Ray Bradbury - Long After Midnight

"Only you and I know the things." His breath was fresh. She felt very sorry for him and herself and the world, suddenly. Everyone was infernally .alone. He was like a man clawing at a statue. She did not feel herself move. Only her mind, which was a lightless, dim fluorescent vapor, shifted. "Only you and I remember," he said, "and if one of us should leave, then half the memories are gone. So we must stay together because if one forgets the other remembers."

Remembers what? she asked herself. But she remembered instantly, in a linked series, those parts of incidents in their life together that perhaps he might not recall; the night at the beach, five years ago, one of the first fine nights beneath the canvas with the secret touchings, the days at Sunland sprawled together, taking the sun until twilight. Wandering in an abandoned silver mine, oh, a million things, one touched on and revealed another in an instant!

He held her tight back against the bed now. "Do you know how lonely I am? Do you know how lonely I make myself with these arguments and fights and all of it, when I'm tired?" He waited for her to answer, but she said nothing. She felt his eyelid flutter on her neck. Faintly, she remembered when he had first flicked his eyelid near her ear. "Spider-eye," she had said, laughing, then. "It feels like a small spider in my ear." And now this small lost spider climbed with insane humor upon her neck. There was something in his voice which made her feel she was a woman on a train going away and he was standing in the station saying, "Don't go." And her appalled voice silently cried, "But you're the one on a train! I’m not going anywhere!”

She lay back, bewildered. It was the first time in two weeks he had touched her. And the touching had such an immediacy that she knew the wrong word would send him very far away again.

She lay and said nothing.

Finally, after a long while, she heard him get up, sighing, and move off. He got into his own bed and drew the covers up, silently. She moved at last, arranged herself on her bed, and lay listening to her watch tick in the small hot darkness. "My God," she whispered, finally, "if s only eight-thirty."

"Go to sleep," he said.

She lay in the dark, perspiring, naked, on her own bed, and in the distance, sweetly, faintly, so that it made her soul and heart ache to hear it, she heard the band thumping and brassing out its melodies. She wanted to walk among the dark moving people and sing with them and smell the soft charcoal air of October in a small summery town deep in the tropics of Mexico, a million miles lost from civilization, listening to the good music, tapping her foot and humming. But now she lay with her eyes wide, in bed. In the next hour, the band played "La Golondrina," "Marimba," "Los Vie-jitos," "Michoacan la Verde," "Barcarolle," and "Luna Lunera."

At three in the morning she awoke for no reason and lay, her sleep done and finished with, feeling the coolness that came with deep night. She listened to his breathing and she felt away and separate from the world. She thought of the long trip from Los Angeles to Laredo, Texas, like a silver-white boiling nightmare. And then the green technicolor, red and yellow and blue and purple, dream of Mexico arising like a flood about them to engulf their car with color and smell of rain forest and deserted town. She thought of all the small towns, the shops, the walking people, the burros, and all the arguments and near-fights. She thought of the five years she had been married. A long, long time. There had been no day in all that time that they had not seen each other; there had been no day when she had seen friends, separately; he was always there to see and criticize. There had been no day when she was allowed to be gone for more than an hour or so without a full explanation. Sometimes, feeling infinitely evil, she would sneak to a midnight show, telling no one, and sit, feeling free, breathing deeply of the air of freedom, watching the people, far realer than she, upon the screen, motioning and moving.

And now here they were, after five years. She looked over at his sleeping form. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days with you, she thought, my husband. A few hours each day at my typewriter, and then all the rest of each day and night with you. I feel quite like that man walled up in a vault in The Cask of Amontillado. I scream but no one hears.

There was a shift of footsteps outside, a knock on their door. "Senora," called a soft voice, in Spanish. "It is three o'clock."

Oh, my God, thought the wife. "Sh!" she hissed, leaping up to the door. But her husband was awake. "What is it?" he cried.

She opened the door the slightest crack. "You've come at the wrong time," she said to the man in the darkness.

"Three o'clock, senora."

"No, no," she hissed, her face wrenching with the agony of the moment. "I meant tomorrow afternoon."

"What is it?" demanded her husband, switching on a light. "Christ, it's only three in the morning. What does the fool want?"

She turned, shutting her eyes. "He's here to take us to Paricutin."

"My God, you can't speak Spanish at all!"

"Go away," she said to the guide.

"But I arose for this hour," said the guide.

The husband swore and got up. "I won't be able to sleep now, anyway. Tell the idiot we'll be dressed in ten minutes and go with him and get it over, my God!"

She did this and the guide slipped away into the darkness and out into the street where the cool moon burnished the fenders of his taxi.

"You are incompetent," snapped the husband, pulling on two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, a sport shirt, and a wool shirt over that. "Jesus, this'll fix my throat, all right. If I come down with another strep infection—"

"Get back into bed, damn you."

"I couldn't sleep now, anyway."

"Well, we've had six hours' sleep already, and you had at least three hours' this afternoon; that should be enough."

"Spoiling our trip," he said, putting on two sweaters and two pairs of socks. "It's cold up there on the mountain; dress warm, hurry up." He put on a jacket and a muffler and looked enormous in the heap of clothing he wore. "Get me my pills. Where's some water?"

"Get back to bed," she said. "I won't have you sick and whining." She found his medicine and poured some water.

"The least thing you could do was get the hour right."

"Shut up!" She held the glass.

"Just another of your thick-headed blunders."

She threw the water in his face. "Let me alone, damn you, let me alone. I didn't mean to do that!"

"You!" he shouted, face dripping. He ripped off his jacket. "You'll chill me, I'll catch cold!"

"I don't give a damn, let me alone!" She raised her hands into fists, and her face was terrible and red, and she looked like some animal in a maze who has steadily sought exit from an impossible chaos and has been constantly fooled, turned back, rerouted, led on, tempted, whispered to, lied to, led further, and at last reached a blank wall.

"Put your hands down!" he shouted.

"I'll kill you, by God, I'll kill you!" she screamed, her face contorted and ugly. "Leave me alone! I've tried my damnedest—beds, language, time, my God, the mistakes, you think I don't know it? You think I'm not sorry?"

"I'll catch cold, I'll catch cold." He was staring at the wet floor. He sat down with water on his face.

"Here. Wipe your face off!" She flung him a towel.

He began to shake violently. "I'm cold!"

"Get a chill, damn it, and die, but leave me alone!"

"I'm cold, I'm cold." His teeth chattered, he wiped his face with trembling hands. "I'll have another infection."

"Take off that coat! It's wet."