It’s not the restlessness that bothers me, or the way things blur into each other until reality is no longer felt in ears and lips and hands but only in the eyes, like watching a movie filmed entirely with a wide-angle lens. I can deal with the headaches and nightly pilgrimages to the nearly empty refrigerator. I can even make it to and from work without getting run over as I sleepwalk across rivers of busy New York traffic. It’s the lack of control that I just can’t stand. When even your own body stops listening to you, then you’re really in trouble.

Roberta wiggles her toes beneath the blankets, a fluttering against my ankles that reminds me of the day I found a giant moth in bed with me down in Guatemala. I roll over in contempt, taking as much of the covers as I can with me. Let her freeze. Maybe her toes will be too numb to bring back my man-eating moth nightmares. But then again, what’s the point? It’s not as though all the warmth in this world would be enough to help me sleep.

I peel back the covers, feeling the refreshing cool of the early morning chill paint goosebumps over my sallow flesh. I don’t even have enough energy for one of those world-weary sighs, you know, the kind that you see B-movie actors give after their lover has just left them for the alien princess with three breasts and Styrofoam antennae.

Roberta grumbles and pulls the covers closer in an attempt to cocoon herself against the cold I’ve let in. She doesn’t wake, because she’s used to this by now. The romantic buried deep beneath so many layers of hazy monotony might have stayed to watch her sleep. But I’ve had plenty sleepless nights to watch Roberta, and I’ve come to realize that all those poets who spoke of the surreal quality of watching your loved one sleep were just doing that to stop generations of men from snatching back a craftily annexed arm and sending their lover toppling out of the bed.

Watching Roberta sleep is like watching someone slowly go insane. She starts out with the ordinary mask of tension and worry of everyday life. Then the wrinkles suddenly fade as she relaxes and shifts her way into a natural position. Roberta always starts with her head in the crook of my arm, her right hand placed heavily on my solar plexus, making it impossible for me to breathe the deep inhalations of a sound sleeper. Luckily, this position must give her a kink in her neck because she always rolls over and curls into a ball, back to me, ready to strike out against anything that invades her fetal bubble. I wish she would just cut to the chase and start out that way rather than pretend that we fit naturally together like the young in love.

Of course, to remain angelic and peaceful would be far too common and uncomplicated for Roberta. Her eyes tighten into nothing but a crease in skin in a futile attempt to shut out every connection to that rebelliously unidealistic outside world and her lips relax into what must be her natural state: a petulant but unhurried frown. Her masses of jet-black hair spun around her in a tight web, she furrows her brow and gives out slight moans. I am never sure if she is aroused or frightened since she claims that she doesn’t recall her dreams.

I move away from her with a grunt, stumbling toward the bathroom without bothering to turn on the lights. I’ve got the route memorized so I could make it in my sleep- if I should ever be so lucky. It’s not that I really need to go, but it’s something to do. I have a feeling that I’m spoiling my bladder with so many nightly trips.

When it’s obvious that even the bladder excuse isn’t going to keep me occupied I make my way out into the living room and grab my laptop, relishing in the eerie blue shadows the screen casts across the room, looking at my ghastly face, luminescent in the stainless steel of the refrigerator, next to Roberta’s human encrypted grocery list and a piece of crayon and magic marker modern art. Why does Roberta have to display absolutely everything her sister sends us by that bratty kid of hers?

Mostly I’m upset because those bright crayon strokes destroy my hazy reflection persona of a zombie. I don’t even know if I’m alive anymore, to tell you the truth. I can no longer feel that which makes a person alive: the feel of the wind turning cheeks a biting red, the warmth of snuggling next to a living body, the pungent smell of coffee fresh off the brewer. Maybe I’ve slipped into a coma. This surreal feeling is creeping in from the outskirts of perception, seeping and dripping through every hole in my previously well-defined understanding of reality. I keep thinking of Dali and his paintings of clocks.

Time is the furthest thing from me, the most elusive, the completely unthinkable. Time was never something I could explain before, but now as it skips by in bounds and leaps, only to slow the moment until it wraps around itself like pursed lips, where thought and action and perception are all occurring after one another yet at the same time. I’m not sure if there is a past or a future. I only know now, with that shadow-life of before to remind me what mistakes not to make, but signifying nothing beyond that.

I can’t even remember existence with sleep. Somewhere, somehow, I remember I had a life before this one. It may not have always been happy, but at least I felt something. There was none of this pervasive numbness, this artificial chill that seems to repel every living being. Even Roberta seems to be distancing herself, and she said she loves me. Perhaps I really am dead and my image is fading from this place. I can see her valiant smile - the one that tries to tell me that things will be okay, just the slight upturn of the mouth, swamped by the sea of worry in her eyes.

Roberta has always been stubborn. If anyone can keep my spirit in this life, in living memory so that it can’t sink into that fathomless ocean of infinite time, it’s her. After so many times I tried to break it off, she kept hope in “us”. I could never just destroy that hope. It’s such a beautiful dream: the posh New York apartment with the modernist furniture and the cappuccino machine, sitting in bed and writing together in silence, walking through Central Park in the snow and watching the pigeons leave their delicate tracks in that field of white, growing old together as we mediate on the meaning of life and death. We still have those things, but they aren’t nearly as fulfilling as I had planned. I told myself that this life would make me happy, and maybe it would if I could break through the ice and find it. But I can’t.

I set about proofreading my article for the eleventh time. My eyes are so sore from staring at the computer screen that the letters begin to blur together, taking on shapes and lives of their own. I see humpbacked monsters fighting tooth and nail against great walls of text: looming stick-like giants of ‘I’s and sinister slithering ‘s’s. Not that any of this matters. It’s an article on hermit crabs of all the innocuous mundane things they could have chosen for a travel writer.

Someone had the brilliant idea to take pictures of crabs that have used manmade objects for shells. After the tenth picture of a living can of Coors light, I remember that this idiot with the brilliant ideas was none other than yours truly. That was back in the days when I had cute comedic ideas like that, when I wanted an undemanding assignment, where all I had to do was stroll down trash infested beaches and take pictures instead of hacking my way through an army of vines and creepers with a rusty machete and a guide who doesn’t speak English. Now I’d give anything for a good mosquito infested trail to an ‘undiscovered’ ancient ruin. At least it would be an adventure.

I wonder idly if I am the first victim of some exotic anti-sleeping disease. Perhaps all of my travels have finally caught up with me, my body making up for all those lost hours spent flying against the sunset. Or maybe God is trying to tell me something. I wonder what it could possibly be. He should know by now that I’m not one who picks up easily on these kinds of subtleties.

I blink and am suddenly ripped from this reality like Dorothy, swept up by a tornado. Oddly, I’m not at all bothered. There is no past, so a smash-zoom transition between things is not out of place. All life is a dream, or perhaps it is only now that I’m truly awake.

I’m standing on a beercan-crab-free beach, watching the water lap at my feet as I stare out at the white crest of a far off reef. Beneath the clear surface of the water, life goes by unhindered. Animals are moving through water as people move through dreams. I want to walk out through the shallow reeds that hide dangerous and amazing things to stand atop that rough island in the middle of the sea, looking down at the aquamarine depths where the shelf drops off into the territory of sea monsters and sunken ships.

It is only the figure in the distance that stops me on my quest for oblivion. There’s something enchantingly familiar about those movements, the way the large white button down shirt and the sun-patterned sarong blow in the light ocean breeze that tangles brilliant red curls. She looks like the sun, green eyes smiling as she opens her arms to me. Suddenly I’m running through the surf, leaving transitive foot-shaped puddles in my wake as I burn my lungs trying to reach her.

I’m almost there when I see her pale pink lips tighten in a wistful smile. Somehow I know those lips will be velvety soft in a kiss, but her look tells me that there will be no kiss in this fairy-tale. I reach out to her, knowing that it’s futile by the apology in her eyes.

And then there is this screeching noise, like the sound of the world shattering, and indeed it does, the bright hues of the beach dissolving into the monotonous black and white of our apartment. My thighs are glued to the leather of the seat with my own sweat, making me wince as a move away. I’m dimly aware of a pain in my neck from sleeping with head leaned backwards on top of the couch, mouth open as if waiting to catch drops of acid rain.

Roberta stands from behind the counter holding two halves of a broken plate, something I suppose should catch me by surprise, but it doesn’t. “I’m sorry I woke you, dear.” She cringes, even though I can’t be bothered to glare. Glancing at the clock over the microwave I note that it’s eight o’clock and I’ve had exactly 2 hours and eleven minutes of sleep. It’s better than nothing, I suppose.

She absently hands me a plate of eggs and sausage as she moves back to the toaster oven to remove two pieces of whole-wheat toast, which she’ll eat with apricot jam and a vanilla cappuccino. I nod my thanks, rubbing my eyes and settling down at our small breakfast table next to my steaming hot cup of Colombian grounds – black and intolerably bitter, just as I like it.

“How did you sleep?” she asks innocently, purposefully averting her eyes as she spreads her toast.

"As well as can be expected,” I huff.

“Did you dream?” Roberta is fascinated by my dreams, perhaps because she graduated with a minor in psych or maybe because she has none of her own.

“No.” I lie.

Her shoulders seem to slump in disappointment as she bites her lower lip. She’s clearly waiting to ask me a question. I hope it’s not one of those lame, ‘what’s the status of our relationship,’ ones. If she asks that I might actually tell her the truth, despite the fact that I’m not in the mood for an argument right now.

“I need your opinion on something, honey.” It’s an order not a question, despite her singsong tone. Sometimes I think she only keeps me around so she can have the opinions of an honest-to-god writer handy.

Roberta writes erotic haikus, which, apparently, are in high demand. She has been published in multiple anthologies, most issues of the haiku quarterly, and prestigious magazines such as Playboy and Hustler (though I think this was Larry Flint’s idea of a joke). Privately, I think it’s a cop-out. Every writer, even poor, undereducated me, comes up with a brilliant sentence every once in a while. In fact, the number of words in the English language is relatively small compared to the sheer volume of speech each one of us commits in the course of our meager lives. The probability of finding an artful combination somewhere in there is probably a whole hell of a lot better than winning the lottery. So Roberta takes advantages of her luck, and the fact that she’s sweet-talked, or should I say intellectualized, her way into the 18-syllable-and-under club.

I spend my days beating my aging cartilage-free knees into submission on a trek through some exotic and usually inhospitable climate, making sure I cause myself the maximum amount of pain and/or hardship, because conflict increases circulation, of course. Roberta, on the other hand, hammers out just under 2K syllables a day, in hopes that just 18 of them will strike gold. I wonder how many syllables were in that sentence.

“Okay, here it goes:” She rubs her hands together nervously as if working up enough static energy between them to captivate my attention. “Furry handcuffs / Silken sheets / One set of hands.” Then she repeats it to make sure I‘ve heard every word.

A long time ago, when I first heard Roberta read her poetry at one of those artsy coffee houses for elite intellectuals, I was turned on by the playful cadence of her voice, the sparkle in her eyes as she said something so dangerously erotic in such a simple and serious form. I would imagine that tight-lipped smile opening up for me in a lascivious kiss or those spindly fingers dancing lightly down my chest.

Now even the idea of her waiting for me, tied up in a leather bodice as she leans seductively against red silk sheets, eyes hungry as she toys with a pair of furry handcuffs is barely enough to get me to think. “It’s nice,” I say, conjuring up images of milky white skin, an angular tall body unashamed of its naturally awkward nudity, as it stretches catlike against black satin, green eyes locked in mine in entreaty.

“Nice?” Roberta asks incredulously.

“Sexy.” I like the way the word sounds on my tongue, as though it could embody all my fantasies.

“It’s about loneliness.” She gives a plaintive sigh, perhaps glaring at me, but I am lost in my daydream.

Amber curls fan out to make a bed for a delicate face with a brave button of a nose and light, nearly-invisible brows. Her lips are painted a luscious red, like the roses she’s left for me in a trail to the bedroom.

Roberta gives up and I finish my breakfast in untasting silence.

I’m moving toward the bed, hands shaking with anticipation. She looks edible, lips parted just slightly, breath smelling of cinnamon as she leans every so slightly toward me for a kiss, eyes closed in pleasure. And then we’re locked in a passionate embrace. I can taste her, more real that the sights and sounds around me. I’m hungry for her, from the biting smell of cinnamon to the supple smoothness of skin against my calloused fingers. I want to feel again.

Then she pushes me away, and I feel empty - the numbness rushing back and invading every cell of my body even as I protest against it. I’m looking into dark eyes, nearly weeping with desire. Red curls have melted to black and Roberta is smiling greedily. “When I get back from class, love; you wouldn’t want to miss your meeting with Stew.”

I nod, in a daze again without the force of desire to drive me, wandering into the bedroom to shower and find something decent to wear. Roberta helps me button my shirt, concern creasing her wide brow. She doesn’t speak or move against me seductively the way she used to after we made love. She just gives me a peck on the cheek when I’m ready to go. And to think, there was a time where I couldn’t imagine her ever being domestic. I’m afraid I have tamed her eccentric beauty. She seems so pale nowadays, though perhaps that is because all color has long been bleached from my world.

Before I know it I’m trudging into Stew’s office, trying to ignore the colony of worker bees I had to wade through to get to this glass-encased sanctuary. I’m surprised to see that Stew is wearing a tie, but too absent-spirited to be ashamed that I am not.

Even after all these years, seeing him like this still amazes me. His bowl-cut blond hair looks strangely out of place in this corporate world, as though someone has taken Stew’s head and sewn in onto the tall-potbellied-corporate-golf-player action figure.

I can still picture him meeting me at a coffee shop in Portland, complete with a dirty blond goatee, a sprinkling of freckles and water bottles covered in duck tape attached to a worn external-frame backpack.

“So, Dave, how lovely to find myself once again in your presence,” he says with a wide conspiratorial grin, reminding me of the days when we used to walk through torrential rains and mudslides with nothing but what we carried on our backs and Stew’s ever-present smile.

“Same to you.”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“And the Mrs.?”

“Okay, I guess.” How can I even speak about her after what I did this morning? I shift uncomfortably, returning effortlessly to that other world, more vivid and present then this one, but outside all laws of reality.

She’s wearing a white spring dress as she stands under a gazebo in the moonlight. I can smell the sweet decay of tropical flowers and the sweat the coats on her glistening ethereal skin. She seems to be made of moonlight, not that eerie glow that makes monsters out of everyday things, but the translucence that lets you see the purity in that which you’ve know all your life. I feel now as if our moments together are not just fleeting daydreams, but something that can last for an eternity.

She turns to face me and sighs. The sadness of the world is written onto her face without a single line or crease. She looks like someone who knows the future, timeless and divine but impotent none-the-less.

“I love you,” she says, tones deep and melodic, as though they could contain all of existence in every subtle pitch.

Before I can respond a rugged and impatient voice breaks our enchanting connection. “Dave, have you heard a word I’ve said?”

“Sorry, Stew, you lost me.”

“When?”

“Somewhere between ‘How are you?’ and ‘Have you heard a word I’ve said?’” I say with what I hope is a repentant shrug.

Stew just shakes his head, shaggy blonde hair tumbling past his eyes in a cascade of disappointment. “You look terrible, Dave. Haven’t you been getting any sleep?”

“Nope. Jetlag,” I lie. If Stew remembers it’s been three weeks since I got back to New York, he doesn’t let on.

“Well, congratulations on the crab hunting expedition. You got some absolutely amazing shots, as usual.”

“But?”

“But, it’s a little . . . well . . .”

“’Well’ what, Stew? I snap, rising slightly in my chair, only to lose interest and flop back in a greater slump than before. I grumble, driving my right index finger into my temple, trying to make it look like I’m deep in thought. “You’re my editor - they pay you to criticize me.”

“It’s just kind of resentful.”

“It’s about fucking crabs, Stew. It can’t be resentful.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. I wouldn’t have thought it possible either, but somehow you manage to make crabs resentful.”

“They pay me to write interesting articles.”

“And this certainly is interesting, Dave, but I think it says more about your current frame of mind the it does about the crabs. Allow me to quote.” I wave my hand at him impatiently. “’A hermit crab moves from house to house without a care for those he leaves behind.’ Need I remind you that crabs are not necessarily male,” he comments with the accusatorial raise of an eyebrow. “‘He abandons the old shell like a girl leaves an abusive boyfriend, not caring if it is eaten up by the rough whirlwind of the tide or the unknown fate brought down on it by a new inhabitant.’ As far as I know, only the wrath of God can be brought down from on high. ‘He finds a new shell that doesn’t fit quite right, which he hopes to grow into, though his hopes are sometimes ironically misplaced.’ I doubt the crab appreciates the irony. Then you let the anger simmer a bit more throwing in a couple of inappropriate sexual metaphors. Since when is a shell, ‘nothing but a warm, wet and inviting entrance to be used and abused like a latex condom?’ And why latex, specifically?”

“Rhythm.”

“Good to know you still have a modicum of concern for your readers. Of course after the ‘intrepid softskined burrower sheaths himself in his new match,’ we receive your enlightening final thoughts.” He clears his throat with a melodramatic glare. “’If only we should all be as lucky as the hermit crab, able to shake all responsibility and memory of his old residences, living for the dream of a bigger and better life and a house to match.’ I swear, Dave, only you could conceive of a hermit crab as a phallic object.”

“It’s fresh,” I offer hopefully, knowing that he’s not going to buy it.

“It’s offensive. We love the photos. We’ve got layout all over them already, and your title, ‘Life as a House,’ is an interesting if not plagiarized reference to what I thought was a remarkable movie.”

“Gotta love Kevin Kline.”

“Yes, he was great in A Fish Called Wanda, but . . .”

“Don’t forget the Big Chill, I really love the scene when he . . .”

“Dave,” my name stretches as it crescendos, catching in his throat, “you need to focus.”

I open my mouth to protest, but realize that it’s as pointless as trying to sprout wings and fly out the widow of his office. Widows on the thirty-seventh floor of modernist Manhattan monstrosities don’t open, of course. “I know.” I whisper, looking quickly over my shoulder to see if anyone heard my admission. It looks as though I’m in the clear, unless his office is bugged.


I push angrily through the door, momentum carrying me further than expect and end up in a cursing heap on the floor. Stew wants me to rewrite my article. I’m not really upset that I have to do it. Most travel magazines would refuse to publish something that referred to objects in nature in such a blatantly sexual way. Maybe Roberta is rubbing off on me.

What makes me angry is the fact that Stew turned it down. He’s never made me rewrite something from scratch before. I used to think we were friends. But Stew’s sold out, turned in the gung-ho eco-tour leader who once hiked twenty miles in one day carrying my badly concussed body on his back, for a suit and a glass cubicle in a corporate hive tower. Back when we first started working together, when I had just become famous for my article of an expedition gone awry in the Gobi Dessert, Stew would have read my article by the campfire, and after a half a dozen beers and a good laugh proclaimed it absolutely brilliant. But those days are gone.

Here is where I should slam my hand into the polished pine floor and scream, but I barely have enough energy to stumble to the couch and collapse.

I can’t sleep, but I can’t move. This feels like that jellyfish sting I got in Thailand: pain coursing through an unmoving body. Without being able to react it begins to feel as though the pain exists only in the mind, as though it is completely separate from that thing that was once a body.

She’s leaning over me, green eyes alight with compassion and concern. She doesn’t speak in words, or maybe my pain-addled mind can't process them. Her soft murmur is like the whisper inside a great seashell, a gentle caress that sweeps through the clouded mind until it is the only thing in this motion-blurred world that is clear. She is my anchor, my only link to this wonderful reality, to sanity.

I can feel her hand slipping down my chest, casting away the pain of the world the way a ship cuts cleanly through the rippled sheet of the ocean. I am so detached from my body that in the physical world I don’t notice that it is my own hand gliding through tufts of lightly sprinkled chest hair only pausing slightly before it dives under the surface of my pants.

I moan as she takes the pain from me, spreading her warmth from the inside out. Pleasure washes over me in long languid strokes, like the soft ebb and flow of the tide in our peaceful coral atoll. All she has to do is moan to turn the sky into a regal purple sunset and set a tropical storm on the horizon, quickening the passionate crash of the waves until they drown out everything else, except the sound or her voice, her light chuckle of delight at the pleasure she’s caused me. Her laugh blooms until it is a lightning bright tsunami rushing through the spaces between my cells, inundated with pure bliss. I cry out her name, as I fall onto the floor, completely and utterly spent.

I dream of her.


I wake to find that someone has covered me with a blanket, though my neck is again sore from sleeping flat on my face and I have a black and blue stain on my right knee from where it collided with the coffee table on the way down. I look down at the sticky mass that is now my pants and drag myself toward the bedroom.

Roberta is sitting in bed, legs crossed at the ankles with the New York Times spread out on her lap. She bites her bottom lip in concentration, as though making prophesy. For some reason I am reminded of the Wicked Witch of the West . . . no the East. I can’t believe she’s reading that slut of a newspaper, with its convoluted headlines and witless attempts at pomp and intellect. I thought I hated New Yorkers. But Roberta’s a New Yorker and I suppose I must like her. I mean, I’m still here, aren’t I?

She looks up casually, surveying me over the rims of her reading glasses without really seeing, “It looks like someone couldn’t wait for me to come home.” She says to my crotch. She’s probably been planning that one all morning. I can only roll my eyes. Even the glint of the morning sun slanting through our window fails to illuminate her in a way I find attractive.

I open my mouth in hopes that a witty rejoinder will come to mind in the next half-second, but she cuts me to the chase, not even looking up from her paper, “Breakfast’s in the skillet. You can heat it up yourself. “

With nothing to say, I turn submissively and pad back out into the kitchen. There in the skillet is an order of huevos rancheros. I’m about to dig into it when I realize that something is horribly wrong. I can’t do anything but stare at it, amazed. She’s put peppers in it. I’m allergic to peppers. I would be in anaphylactic shock within minutes.

After years hiking to the most remote places in the world, I was almost done in by a friendly Mexican breakfast. I probably should feel angry, but all I can do is laugh at the irony of it. It’s not Roberta’s fault, of course. We’ve had scant opportunities to dine together, after all. How could she possibly know?

Still, that doesn’t stop me from trudging dutifully into the bedroom with a scowl on my face. “I’m allergic to peppers,” I state calmly. Only now will Roberta meet my eyes. I can see a mix of sadness and anger there.

“I’m sorry sweetheart; I didn’t realize.” The sincerity in her voice is terrifying. It’s been a long time since someone apologized so spitelessly to me. I just wish she would stop calling me by those pet names.

“It’s okay,” I say, sitting down next to her, caressing her lean muscleless thigh. The look in my eyes must reflect some of this doubt that is burning through me from the inside out, because she pulls her feet up to her chest and rests her chin on her knees,

“But?” she asks, tears threatening to break down even the walls to the stronghold of her inner heart.

I reach out to her, but she shies away, baleful eyes showing poetic foresight. “Look, Roberta, this isn’t working. It was a nice experiment, three weeks that I really needed. I couldn’t have lived without trying, but we tried and it didn’t work out. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Roberta sighs. I could stand her screaming, waves of curly ebony hair unfurling behind her like a cornered animal trying to puff itself up before its attacker. But her meekness . . . that look of hopeless defeat carved into the lines of her cheeks, the way she adverts those liquid obsidian eyes . . . I can feel my defenses crumbling, the words on my tongue evaporating into the current of helpless disappointment in the air.

“I thought I could love you, Roberta. You kept my life interesting the last five years. All those passionate nights, the secret dates, the stolen kisses, were just the escape I needed. I was confused. I care about you, and I want you, but we’re not the kind of people who can live a life together. We’re amazing in a cloak of secrecy, but in the ordinary light of day, we’re just two people with little in common.”

Tears are dripping down through the downy hair on her face, but she refuses to acknowledge them - not even letting out the faintest cry. I don’t dare reach out and wipe the tears away, as much as seeing each one fall across the delicate line of her neck hurts me. I used to love to burry my head in the curve of that graceful neck.

“I know we’ve been together too long for the groping newlywed phase, Dave, but I honestly thought this was working.” That’s a lie and she knows it, but Roberta is the type to fall for blissful ignorance. “Sure, we haven’t entirely learned how to mesh together and it’s been tough coordinating our schedules, but in time I could see us living like an old married couple. We might not have that much in common, but what we do have is enough for a lifetime. You just haven’t given us the time to get comfortable.”

“Yes, we might get comfortable. But I don’t want comfortable - I want passionate. I’ve already got comfortable, and I don’t feel like starting all over again so I can get what I already have.”

“You want to go back to your wife?” She looks at me, shocked. All she’s ever heard about my wife is how much I hate her, how our marriage is dead, how I wish that it was Roberta in her place. She doesn’t know how we fell in love on a deserted beach in Thailand, or how fragile she looked when she cried over our inability to have children, or how beautifully her soul shone when she walked down the aisle in that sparkling white dress.

“I keep dreaming about her,” is all I can say as I move to pack my bags. Roberta doesn’t move from where she’s perched on the bed, still crying silent tears. For once in her lifetime, feisty Roberta has nothing to say. She knows so much of hope, but nothing of dreams.


I walk calmly out of the apartment without a shower and wait at the airport standby, only to take the red-eye back to Los Angeles, shifting restlessly, unable to sleep in the cramped cabin despite all my efforts. I rent a car and drive down the familiar concrete of the Century freeway, the sunrise glittering around me as the interchange ramp vaults me into the smog filled sky. The monotony of the traffic instantly relaxes me, more like the steady flow of a river than the aggressive game of red-light/green-light they play in New York, taxi cabs moving in packs around you like a pack of jackals, the screeching cackle of their horns a battle cry echoing through the overcrowded streets.

The house looks just as I left it, cool clay and red tile soothing to the touch, the smell of bougainvilleas that climb up the side, still in the pink haze of bloom despite the season. I pause to inhale their sweet scent, like the tropical perfume she used to wear back when we dated.

I don’t stumble on the familiar two steps down onto the bright wiry wool carpet we bought in an open market bazaar in Peru. Leaving my luggage on the living room floor I toss my keys into the tin atop the grand piano, relishing in the way they clatter - not loud enough to wake the sleeping figure I can just see through the open door to the master bedroom but with the resounding finality of a welcome home after a rough day.

I slip out of my shoes and creep into our bedroom. I can still smell my own scent lingering there, especially on the old Lakers T-shirt that she’s currently wearing. Dropping my clothes next to hers on the worn-out mahogany chair beside the bed, I slide gently beneath the comforter. I am excited by her scent of cinnamon and potter’s clay, the way her breath flutters from her delicately inflating chest, the half moon smile on her lips as she sleeps, but too exhausted to do anything about it.

“Where have you been?” she asks groggily, in that deep and oddly erotic voice that I’ve heard a thousand times, though once was enough for me to fall in love with it. She does it as a reaction, using her knowledge of many years of me collapsing into bed exhausted and smelling of sex and another woman’s perfume, having had to “work” late. When she wakes there will be hell to pay, but in the world of dreams, we can be comfortable together.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I reply, finally letting out my tv-movie certified world-weary sigh and nesting contentedly among flaming red curls peppered now with grey.

I slip effortlessly into perfect dreamless sleep.

FIN