I was home again, in my apartment. I sat at the kitchen table, looking over my notes. Names and numbers of contacts and potential leads, friends of friends or complete strangers whose names I plucked out of directories. Any one of them might be the very person that knew about a job opening and could get me an interview. I flipped through the pages over and over, trying to divine who that one person might be. Soon, I told myself, I would finally pick up the phone and call.
Though only mid-morning, the inside air was already seething. The intense Central Illinois heat sweltered the apartment all day long, and during the night the place never completely cooled down. Just when the inside temperature would begin to subside, a new day would arrive, starting the unpleasant cycle all over again. At night it might cool just enough for a few hours of fitful sleep; on the worst nights I slept on the couch, defying my dwindled budget by running the only air conditioner, an old window-mounted unit, on low. Running it during the day was impossible—electricity cost what seemed like a fortune, and even without air I barely had enough money to eat. When I complained to others, somebody would always suggest opening up windows on opposite ends of the apartment and turning on a fan, but that brought no relief as it just moved the hot air around faster. When the temperature was high enough, all the air flow and sweat in the world did nothing to cool a body down. And in Champaign it seemed that hot every day.
During those long daylight hours I would feel my inner thermostat reaching its boiling point, and I would barely be able to think clearly. And with mere thinking being difficult at those times, the intense writing that Wheatyard insisted on was all but impossible. He might have been able to write through delirium—indeed, some of the flightier passages in Longing Dissolute Midnight suggested he was delirious when he wrote them—but for me the condition was debilitating. I would sit and stare at the TV for hours, barely comprehending what I was seeing, or simply lay back with my eyes closed, waiting languidly for some sort of deliverance.
Now and then I would escape the heat by loitering in stores around town, but getting there under the relentless sun was even worse than staying in the stifling apartment, and once in the store I could never stay long since I lacked money to buy anything, the unstated price of hanging around. After a few minutes I would always be shooed away by the proprietors or their student managers. The Union offered little; having graduated in May, I no longer had student discounts on billiards or bowling which I couldn't afford otherwise. Sitting around on the couches in the desultory lounges, even with a decent book, was no more appealing than enduring the heat outside or at home.
At least the apartment had enough—TV, stereo, books—to keep me occupied, if I could just fight off the humid malaise. All those things were already paid for, and could be enjoyed at no extra expense, something that in corporate finance class was called a sunk cost. The money was out the door, the funds couldn't be recovered, so I might as well get whatever use from those things that I could.
The only activity that kept me both air-conditioned and occupied was my internship, which had run all year but would terminate in August, at the same time as my lease. When those events occurred I would leave town for good, either off somewhere for a new job or just back home to my parents. The internship, despite its shortcomings, somehow kept me sane. Even the public library, which had the same air conditioning and busy work, was too closely associated with my helpless job hunt and all its sad connotations.
Sitting on the couch, still simmering, I thought back to the previous afternoon.