The empty hallways were covered with worn-out carpet. A ventilator worked against the smell of fish, burnt fat, and sweat.
I felt a pain behind my eyes, in my temples.
Some of the cabin doors had numbers on them. A sign directed me to the cafeteria where the night workers were eating dinner. I could see into the cafeteria through a glass partition. Night workers in their coveralls. I tried my key card and the sliding glass door to the cafeteria didn’t open. Workers continued eating and watching. I tried my key card again. When the door didn’t open this time, I walked away.
On the deck, I sat outside in the humid air. The full moon was low in the sky. It looked as if the huge hook hanging from a crane was stabbing the moon.
I took out the earplugs, listened to the sea, but all I heard was the humming of machines.
The night workers gradually showed up on the deck again. They were directing the drill deep into the sea.
Pipes and pulleys everywhere. Cranes moved up and down. Walkie-talkies crackled. The drill screamed against bedrock, penetrating the earth below us.
I was hungry and horny.
Tara. Her body a distant memory.
Camping with her by the lake. My semen in the water like a snake.
A night in a cabin in the mountains. Drunk on wine. Her long eyelashes. The wooden bed creaking.
I put my hand under her dress.
Her firm buttocks.
“You’re not yourself tonight,” she said. “You’re hurting me.”
“I love you.”
“I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”
Good memories brought back bitter ones. Everything tainted.
I wished I could go back to the beginning. I wished I could begin again.
I knew it wasn’t possible.
I remembered the early days, when I told her that I couldn’t just think about her all day or I would never get any work done.
Even when I tried to read a book, I was so distracted that I couldn’t make sense of the words.
I would stare out of the window, waiting for her to come back. The sky would change colour. Trees were filled with blossoms. They waved at me.
A pink light diffused through the curtains when she showed up in the alley, returning from work. My heart would beat fast. I waved at her from the window. She smiled, her face opening. Her big hazel eyes.
I heard her every step coming up the stairs.
In the morning, I begged her to call in sick, to stay in bed. And sometimes she did. We stayed in bed like that, talking, listening to music. We stayed until afternoon, until we were both hungry.
“Do you want to go out?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. But we would end up eating stale bread and cheese, standing by my fridge.
My mind went to strange places after that. For some reason, I remembered my first girlfriend when I was a teenager. I had asked her to go to a movie with me one night. She’d told me she was going to study. Later that night, on the street, I saw her walking with another boy, holding hands. I went back home to my room and shut the door. My mother kept asking what was wrong. I didn’t know why I remembered it now.
I tried to remember the girl’s face, but I couldn’t.
I looked at the cranes. The reflection of the moon rippled on the ocean.
I wanted a drink.
Moving fast, the workers became shadows of themselves. I tried to talk to two of them.
“Busy,” they said, holding onto their walkie-talkies, looking up at the drill hammering the bedrock. They walked fast. They didn’t make eye contact. A number was written on the front of their yellow hard hats. Their headlights moved through the darkness.
My hard hat didn’t have a number on it.
I could detect some familiar words if I listened closely to what was being said on the walkie-talkies.
The light from other rigs flickered in the distance.
