6.
Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks. On Benzedrine and coffee. Helen read this somewhere. It makes her walk faster towards home to think of Jack Kerouac hopped up on caffeine and pills. She imagines his shaking fingers and hands, his handsome smile all torn up inside, his aching belly. Because wouldn’t your belly be aching from all that crap?
But he wrote something good, didn’t he? Something different.
Helen isn’t sure anymore. What is different? What is good? Good is subjective.
She walks forward, all wobbly. The alcohol – the wine, and then the gin and tonic later, and then the vodka and soda, and then the manhattan. What was she thinking? All of it is swimming in her stomach. It’s so dark out.
She is almost home. Woozy.
Allan left her. He went the opposite direction,
