N: Alice #5

I keep throwing up, the thin liquid swirling into the tray. To look
at it makes me sick again, so I try not to. But I can't help it.

I wasn't meant to marry my husband. Originally I was engaged to a
doctor, quite the catch back then. Though I imagine a doctor is still a
catch. Anyway, I liked him. I loved him, too. He was quiet but so
smart. He liked to run his fingers on the skin just inside my elbow. He
said it felt like the liver, which was easy to recognize during
autopsies. I didn't care about that but I did like the way his fingers
felt on my arm, like he was brushing past me in a crowded hallway and -
surprise! - he was still there. His name was Robert and he died. Of
course he died.

It was a brain aneurism. One minute I'm holding the jewel encrusted pen
he bought me, and the next I'm on the phone with his mother. I like
that term, "jewel encrusted"; I think it sums up my life, even if I'm
no jewel.

Robert's mother blamed me. "He was too excited," she rambled, "It was
too much." Stupid woman. I lay in my bed for days thinking about how to
get at her, until I realized nothing would get at her. It didn't matter
anyway. Robert and I weren't married, and I kept going to school as
always.

The best class I ever took was typing. I don't say that just because it
was my job. There is something about your fingers moving along the
keyboard with a will of their own, making sense out of nothing. I could
type one-hundred and twenty words a minute before I got sick. I wonder
if it would be more or less now. Probably less. Who cares?