224
PARTISAN REVIEW
"That's better." I was thankful that she was becoming less
and less like a bat.
I
wasn't up to dealing with a load of guano.
"I
thought
I
heard termites."
"We don ' t have any termites."
She yawned. "The moon was too bright.
I
couldn't sleep. "
She was as insouciant as a bagworm on cedar.
Reminding myself that she resembled a bat more than a
parasite,
I
asked her, "Why didn't you pull the curtains to?"
"I
didn't want to wake you."
"Thank you."
I
wished
I
were Plastic Man so
I
could stretch
my arm out long enough to whack her gelatinous bottom.
"I'll be down in a moment. The moon 's passed most of the
way by already. You go on back to sleep. "
"How?"
She didn't answer, and it was all I could do not to yell at her.
Actually, that's an exaggeration.
It
was easy to refrain from
yelling, primarily because I found myself suddenly suffering
from a temporary case of acute lockjaw. I've had it before, but it
goes away quickly. Usually. I asked her if she wanted me to come
up there with her. She said she didn't think so, that she'd be
down shortly. The vertigo returned. I swung my left leg off the
bed so my foot felt the floor. That helped.
"Do go on back to sleep," she said.
So I did, and the next thing I knew she was lying beside me.
The closeness of her created what I have to call intimacy. The
toenail of her big toe was scratching my ankle, and I knew that
she was also asleep. I felt more peaceful than a martyr in the
bosom of the Lord. I had no desire to wake up and leave. I
mumbled to her in the pale wash of moonlight over our sheeted
bodies that if some disturbance came-knock on door, ringing of
phone-that I might not respond but would stay loyal to the
respite of our tangential slumber. She laughed, and I swelled
large, but not as large as the gigantic spread of the vacuum
where we lay. I shrank, then at once I felt tiny and huge, and in
that moment I noticed that her toenail had left my ankle. I
moved my foot to find it but couldn ' t and felt, somehow
profoundly, the sadness of the foolishness of mortality. There
