There had been days before she met Richard Yates – months and years, even – where all Lydia Davis did was sit on her bed in her room, waiting for something to happen. "There's nothing in my reality I want enough to try getting" was the overarching theme of her mindset then, waiting for something to happen on her bed in her room, at the store, buying cans of beer, getting coffee, or walking on the sidewalk. Sometimes Lydia Davis would try to make herself cry by thinking of how bad her life was, how useless and uncontrollable her life and everything was, but then it seemed not to matter, and all that was left was the hard, blunt edge of boredom. Other times, sadness would strike her, coming out of nowhere, and she would hold back the tears, or cover her face with pillows and sob. Lydia Davis often thought, then, that nothing was worth anything, and anything worth something could only be worth something after ignoring so many depressing things. The only thing Lydia Davis could really feel was an apathetic sense of waiting for nothing to happen, because she knew that nothing could ever happen – things that would happen would quickly become the same thing: Lydia Davis sitting on her bed in her room, waiting for something to happen.