Read Faces in Time for Free Online Page B

unbelievable…and the smoke detector…how? how could all of it not work at all? Was getting power, hooked up to the alarm too…nothing…couldn’t get rid of the hat, couldn’t clear out the building, couldn’t change one lousy photograph in the local section of the paper…trapped…can’t change anything…don’t want to see all those lonely years again…too much…too much…can’t help her, can’t even help myself…everything I try to change, universe will set back the way that it was…reality is constant…they were right…can’t go back and change anything…there’s no hope…
     

     
    Thirteen minutes later.
    Sour burns its way into his esophagus. Until its present return, the familiar discomfort had disappeared from him since embarking on this trip. His stomach is a biological anomaly with diagnoses of ulcers, acid reflux, spastic esophagus, and a hiatal hernia.
    Treatment for all four of the ailments has provided at best haphazard relief. His doctors have had their own differing theories on his condition and why his treatment has consistently failed, but they all agree that his personality and stress level are the chief culprits.
    Antacids have been his most expensive amenity since junior high, taking them in such quantities as to produce routine kidney stones from their high calcium content. The sharp sting of kidney stones paled in comparison to the perennial burn of a stomach fire fueled by an unsure mind and a discontented soul.
    His forehead and back break into a cold sweat, and he’s well aware of the petite hell that awaits him.
    He rocks slowly on his knees wishing his esophagus and hernia would relax enough to allow him to get the burning, sloshing, gurgling beast out of him. It feels that his nervous uncertainty has formed itself into a gelatinous demon, swelling and pushing against the tender walls of his stomach and shoving a scalding pitchfork into his lower chest. The feeling itself is miserable, but what torments him most about his condition is knowing he won’t be allowed relief for hours.
    A memory flashes before him: another sour night that should have tasted like hope. He had won his first Emmy during his first season of writing for a television series.
    For once he felt like he could behave as the person he’d always wanted to be and not have it be a venture into self-humiliation, but years of stifling himself and self doubt had carved a deep trench of shy habits and familiar inhibitions for him to climb out. Since routine digs a steep ravine from constantly retracing its route, he should have known that any liquid would make the assent slipperier and more difficult. Yet, he drank anyway.
    The after-party was a barrage of toasts and beautiful young actresses bringing him drinks and trying to lure him onto the dance floor. Eventually, one persistent actress succeeded. While they danced, other aspiring women continually worked their way in the area. But, she managed to keep the others squeezed out of the space between her and the tipsy scribe, as if she were clinging onto a casting appointment.
    Eventually the pulse of the bass and the blur of the lights meshed into a crashing rhythm of burn inside him. He leaned forward suddenly, placing his hands on her waist. She turned her ear toward his lips awaiting words her ambition longed to hear.
    He eloquently stated, “I’m going to be sick.”
    Her face was a mess of emotions before she settled on serious and said, “Okay, my name is Susan, and I’m the one who is taking care of you. Remember; it’s very important that you remember me. My name is Susan.”
    The walk off the dance floor appeared to him as if the room were a ball rolling through space and he were inside of it as it rotated around him. The next memory was the cool of the tile floor seeping through his thin tuxedo pants into his knees and his forehead resting on the back curve of the toilet seat.
    The sound of a female, “Ew!” is all that he remembers hearing