May cause drowsiness: day 25

She jokes — nervously, via an exhal­a­tion of faint, scat­ter­shot giggles — about her para­noia that she might leave a smudged imprint of lip­stick on the rim of the wine glass. Human remains that would enable him, with the aid of forensic sci­ence, to track her down wherever she chose to hide, whether it was in the imme­di­ate world or bey­ond. He reas­sures her. The faint lines of a person’s lips aren’t as unique as a fin­ger­print. No one would be able to make an iden­ti­fic­a­tion based only on tell­tale cos­metic traces. She smiles at him for dis­trac­tion — his rather than hers — while widen­ing her grip out­wards from the stem to the bowl, press­ing the soft pad of her index fin­ger into the dark red stain. Leav­ing a mark to tell a story, to make an impres­sion, even to offer proof of her exist­ence in this place, on this even­ing. She hands him the glass as he stands to go to the kit­chen. Tells him not to wash it, to never wash it. Alone for a moment, he mur­murs and allows him­self a flicker of con­fid­ence amidst so much uncer­tainty. He upends the glass, shakes the last resid­ual drops of alco­hol into the sink, and places it care­fully in a cup­board. The sev­enth glass, along­side six oth­ers that already bear wit­ness — if not admiss­ible as evid­ence — to each shade she wears when they meet. Tomor­row, her mouth will be scrubbed clean and raw.