I wake up in a panic. I can’t remember my worth—will I always be alone? I want V, but of course V’s not for me either. I run to the kitchen and call B, bursting tears. But what I’m looking for is a spiritual guide. I pace between my couch and red writing table in my living room and wish for the tenth time this morning that I could have Jesus. Why does everyone get to have Jesus but me? If I had Jesus I wouldn’t feel alone, if I had Jesus he would carry me through these mornings, hoist me up or maybe he’d hang me over his shoulder, if I had Jesus I would hop out of bed and drop to my knees.

I guess I could drop to my knees anyway.

I drop to my knees in front of the unread stack of New Yorkers on the coffee table and ask god to help me get over myself and to give me the faith to take good care of two kittens.

The gray is out, green trees up against gray sky, the air full of rain.

I can’t grasp anymore, I can’t force.

Sheets of rain slick up 15th street. B talks about Sylvia Plath and we disagree about the structure of emotions. I say anger is a secondary emotion, perched on top of pain and fear and hurt. She says Plath suicided because she turned her anger on herself, Bell Jar isn’t a very good book oh but some amazing poems if you don’t despise catharsis.

My neighbor comes out of his studio cocoon across the hall. We never talk because he is inside himself. He is packed in gel. Sometimes on my walk to work down Market Street I walk behind him and we don’t speak but I send him human love and he knows I’m there. Or at least I imagine he knows I’m there. His legs turn out as he walks and he has small hips. He is small all over and he has curly sandy-blonde hair, and he has eyes but I can’t see them. The faded tape on his mailbox says his name is Andrew. Once I tried to send him a touch like in the German movie Wings of Desire when Peter Falk touched those in despair. I stared at Andrew’s back and wove a spell: may Andrew feel loved today, may Andrew not feel alone today. This could be extreme arrogance.

These are my kittens, I say. I introduce him to Spot who has no spots and Fido who looks nothing like a Fido and he bends down and wiggles his fingers.

Hello, he says.Hello.Kitty.Kitty.

I stare at him. Spot and Fido stare at him. I wish they would climb on Andrew and kiss his face, I wish they would leap into his arms and purr, but they back off and puff and spit. Andrew’s fingers begin to look ridiculous in the air so I throw their mouse out into the hall and they forget about dissing Andrew. I start to babble about how I’m trying to increase their territory and Andrew backs off into his apartment like he’s trying to get away from me.

---

Nona Caspers’ book of stories Heavier Than Air (University of Massachusettes Press) won the AWP Grace Paley Short Fiction Prize. A Book of One Hundred Days will be available from Spuyten Duyvil in Fall 2007. Her work has been honored with a Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Grant and Award and a Barbara Deming Grant and Award and has appeared in Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Review, Fourteen Hills, and New Standards: The First Decade of Fiction at Fourteen Hills, among others.

The above is an excerpt of A Book of One Hundred Days.

Other works on Sidebrow: Day Nine, Day Ten, Day Eleven, Day Eighteen, Day Twenty-two & Day Twenty-three