well this is the third night she has been gone. the first night she didn't come home i just thought well she could have decided to stay overnight with a friend but it's been three whole days. housesitting is the only thing i can think of that she might be doing - some faculty member has gone out of town, and she's staying in their house for a few days feeding the cats or whatever it is. i just feel as if if i could just go into her room and see that she's not lying unconscious on the floor i'd feel better, but i shouldn't do that. very likely she has just gone out of town, for any number of perfectly ordinary reasons - a wedding, a friend in distress, an emergency at home - though she hasn't taken her suitcase - that's still sitting in our hall closet. i know i'm making a storm in a teacup: our living arrangements, as well as our relationship, are not of the sort that she's likely to go out of her way to tell me if she's going away for a short trip, and ordinarily we hardly see each other even at home so that she may not have had a chance to tell me - but i did see her in the department on wednesday, as late as 6 in the evening, and if this trip were pre-planned she might have mentioned it, though she needn't have. i can't see how anyone would travel willingly at this hectic time of the semester; and she'd just been gone for springbreak, and that was barely a week ago, so that i'm inclined to think she had to go at short notice and that it is not for a happy reason, though i suppose when you travel may not be a matter of your choice for many perfectly happy reasons too - you can't pick someone else's wedding date, or your grandmother's 90th birthday. but then again you ought to know about those well in advance. is she all right, i wonder? i don't mean merely is she lying somewhere out in a back alley mugged but if she's gone home to an emergency is there anything i might do for her on this end? i expect i'll feel a damned fool when she comes in tomorrow morning from new york or something but.