He fucked her. There is no other term to describe what he did. She was silent the whole way through. She never moved. She never said a word. And he did it all night long. When it was over, he was the only one left in the room, and he cried. He had poured all of himself into that carnal release. Everything he was now laid in a mass of rubber and semen on the hotel room floor. He felt empty. The release was no longer enough to pacify the gnawing loneliness that he felt. Not alive, not dead. He was nothing. He did not exist. He walked into the bathroom and vomited, asking himself as he did so, whether or not he should kill himself. It was a hypothetical question that he had asked himself before and knew the answer to. How many times had he clutched the pill? How many times had he tied the noose? How many times had he cocked the gun? As he was thinking this he crawled into the bathtub and passed out.
He woke up the next afternoon at about three-thirty and decided to get some breakfast. He got dressed in the suit he wore last night and walked to the lobby. There was a restaurant in the hotel that had good French toast so he walked into there, but there was a wait. He sat down on a free chair and waited. There was a little girl who couldn’t have been older than nine sitting across from him. The girl smiled and waved. He smiled back and felt like shit. He wondered if the girl who had been in his room last night was ever a cute little girl, and he wanted to cry.
He hated himself. He had hated himself since he was a sophomore in high school. That was the first time he had ever broken a girl’s heart. Her name was Nancy. She was nice and pretty too, and she loved him. She loved him with all her heart. Or at least that’s what her notes said. And who couldn’t love him, he thought. He was the greatest. Smart, athletic, handsome; he had it all. So that’s why he was taken aback when she said that she didn’t want to have sex with him. That was the first time he had ever taken advantage of a woman. He cajoled her. He pleaded with her. He told her that he just wanted to express his love for her. Then, when it was over, he broke up with her.
His number was called and he sat at the table. He was glad to be gone. He was just about to cry from looking at that little girl. When he sat down, the waitress tried to make small talk. He hated this more than anything. His philosophy was that people shouldn’t speak unless they had something important to say, but he was too far into self loathing to be cross with anyone so he talked. He decided not to get the French toast. Instead he got a burger, seeing as how it was after noon. It was all right, a bit over done but edible.
When he was done he checked his watch. It was a quarter past four. He still had about three hours until he had to meet his sister. He decided to go buy a book. Except for movies, books were his favorite thing in the world. He got so lost in them that he would completely lose track of time. He went to a really dingy bookstore where he knew he could get books for cheap. The old man behind the counter knew him, and he knew that he liked to browse. So when he walked into the store, the old man told him to show some cash or get out. He opened his wallet and took out a ten. He put it on the counter and started looking for a book to buy now that he was committed. All the used paperbacks were really worn. As he walked through he could smell the people who had tread these books. All the pieces of themselves that they left on the pages smelled. He liked the smell. It made him feel like he was more human and less himself.
He picked out a book called Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. It was about a man who had survived the concentration camps. He liked books like that, stories about real people. He really liked autobiographies. He figured that you could tell a lot about a person by how they wrote about themselves. He tried to write an autobiography, but it ended up being about a guy that was nowhere near like him. He got the childhood down all right, but when he started to grow up things became fuzzier in his mind. He didn’t know what he wanted to put in and what he didn’t. So he made up a bunch of stories.  In the end he ended up hating the character he made up for himself too and stopped writing.
He took the book and walked out of the store. It’s was colder than he thought outside, and all he had was the jacket of the suit he was wearing. He decided to go into the first grimy little diner he saw. He got a booth and ordered some coffee. Then he started reading. It was a really good book. He knew it was a good book because after he started reading it and his coffee came, the waitress had to shout a little to get his attention. By the time he had finished his second cup he was really far into the book. He checked his watch and realized that he only had about a half hour to spare. He paid his bill and left with somebody else’s jacket that was hanging on the rack.
When he got to the bar he saw her. He went over and stood next to her for about a minute. When she finally noticed him he tired to give her a hug but she pushed him away.
“You’re late.”
“I thought you said seven.”
“Six-thirty. Anyway, what do you want”
“Nothing, can’t I just want to see my sister?”
“No. it’s never that easy with you”
“Okay, I’ll level with you. I’m a bit short this month.”
“Maybe if you didn’t live in a hotel. . . “
“I can’t find anything cheaper.”
“How much?”
“Only about seven-hundred.”
“I can’t spare that. You know I can’t.”
“Please, I’m gonna get kicked out.”
“I really can’t, and you know it.”
“I won’t have anywhere to live.”
“I can give you six-hundred. That’s it.”
“Thanks sis. You know, I really do love you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I know, but this is still the last time.”
He started to walk home to his place that wasn’t his. He thought about his cold hotel room, and he thought about his sister. He thought about how familiar that had felt, at the bar. He realized why it had felt familiar. He had done it so many times. He fucked his sister. He screwed her over and told her he loved her after he took something. Then he just left. He leaned up against a streetlight and vomited.
After he put the envelope in the mailbox, he walked to the bridge. It was near midnight and freezing. His face was red from the cold and the walk. He leaned on the railing and just looked. He looked at the city and all of the lights. he thought about what a nice skyline it was and how perfect it would be if it would only snow. He pulled out a cigarette and started smoking it. When it got down to the filter he put it out and hurled himself over the edge. He timed it just right and saw the ship below him as he dove head first toward it. The last thing he thought about was how he forgot to put a stamp on the envelope he mailed.