Learning to swim (2)

“This is the BBC News Hour…” blares the cheap brown clock radio next to Jody’s futon. She makes a noise, some sort of grunt-sigh, as she realizes she has been snoozing for an hour and that it is already 9 am. She wakes up, trying to ignore the extremely loud British woman intruding on her sleep while at the same time straining to hear the morning’s top stories. After a few minutes she rolls from her right side onto her back, reaching up and across her body to turn the volume down. The clock now reads 9:06. She needs to get up, but her down comforter feels so much better than just about anything else in her world, so she entertains a brief morning ritual instead.

In her mind, Jody runs through the list she is trying to compile of different ways to earn a living without leaving your bed. Sleep studies…not a sure thing, she had read that some sleep studies require subjects to stay awake for long periods of time, to study the effect of sleep deprivation. That sure wasn’t what she wanted.

Mattress salesperson…on slow days it would be great, lots of time to rest on the most comfortable and expensive mattresses in the store, mattresses even more comfortable than Jody’s own, which was not bad. But selling mattresses would be torture on busy days, she pictured herself running around a store, helping customers who didn’t know what kind of bed they wanted, only that this one was too firm and this one too soft. On busy days the mattresses would only taunt her. Beds everywhere, but not a single place to rest.

Jody has blond hair and green eyes. Not that you would know by looking at her. Right now her hair has blue tips and magenta roots. It rises from her head in little spikes, hundreds of candle flames growing out of her head. Medusa with short hair. Her eyebrow is pierced, a small ring resting just beyond the corner of her right eye. It has only been pierced for about a month, though she spent three or four years thinking about it. Same thing with her hair. Up until a month ago, it fell to her chin, always blond, never quite curly, never quite straight. But now she has spiky flaming hair and an eyebrow ring.