Evans knows he is going deeper into the hole, but he does not fight to escape it. He has a nihilistic fascination with the process of sinking deeper and deeper into his depression. Having broken a promise to marry, left his family and friends (except one) behind, and basically thrown away his life, he is curious how much further he can fall. He wonders if it will be possible to 'hit bottom.' He wonders what will happen when he does.

His routine is fixed around his work schedule. The twenty hours each week that he spends isolated in an empty office performing data entry covers the costs of his apartment, and allows him to pay for his food, beer and cigarettes without dipping into his saving, which had originally been set aside for his wedding. Although the wedding is off, he cannot bring himself to touch the money.

There is no television in his rented room, and he has no desire to watch one. The last several times he'd sat in front of a television he had ended up full of anxiety, almost panicked with the feeling of wasting time. His mother would watch as he would storm out of the room, often to go outside and smoke, or to the room he had occupied since childhood to pace and fret.

With no social life to speak of, no television and unable to read more than a page or two of any book without his mind drifting, our man Evans spends most of his time looking over and adding to his journals. Thick books of writing, drawings and pasted-in clipping form an ongoing collage that he has maintained without interruption since he was twelve years old. The first few notebooks were the simple jottings of a child, but as he grew, the content and style of the books became more complex and textured. The books covering the last few years of his life are richly detailed, containing notes on events and conversations, dream details, scraps of imagined dialogue, descriptions of fantastic places and people, and notes for the future: plans and imagined schemes. The pages are brought to life with drawing of the people Evans meets, places he visits. Magazine and newspaper clippings of curious images, facts or stories are pasted in to give the flavor of the zeitgeist. All in all, it is less a diary than a slowly accumulating psychological profile.

Our man Evans is reviewing this profile, trying to draw a cohesive image of his life out of the pages. Reading as if he were an outside observer, he tries to analyze the character of the young man who created the journals. He can draw no conclusions, but eventually flips to the most recent pages, and then to the blank pages he has yet to write upon. He leans back in his chair and tries to remember a line from The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.

"'These fragments I have shored against my ruins,'" he says, remembering the exact line.

The phone rings. As always when it rings, he feels a sudden apprehension that it might be his parents, or worse, his former betrothed, Trish. As always there is the sudden rush of adrenaline and a fight or flight reaction, but by the second ring Evans has calmed down, knowing it is probably just Buddy calling. He gets up and answers the phone.

"Evans? It's Carrie."

An image flashes through his mind of blue eyes set in a smooth white face. A pretty girl with a black bob haircut, beers and cigarettes. "Hi," he says. "How's it going?"

"Good. Buddy told you he gave me your number, right? I hope it's cool for me to call. Some guys I know are playing a show at The Mallard tonight. They suck, but it should be fun. If you're not busy do you want to come?"

"I don't really have a lot of extra cash right now."

"Oh that's okay, there's no cover or anything. I'll buy you a beer. We'll boo the band. We'll throw pennies. It'll be hilarious."

He tries to think of another reason not to go, but he can't think of anything plausible. "Okay," he says. "Where is the place?"

* *

Around ten o'clock our man finds himself standing on the sidewalk in front of The Mallard. There's a quiet restaurant on the first level, but from the upstairs comes the thumping of bass and drums. There are a few punters from the gig standing in front of the bar as well, smoking cigarettes. Evans stands apart from them, finishes his smoke, and goes in and up the stairs.

The stairs lead him to the front of the room, just to the side of the stage. Four guys in white t-shirts and teddy boy haircuts are wailing away on stage. The room is full, and Evans works his way toward the bar at the back of the room.

As the bartender hands him his glass of beer, he feels a hand on his shoulder. It's Carrie. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair is wet with sweat. The denim jacket she wore the night they met is gone, and instead she is bare-armed in a black tank top and skirt. She has a big smile on her face.

She leads Evans through the crowd to where she has been watching the bands play. "Are those your friends playing now?" he asks.

"No, they'll be on later," she says. Evans stands and watches the rock-a-billy act on stage and drinks his beer while Carrie dances with other girls, spinning and shaking out her hair.

She dances until the band ends its set, then takes Evans by the hand and leads him back to the bar. She drinks a glass of ice water, and then insists that he do a shot with her. She pulls out the money, and although Evans says no thanks, she buys two shots of a cream liqueur and hands one to him anyway.

"Just do the shot," she says, and swallows her own. He drinks.

"How are you doing?" he asks, unable to think of anything more interesting to say.

"I'm busy!" she says, shouting over the bar noise. "I'm always so busy. I hate my life sometimes. I just want to go nuts tonight. Do you want to do another shot?"

He laughs and talks her out of it. Instead they head downstairs for cigarettes. Carrie explains that although she only works two or three days a week at a book store, almost all of her free hours are consumed making art and writing for different publications. "I do arts reviews for one of the local entertainment papers, an arts blog for a website, music reviews for a different paper, all sorts of stuff like that, plus actually trying to make my own art when I can find the time. It just feels like I work all the time."

"Do you make any money doing all that?"

She shrugs and takes a drag on her cigarette. "Some. Not a lot." She slaps his arm. "You shouldn't ask about money."

"Right," he nods. "Rude. Sorry."

"What have you been doing?" she asks him.

"Not a hell of a lot."

They head back inside in time to see Carrie's friends take the stage. Four boys, shirtless and skinny, stand ready to play. With four stick-taps from the drummer, they begin to play a ruthless cacophony of skinny-boy speed metal. The music is so fast it's almost impossible to dance, and Carrie stands in front of Evans and the two of them watch the performance.

Carrie moves back slightly, brushing against him. She turns and looks up at him with a smile, reaching back to take his hands and lead them to her waist. They stand with Evans holding her warm body against him.

There is a grim feeling inside our man Evans, as he stands holding this woman. He feels lust for her as she presses her body back against him, but he is apprehensive. He does not want to like this girl. He does not want to have any feelings about anyone or anything. All feelings lead to pain. To hurt. He thinks of Trish and a lump rises in his throat. How can it be that he broke up with her and left town and somehow still feels like he's cheating on her just by holding Carrie by the waist?

They band plays, and after the second song Carrie turns around and slips her arms around Evans neck. He can smell the alcohol on her breath as she kisses him. Her eyes are closed. Despite the stony feeling in his stomach he kisses her back, feeling like an awful, shitty person as he feels her lips on his.

"Do you want to go?" she asks him.

"You don't want to stay and watch your friends play?"

"I've seen them before."

They slip through the crowd and out of the bar, and at the next corner they climb into a taxi and head to Carrie's apartment.