Флетчер Флора - Wake Up With a Stranger

It was a fine definitive action of which he was proud in the instant of its execution, but it turned out to be, after all, only another failure and humiliation — a climactic rejection of all rejections, no less than the scorn of death itself — for neglecting to lock the bathroom door, he was found, saved and sent away. Then had come the episode of the hill and the pines and the doctor who came to talk; and after that, after a sustained period on the top of the cycle, his release to the business of living for which he was somehow unfit. Because there seemed to be nothing else to do, he returned to the university and finished his course. Eventually, through the good offices of a friend of his father, after a couple of beginnings and failures in other places, he had come to this second hill of pines. Now here he was, looking out the window and up the slope, wondering how he could possibly go on with the intolerable task of survival.

Looking and wondering, he began to think of Donna, who had returned to his life like a kind of incidental miracle, and he felt the lift in darkness thinking of her always brought. He knew he must go to her again at once, with her permission if possible and without it if necessary, as he had gone three times since their first meeting. Stirred out of his perilous lethargy by the thought of her, he turned away from the window, went to the telephone and dialed her number.

In her own place at that moment, with a need far less profound than his, Donna was wanting him.

She was awakened suddenly by a sound at midnight. She did not actually know that it was a sound that awakened her, the assumption and acceptance of it simply being in her mind upon awakening, but she knew that it was midnight, because she could see, by turning her head slightly on her pillow, the luminous face of the bedside clock. Her left arm was pinned and numb, but she did not attempt to release it, lying very quietly, instead, and waiting for the repetition of the assumed sound, which very shortly came. It was no wonder that the sound had awakened her, for it was strangely penetrating, in spite of being very soft, and it was, she thought, a kind of whimper, a sound of dumb suffering.

Her arm still pinned, she raised her body from the hips as far as she could and leaned over Enos Simon to look down at his face. On his face was the visible expression of the sound, and as she watched the expression, the oral expression was repeated again, but this time with added shrillness and intensity, and it did not diminish and die away as it had before, but ascended precipitately to a high, thin cry. As if lifted by the force of the cry itself, his body jerked up to a sitting position, her own falling aside to avoid a collision, and the cry ended in his throat with a strangled sound.

“Darling,” she said. “Darling, what’s the matter?”

He remained in a rigid posture of sitting and did not answer. His body was trembling, but the trembling slowly stopped. At first she could plainly hear him breathing, but then, quite soon, she could hear him only by listening intently.

“You cried out in your sleep,” she said. “Did you have a dream?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.” Reaching up, she touched his shoulder, drawing her fingers down his side.

“Lie down,” she said. “Lie down.”

He lay back slowly, turning to put his arms around her and press his face against her breasts.

“Did you have a dream?” she said again.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember any dream.”

“You sounded as if something were hurting you. Not physically. As if you were suffering.”

“Nothing was hurting. I don’t know what it was.”

“Does it make you happy to be here with me?”

“Yes. It’s the only thing. Nothing else makes me happy.”

“Did it make you happier earlier? What we did?”

“Yes. Of course. It always makes me happy.”

“When it happens, I get the feeling that you are not happy afterward. That maybe you feel it is something you should not do. Do you love me afterward, or do you despise me for a little while?”

“No, no. I never despise you. You only imagine it if you think I do.”

“All right. Do you want to go back to sleep?”

“No. I’m wide awake. I couldn’t possibly sleep.”

“Neither could I. Would you like a drink or some coffee or anything like that?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Or a cigarette? Would you like a cigarette?”

“No. A cigarette is not what I want.”

“What is it? What is it that you want?”

“You know. You know.”

“All right. All right, darling. All right.”

And then, as before, in the achievement of ecstasy and even in the ecstatic accomplishment, she was aware in her bones that it was all a mistake, not in itself alone, but in this way and with this man, and that it might very well be in the end, for him or for her or for both, the worst mistake of all. Afterward, however, lying in the lethargy succeeding excitement, in a warm and delicious indifference to trials and trouble and all consequences whatever, she listened again to his regular breathing, the slow and even pumping of his lungs, and wondered what it was about him that incited her compassion and generosity and almost her love, and she understood suddenly that it was because he was like a child.

He is like a child, she thought, with a terrible problem, whatever the problem may be.

“Are you going to sleep now?” she said.

“Maybe now. In a little while.”

“Do you feel good?”

“Yes, good. Very good.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“That you are lovely. That I love you. That I can almost believe in myself when you are with me, and that I cannot believe in myself, and consequently nothing at all, when you are not with me.”

“You shouldn’t say that. You must not be dependent on me or anyone else. It isn’t necessary.”

“Don’t you think so?”

“Of course not. Just consider a minute. It was only three weeks ago that we met again, and before that we knew each other for only a few months. You see? Out of all your life, you have known me less than half a year, and all the rest of the time you got along perfectly well without me.”

“I did not get along perfectly well.”

“Nonsense, darling. Certainly you did.”

“No. Perhaps sometime I’ll tell you just how I did not.”

“I’d like that. I’d like you to tell me about yourself.”

“Perhaps I’ll tell you.”

“But not now?”

“No, not now.”

“All right. Tell me how things were at school. Did you have a good week?”

“No. I had a terrible week. All weeks are terrible at the school.”

“Is it that bad?”

“It’s bad enough.”

“Why do you stay, then?”

“I don’t know. Where else is there to go?”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You sound as if you thought Pine Hill were, so far as you’re concerned, the end of the world.”

“Perhaps it is. Who knows?”

“Oh, such nonsense! Besides, you are almost criticizing me by implication. I have tried to make you happy, and you obviously are not happy at all.”

“You mustn’t think that. When I am with you, I am as happy as I can be. I’d like to stay here always.”

“That’s not possible, of course.”

“I could at least stay again tomorrow night. Is that possible?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think you’d better.”

“Why? Can’t you stand me two nights in succession?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that we probably shouldn’t do it too often.”

“You’re only trying to avoid telling me the truth. You simply don’t want me. Have you planned to be with someone else?”