He leapt out of bed before the alarm started ringing. As the first static chirp sheared the blanket bedroom air, both feet hit the floor. It had been too long. Friday night? It was a sacred time, when he forgot the strain of glowing computer screens, the dryness of papers for clients to sign, 1040s, 1099s, bitter boredom. He’d almost recovered from last Friday’s hangover. Today would be even more magnificent.
Before the alarm had chirped ten times, he’d exchanged his sweaty briefs for neon blue boxers, a white wife-beater, a bevy of gold chains, some thick sunglasses, and sandals. He started to feel a pulling-apart, an intergalactic inflation, but he wrote this off as the mixed effect of adrenaline and caffeine. And speaking of caffeine… before the alarm had chirped sixteen times he’d made it to the kitchen and downed a mug of cold coffee and a shot of Bombay Sapphire.
Now the static swept across his skin, as if the circulation had been cut off everywhere. I feel bright and real! he thought, and before the alarm had chirped twenty times he had washed his face, slammed the door, and backed the black Fiero down the driveway. The electrical and now nuclear forces surged through his body. Tonight he’d hit twenty-one bars, dance at forty clubs, have seven one-night stands. He could taste the frisson in the air!
But he was moving too fast.
And all of the atoms in his body separated and scattered to the wind.