She started to cry as she wrote more words on the mirror. She dropped the lipstick into the sink basin and then threw herself to the floor and held her face in her hands as she continued to cry. It looked like one of her eyes was blackened as well or was it smeared mascara? Her boyfriend entered the bathroom and with a twisted expression on his face he shouted out some angry words. She didn’t look at him but continued to cry. He looked at the mirror to see what she had written and that seemed to make him angrier. He kicked her in the side and dragged her along the floor and out of the bathroom. I wondered if I should call the police. I feared that if I called the police then they may somehow find out that I’d been spying on them all this time. But I called the police anyway. As I waited for the police to come, I continued to look at the bathroom window in the darkness of my kitchen. A few minutes later a policeman stepped into the bathroom and looked around to do a quick inspection. He glanced at the writing on the mirror and shook his head and left. I never knew what happened that night. I never found out what she wrote on the mirror.
By the middle of that week I sent Sidney my 6,000 word opus on the dangers of railroad crossings thanks to the Chicago Tribune. He called me a few hours later and said it was the best article that I had ever written, maybe the best article the magazine had ever published. During my third week at home, my anxiety decreased but maybe that was due to the fact that I decided to start drinking throughout the day and evening. I thought if I maintained a certain high, I would feel less anxious. It worked. I also showed my appreciation to Sidney for being so understanding about my mental health that I sent him a long, torturous article titled, “The Road Beds of the European Railway System.” It was about the different foundations used to lay rails and ties on a railroad. It was someone’s dreary thesis from some website that was a good 30,000 words.
Sidney called and asked why was I sending him this extra story? I told him that I couldn’t stop writing. I told him that I was on a roll.
“Yes,” he muttered, “nothing can stop good talent. You got the fire in your belly!”