The Adventures of Sally Tomato, Cosmonaut

She observed the damaged highway beneath her as she drove from her office to the gym. The road sank under yellow center dashes as if the paint had suddenly become massively heavy.

There were cylindrical potholes, too, about five inches deep. They looked as though they'd been rasped out, like grey decaying flesh, by the jawless teeth-rimmed mouth of a cement-feeding lamprey.

Her mind strayed. She reflected on her own strengths and weaknesses, suspecting that every weakness was a strength taken so far it had collapsed in upon itself.

Method actors practice a form of empathy: they draw on past experiences that corresponds to their characters' in an attempt to better understand them. Her empathy was often considered her greatest asset, though she suspected this was due more to its rarity than its inherent worth.

She didn't have to channel her past to empathize. She simply slipped into another's devastation, elation, frustration, the way she would a glove or a cardigan.

Or did extrinsic emotion fit itself to her? Sometimes, when she entered a broken neighborhood, the collective sorrow of the inhabitants would impress her so strongly that she'd feel all at once deflated.

She found that this additional perception weakened her. She had trouble differentiating between her own feelings and those that had attached themselves to her. In past relationships her own emotional state had been so interconnected with her partners' that she could not trust her feelings to help her make decisions.

Over the years she had developed work arounds. She became intensely logical, which proved beneficial professionally. At work she did express emotion - usually frustration with illogical systems and the ineptitude of middle management - but her co-workers knew it was rigorous internal deliberation, not fleeting emotions, that informed her decisions and guided her actions.

She was a reluctant trailblazer, preferring a spectrum of established models to choose from. Unfortunately, she was also too neurotic to settle.

Her personal life suffered from a similar paucity of alternatives.

Sex and the City: the Movie suggests that (SPOILER ALERT) only 25% of women reach contentment sans partner. All the women she knew were planning weddings and house hunting, nesting, or home improving with their significant others.

That fulfillment required partnering was simply not a logically defensible position, she felt. But, then again, there was no use lying to herself; she too had been quite disappointed by Samantha and Smith's breakup.

She began to feel marginalized by a system she never even wanted to matriculate into.

Upon awakening, she decided productivity was far more likely following a protein-rich (and usually labor-intensive) breakfast--steak and eggs, cheesy mushroom risotto, or similar.

She knew the whole day would be wasted should she remain in her pajamas. We are who we pretend to be, after all, and, as any dramatis persona will tell you, costume is absolutely essential for convincing pretense.

Always fascinated by the Method, she tried to recall a day when she felt entirely effectual as an employee. It was not recent. In fact, she could not remember any such day. She was certain, however, that had it actually occurred, it would have begun with her arrival at the office feeling and looking her most professional, probably in purple suede Marc Jacobs pumps.

Through further imaginary deduction, she determined that efficacy depended on cleanliness. She allowed the pouf to linger languorously on every part of her body as she washed. She cleaned behind her ears and between her toes, noticing the deplorable state of her pedicure as she did so.

By noon, she was dressed for success. She was also quite hungry. Her office had a full kitchen, so she felt it was just as likely that she would be cooking a meal for herself there as in her own home. Besides, the law did require a half-hour lunch for eight hours of work. And who was she to fancy herself above the law?

She arrived at the coffee shop at 1:36 to work. As a salaried worker, she could take a long lunch, she reminded herself. There was no need for guilt, a rather unproductive emotion at best.

Her primary role was writing proposals to secure program support from various institutional funders. Business writing, though perhaps not as creative as flash fiction writing, was still an imaginative exercise, and would undoubtedly benefit from a stream of consciousness warm up.

Time was especially gracious this morning. It opened wide enough to allow the selection of clothing that expressed her emotional state (elated). Her 18 minute toilette afforded all manner of indulgences - leg shaving, eyelash curling, French braiding - that on ordinary days it simply would not accommodate.

She bought Turkish coffee and a breakfast cookie, which she ate during her 15 minute commute.

The far left tile showed water damage.

Eight days prior, while walking together, diesel fumes transported her back. When they previewed the barely furnished apartment four days later, the scent of nag champa elicited a similar experience. Nine hours ago, afterwards, it was the fragrance of time on plaster that did it.

(The fact that the smell of time and, for that matter, plaster, is barely perceptible made the force and immediacy of the association all the more striking.)

She climbed back into bed - in between white, lent sheets, under a brown down comforter - and felt chronologically disoriented. Suddenly quite hungry, she craved the pan y laminas de gouda she used to eat daily during class breaks.

Her head, buoyant with exhaustion, heavy with anxiety, rested on his chest, lifting and descending with his every breath. Her mental noise receded, and she fell still.

Obsessive attention to detail regularly brought her into conflict with supervisors, gridlocked interdepartmental relationships, and stalled projects. She was too honest, too much her mother's daughter, really, to refrain from challenging myopic choices or criticizing pedestrian aesthetics.

On a good day she fancied herself a minor prophet, the last neon warning before a precipice of professional mediocrity and organizational stagnation. Most of the time, however, she felt the way eyes feel when they start to glaze over.