remarkable logic, “is not so bad a life. It is not nearly as bad as people make it seem. An alcoholic has one problem and one problem only. The problem is alcohol.”
“Linda—”
“When an alcoholic has enough alcohol,” she went on, “his problem is solved for the time being. When he wakes up he needs more alcohol, and once again he solves his problem. It’s very simple, you see. He has a problem and he solves it and everything’s fine and dandy.”
Ruth shook her head sadly. She stood up from her chair and closed the book she had been reading. The book was Sepsonwol’s Fundamentals of Contemporary Economic Theories and it didn’t take any remarkable display of will power on Ruth’s part to close the book.
She walked over to Linda and sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. Linda turned to look at her, thinking how petite and lovely the little dark-haired girl was and wondering why she didn’t have the same type of problems. The answer, she guessed, was a simple one. Ruth may have lost her virginity earlier than Linda, but she was a good enough person so that an act like that wouldn’t knock her for a loop.
“Honey,” Ruth was saying, “you’ve got to get a grip on yourself. Isn’t there anything I can do for you.”
Linda shrugged.
“Anything at all?”
She shook her head.
“Linda, why don’t you go over to the psych department one of these afternoons? There are therapists supplied by the school that you could talk things over with — that helps a lot of people.”
“What good would that do?”
“It might help you. Honey, you’re not in so deep that you can’t pull yourself out once you get straightened out inside. If you let one of the therapists have a few good sessions with you, you’d probably feel a lot better, if nothing else. How about it?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Linda—”
“I don’t want to,” she repeated. “I don’t want any psychiatrist trying to take me apart and figure out what’s wrong with me. I just don’t care, Ruth.”
Ruth didn’t say anything this time, and Linda thought that it didn’t matter what she did or where she went or who she talked to. Just so long as there was either a man or a gin bottle handy everything would be all right.
“Linda—”
“What is it?”
“Honey, this is silly, but I can’t help feeling partially responsible.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I mean it — if I had been a better roommate maybe you wouldn’t have taken everything so hard. Roommates are supposed to look out for each other, you know.”
“You’ve been a wonderful roommate.”
Ruth sighed, and Linda noticed that the shorter girl was on the point of tears. “Linda,” she said, “isn’t there anything I can do for you?”
Linda considered. She wanted to think of something if only so that Ruth wouldn’t feel bad. “You could drink with me,” she offered finally. “I’m going to drink this stuff anyway, and you could give me a hand with it.”
Ruth forced a smile. “Sure,” she said. “That way at least you won’t be drinking alone. And it’ll keep you from killing the bottle by yourself.”
“Fine,” Linda said.
And she tilted the bottle and took a long swallow. Then she handed it to Ruth.
“I don’t know how you drink this stuff,” Ruth said a while later. Linda noticed that her roommate was slurring her words slightly. Evidently the stuff was hitting her hard.
For that matter, Linda herself was getting hit pretty hard by the gin. It was landing on top of a very empty stomach, and the emptiness of her stomach seemed to balance against Ruth’s lack of familiarity with gin. They were both about equally tight.
“It’s not bad.”
“But it tastes like medicine.”
“I know — that’s what I like about it.”
“Oh,” Ruth said. She took the bottle from Linda and took another long swallow. It didn’t appear any more that she was drinking merely to keep Linda company. She took the bottle in her hand and drank long and deep, and there was a hint of desperation in her face as she drank the gin down.
“Ruth—”
“Whatcha want, Linda?”
“Rub my back, Ruth.”
“Huh?”
“Rub my back,” Linda was saying. “I think I’d like it if you would rub my back.”