She falls back against the couch, and sighs. She holds a cigarette in her hand and rolls her wrist in circles and watches smoke leak out into the air. It’s a picked up pastime, probably something she saw in some movie. She opens her mouth slightly, and the smoke drifts in. She closes and holds it in her mouth, probably tasting ash on her tongue. And then she blows out, and lets the smoke back into the air. She props herself up and looks at me. “I want to go do something.” She says. Her tongue is pale pink. The first time she smoked I asked her to stick out her tongue because I wanted to see if it had turned grey. “Like what?” I ask. I’m tired. We’re both tired. I’m battered and she’s tired. She leans on her elbow and lets go of another mouthful of smoke. “Dancing.” She says. “Let’s go dancing.” “We went dancing last night.” I say. “No we didn’t.” She says, and sits up. “Last night, we had a night on the town and ate out.” “But we went dancing.” I insist. “We went dancing in that fountain, remember?” I say. She leans back. “That wasn’t dancing, that was…celebrating. Tonight I want to go dancing.” She says and nods her head. She falls back against the couch and looks up at the ceiling. I’m tired. We need to slow down. She hasn’t written in weeks. I don’t even remember what we’ve done, at the end of every night. It’s just a blur, a carousel of smells and colors and loud music that leaves us puking in the morning.
“Let’s just sleep tonight.” I say. She lies still for a minute before speaking. “Nobody ever remembers the nights when they got a good sleep.” She says, quoting one of her favorite phrases. I think she got it off of a t-shirt. “Why don’t you stay in and write?” I say. She waves her hand. “I’ll write in the morning. I write better in the morning after a night of stimulus. It gives me ideas. That’s how the Fitzgerald’s worked.” She adores the Fitzgerald’s. She told me she wanted to live in the Jazz age and that it was rotten luck that she was born too late. She doesn’t write in the mornings. In the morning we sleep. We wake up at noon and eat leftovers. And then we get to here. “Let’s go to that one club, the one that everyone’s talking about. What’s it called?” she asks. “The Carousel.” I say. “We’ve been there already.” She sits up again. “No we haven’t.” She says and looks at me. “Yes we have, we went Monday night.” I say. She shrugs. “Well, I don’t remember.” She says. She blows a ring with her cigarette. “So, let’s go again.”