Murphy held his breath and sank deeper into the tub, the noises of his waking roommates dulled down to murmurs, accented by the whirring sound filling his submerged ears. His body was twisted into some kind of sideways fetal position, but he had successfully covered every possible surface with the lukewarm bathwater, which was getting colder by the second. When he came up to breathe, he could feel the near-freezing air of his apartment absorb into his knees and face, exposed like the tips of a Murphy-iceberg. That was the warmest he would feel all day.
“Fuck,” thought Murphy, as he toweled off and looked in the mirror, bags under his eyes from the night before. It was time to get ready for work once again. This was getting exhausting: waking up at 5 in the morning at the most depressing time of year, walking through the grey sludge of Toronto, in the dark, just to get a shitty black coffee before work. Today he would go through the motions like he always did at the bank, turning his personality off until he stepped out into the darkness of the city again at 5.
He couldn’t wait until that hour of freedom: cocktail hour. Tonight it would be especially enjoyable; he was going to meet the guys at Shogun for a little Japanese and a whole lotta sake bombs, a tradition every Pearl Harbor Day. Until then, he had the rest of the miserable day ahead of him.
1st Person Narrative
Holy fuck I’m hung over. And this fucking bath is not helping. Chief swears by baths after a night of drinking, but I think he’s just trying to humiliate me. What kind of grown man takes a bath anyway? Oh well, it’s the only way to get warm in this damn building, and I would stay here all day if it meant I didn’t have to go to work; but here I go. Fuck. I look like shit. I haven’t seen the sun in fucking months. Yep, I am one pale-ass bastard. No wonder I’m not getting laid.
If I’m any kind of lucky, tonight might be the night. I’ll try to land that cute Asian waitress at Shogun—she wants it bad. I can tell. All I have to do is get through the next 12 hours. Ugh, 12 hours seems like so fucking long to me right now. But then why do the weeks go by so fast? It’s almost Christmas already, and in two weeks or so I’ll be drinking eggnog and smoking a fat joint of BC bud in Vancouver with my dad. Holidays are always better there. God Thanksgiving was so miserable with mom and Patrick, so boring. I’ll I kept thinking was, “this time last year, I was talking to a bag of potatoes in the garage after hitting-up some dank-ass chronic.” Man was I fucked. That was the first time my dad tucked me into bed since I was four. Hurry up Christmas, I’m losing myself in this city.