Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

past time. Why did he choose her? What was she thinking? We might have talked more about those
dopey bachelors than Anna’s actual boyfriend, who became her husband that year.
After the interview, the TV host invited me back to their apartment. They had a bottle of wine
they’d been meaning to open, and he and I drained it as his wife put the kids to bed. How many nights
had I spent like this, sinking into some conversation with a man who was not my husband while his
wife washed the dinner dishes, tended to the kids, and shushed us when our voices got too loud?
His wife plopped herself down beside us and yawned.
“Is there another bottle?” he asked, and she stared at him with red-rimmed eyes. She nodded
slowly.
“I should go,” I said, and she agreed with me a bit too quickly.
I hopped in a cab at 10 pm, and I was in that happy place where you feel impenetrable to harm. I
loved talking to cabdrivers when I was like this; those impromptu conversations were one of my
favorite parts of living in New York. I would hop in their Yellow Cab and perch myself up by the
clear plastic divider, and I would scrutinize their names, their faces, trying to divine the landscapes
that had shaped them.
“You’re from Senegal,” I would say, and the guy would laugh. No way. Not Senegal. Totally
wrong.
“You’re from the Ukraine,” I would say, and the guy would gasp with recognition. How did I
know that? Why was I so good at this?
My Paris cabbie didn’t know much English. But he let me smoke in his cab, so I loved him. I was
watching the cherry of my cigarette leave tracers across my line of vision. We zipped past tall white
buildings that looked like wedding cakes in the peripheral blur. When he slammed on the brakes, I
went hurtling onto the floorboard, my shin slamming against a piece of hard plastic.
He whipped around. “You OK?”
Later, I would find a throbbing bruise on my shin. But in the cab, I couldn’t feel much at all. “I’m
fine,” I told him, hoisting myself back up and crossing my legs in the seat. “I’m great.”
THE NEXT DAY I woke up early, full of possibility. I made a short appearance at the reality host’s
photo shoot near the Sacré-Cœur. His family posed on the butte Montmartre trying to look like they
weren’t freezing.
“I was paying for that last bottle this morning,” he told me.
“Oh, I know,” I said. I didn’t feel that bad, but I liked the camaraderie of the hangover.
“Did you do anything else last night?”
“Nah,” I said, omitting the two glasses of wine I had at the hotel bar.
I left them on the frigid hill, feeling nearly guilty for how easy this assignment had been. I had an
entire day to myself in Paris. Should I go to the Louvre? Walk along the Seine? Instead I went back to
my hotel, curled up in the fluffy white bed that felt so safe, and took a nap.
IT WAS DARK when I woke up. This was my last night in Paris, and I had dinner plans with a friend
and a hefty per diem burning a hole in my pocket. I made myself extra-glamorous that night. I straightironed
my hair and wore the black corset top that erased 15 of my extra 30 pounds.