When Bruce awoke, whiskey breath lingered in the fibres of his pillowcase and mixed with the smell of the sweat left when his forehead had hit the bed a few hours before. He always sweat when he drank.
His pants were wrinkled and creased high on his shins from where he had furiously rubbed his ankles together in an attempt to push off his socks. He’d been fifty percent successful. At least he had managed to lose his shoes before collapsing.
Bruce was not what you would call a bourbon man. He enjoyed a glass of scotch when the world went to hell, drank more beer than he should and fancied himself an amateur sommelier but on the list of beverages he preferred to keep stashed in his private cabinet, whiskey came pretty low. But the first rule of business drinking was that it was client’s choice.
“Never appear cheap, never appear weak!” his boss would say. And so it was that when the five foot two blonde in the pink suit for whom Bruce was working ordered herself Jack Daniel’s, Bruce was not to be outdone.
She was a socialite, one of those heiress types who made money simply by being recognizable. When it was discovered that she was, in fact, the product of an affair and so unlikely to inherit the fortune fueling her fame, the girl was eager to make the findings disappear. Bruce could not remember much past the drinks.
The room was spinning around him. More so than usual. He had bought an apartment in one of Arcadia’s seven revolving towers entirely for snob appeal and while it often turned heads, it had a habit of turning his stomach after a night out. He groaned as he lifted himself out of bed, able to feel his brain wince as it crashed against his skull. He tried to remember where the washroom was. 4:47am. It was on the right of the bed after 3 am, he thought. But was it Wednesday or Tuesday? It switched direction on the 15th of every month.
He stumbled across the soft wood until he felt a bump followed by the reassuring stillness of the tile. The apartments were each like donuts, stacked one on top of the other, each floor rotating the opposite direction from the one below it. In the center of the building was the stable column holding the elevators and all rooms requiring plumbing. Bruce fumbled for the doorknob and felt briefly for the light switch but was unable to find it. He gave up, bracing a hand against the wall as he clumsily undid the button of his pants. He could make out a smooth curve of a basin in the dark. Toilet, sink, shower. It was all the same at this hour.
He was about four seconds in when he heard the unmistakable sound of liquid on metal. It cut through the silence of the apartment, reverberating through his hungover head.
Shit. Not again. It wasn’t the toilet at all but a metal bowl that he had left on a stool that afternoon. He couldn't stop mid-piss so he waited until he was finished before feeling again for the light, this time on the opposite wall. Sure enough, the room burst to bright white, the sink visible, the chrome of the fridge. Bruce was pissing in his kitchen.
He thought about cleaning it for a minute but the ache that had wrapped its way around his temple had begun to seep into the back of his eyes. The light had to go off. Pants still undone, Bruce shuffled back to the main apartment, tripping as he shifted onto the moving floor. He sank face-first into the cushions of the couch and fell back to sleep.