The counter was covered with everything that couldn't fit in the kitchen sink. His head filled with faces and names, and an aching fog that wouldn't let him even try to put them together. The number of empty bottles and the absence of damage on the premises astounded him. It was much different than what he was used to.
She was still sleeping. Always, he drank more than her, but she always slept later. She always woke more groggy and in need of coffee but never hung over. He always needed to bring her, her breakfast, usually just coffee and a cigarette, in bed to get her out. After nights like that he needed more aspirin and water, after he dragged himself out of bed.
All the faces and names, forgotten or mismatched, would be a sever handicap to him as he started here. It would be like all the other starts for him: confused and plodding. Faces and places often stuck even when he was drinking, but names… Not even when he was sober. And places that he had never been to or heard of were like uncooked pasta.
He fumbled around the mess, not because of the mismatch and fog in his head. He fumbled cleaning for the same reason he had the mismatch and fog in his head: he wasn't sure what to do where he was and not really sure where he was. A name and photos really only go so far. How to pronounce a person's name there; where to put the metal and glass, if anywhere; what was the first floor and was there a ground floor… That was a whole other for what wasn't just in his head: is surrounded him completely.
Better to just throw it all away, take a shower, make the coffee and have a cigarette. Then watch her until she woke. Best not to think about what to do, or how he got here, or why.
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