"What are you doing in England, anyway?" I asked Nin.
     I was seated on the edge of her unmade hotel bed , trying to avoid allowing my eyes to follow her around the room as she scurried to pick up dirty clothes and misc. belongings from the floor. Without any organization at all she seemed to shove items into an old gray tweed suitcase with equal abandon. 
    
    I let my line of vision fall on a silver room service tray that held the contents of a partially eaten breakfast. One quarter slice dry toast, a banana peel with one third of the banana still in it, an orange rind with pulpy bits attached to it and half a cup of black coffee.
     "I'm visiting," Nin's voice echoed from the bath. I heard a shuffle like toiletries being slid across the counter.
     "Friends?" I called out.
     "No. I don't have any friends here," She peeked her head around the door frame to address me, "You're the first person that I've had a conversation with in the week that I've been here."
     She ducked her head away.
     "So you just wanted a holiday in London?"
     "Sure. Why now? The sun's burning out."
     "What was that?"
     "The sun's burning out-- it doesn't matter. The way I see it, I had a hurt so big that I needed to put an ocean between me and it. All of my heroes have come to London at one point so I figured 'why not'. I don't speak any other languages so it sort of left a greater part of the planet out."
     "With the exception of Australia," I tugged at a thread on the stiff hotel blanket, "Where in America?"
     "Washington state."
     "It's nice there. A lot of trees."
     "Have you been?"
     "Several times."
     "Work?"
     "Kind of. I'm in a band."
     I thumbed through the book she had on the night table. It was a worn copy of a 1960s mystery novel surrounded by balled up tissues. I opened to the page she had marked with a sales slip. A tube of bicarbonate of soda toothpaste and sleep aid. I read the first sentence on the right side page.
      
     He took in lunch at the club.

     "What band?"
     "Probably no one that you've heard of," I closed the book and set it back where I found it.
     "I know a lot about music," She came from the bath with train case in hand, "I worked in a record store until last week." Nin dropped the case next to the tweed suitcase, "I don't think that I know anything about anything else, actually."
     "Now I don't want to tell you. You probably think we're shit."
     "Well, are you?"
     "Probably."
     "Don't tell me then. It'd be ashame to have that hanging over us."
     I blurted out the name.
     I was met with a polite smile.
     I felt dread.
     "You think we're shit."
     "I didn't say that."
     "You didn't have to."
     "It's not my thing."
     "Let's have it. What's wrong with it?"
     "Nothing. You play exceptionally well."
     "But-"
     "It's safe. Rock and roll isn't perfect or safe and your band is too safe."
     "The band before this one wasn't safe and it almost killed me-- now you make me wish it would have."
     "Don't talk like that. Cocaine isn't a cure for anything."
     "Maybe not but apparently it makes for good rock and roll."
     "Not good rock and roll but better rock and roll. Are you off the stuff?"
     "Not completely."
     "How much is not completely?"
     "Special occasions."
     "What counts as a special occasion?"
     "Jesus, you ask a lot of questions."
     "Then don't answer them. You don't have to."
     "Some mornings waking up is a special occasion."
     "Oh."
     "This morning wasn't but tomorrow might be."
     She paused as though in the grips of some sad thought and said,
     "I don't think that I could blame you for tomorrow at all," followed by, "What was your brother's name?"

     It wasn't until she used the word was in reference to my brother that I felt the first sickness pertaining to the event. Up until then there was nothing. No feeling in particular at all.
     But the word was brought bile up to my throat. I forced myself to choke it back down.
     "He was called Ian."
     "Ian is a good name," Nin soothed.
     "Yeah."
     "So is Lee."
     "Thanks," I cleared my throat and pulled a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, "Mind if I uh--."
     She shook her head, "Not at all."
     I pursed the cylinder between my lips and lit.
     "They're weird about smoking in America, aren't they? The bans in pubs and clubs and all. It's utterly frustrating. Hardly the land of freedom," I exhaled smoke, "I mean you escape England because of oppression, start off growing tobacco as your main export and in the end you can't even smoke in a pub while you drink your whisky."
     "I can't even imagine cigarette companies having such an impassioned argument."
     I flicked ash into the crystal ashtray on the night table.
    "There are a lot of things out to kill me and I don't think that cigarettes are one of them. If they do in the end it probably means that I've lived too long anyway."
     "Do you think whisky is the cure for anything?"
     "Ah! I think whisky is the cure for everything."
     She approached me and opened the night table drawer to reveal a full bottle of Bushmill's and the aforementioned sleep aid. As she pulled the bottle out and set it beside the crumpled tissues, I felt a slight horror as the scene came together.
    I looked up at her.
    "Are you sad, Nin?"
    She gave a confused smirk, "No. Why?"
    "I don't mean right now. I mean-- are you sad, Nin?"
    My eyes flashed to the pills and at once she understood that I understood. She looked away and at the floor.
    "Sometimes even an ocean isn't enough to get you away from hurt, is it?"
    She shook her head slowly.
    "I thought it would be."
    "You know what I don't understand about this?"
    "What?"
    "Why you bought the toothpaste."