A. Homes - Music for Torching

They chew. They cut their meat. Paul eats heartily while Elaine eats dutifully. They eat their vegetables and listen as the Nielsons talk.

"If I start now, by Thanksgiving I'll be good enough to compete," Mary says, going on about skating lessons. "Joy Reckling did it. She took lessons, and now she skates all over the place. I bet if I worked hard I could skate as well as she does."

"You'll skate even better," George says.

"You'll be the best," Pat says.

All their dreams laid out, and George and Pat just say yes, and good, and great. Up, up, and away. They don't say, No, you must be crazy, and What the hell are you thinking? Nothing is out of range, everything is possible.

"I've been wanting to move the lilac bush-it's not thriving where I've got it now," George says. "If I put it somewhere else, it'll be happier. I like my bushes to be happy. The azaleas seem delirious, don't they?" Pat winks at George, and he grins back at her.

Paul is no longer smiling. He and Elaine sit staring down at their plates, ashamed. At their house things don't go like this; nothing is easy; it's every man for himself, each hoarding what little he has, each wanting his own, each wanting something different. They speak in the defensive. They wait for disappointment. They constantly accumulate proof of having been let down, misunderstood, unappreciated. They are a tense and bitter lot, and haven't even noticed it until now. Compare and contrast; the differences are so revealing.

"Decaf?" Pat stands over her with a pot of steaming coffee. "Decaf?"

"Please," Elaine says, raising her cup.

A plate of cookies is passed around. "Ummmm," Elaine says. She takes one. Paul takes one, then two, then three more.

"Delicious. Did you make these?" Elaine asks, expecting Pat to say that she whipped them up this afternoon just after she put the roast in. Elaine blithers on, spitting a slew of compliments, a kind of Tourette's syndrome in reverse. She goes on, using what she says aloud to beat herself up mentally. She should be more like Pat, she should get more done, she should be much better than she is, she should be more.. There is no interrupting her.

In the end Pat blushes. "I didn't make them," she says apologetically.

"We did," the two little MM's chirp.

"Well, what wonderful bakers you are," Elaine says, starting again, whacking her brain, for not baking, for not doing anything right, for not doing anything at all. "How wonderful you are," she says. How awful I am, she thinks. Elaine reaches for another cookie. "Ummm, so good," she says. You fat thing, you should be on a diet, she tells herself.

The girls giggle.

Elaine smiles.

Dinner is done. While Mary and Margaret clear the table, Pat and George lead Elaine and Paul back down the hall, getting them set for bed.

"There's a little light down here," George says, pointing to a night-light in the hallway. "If you need anything, holler."

"I couldn't cook," Elaine blurts. She is feeling as if she has to explain.

"It's all right," Pat says.

Elaine and Paul close the bedroom door. There's a nightgown on one bed and a pair of pajamas on the other. Elaine opens the door again. Pat and George are gone. Elaine doesn't understand where it comes from, how it happens. Her interest goes beyond the standard housewife competitiveness and into thinking that Pat and George must be shape shifters. Elaine was with them all evening and never saw Pat or George leave the table. Is there a hidden housekeeper? Do little Borrowers live beneath the floorboards? What explains it? Who does this?

Paul's back is toward her. He is wearing the nightgown. It stops just above his knees. She sees he has shaved his legs, there are nicks on the backs of his calves.

"You look very pretty."

"Thank you. I feel pretty."

"I've never seen you in a dress before."

"It was on my bed."

Elaine goes to the other bed, takes off her sweat suit and puts on the pajamas, dressing herself as though she's a paper doll-cuffing the bottoms, buttoning the buttons. She lays herself out on the satiny pink bedspread, resting her head gently on the pillow. She crosses her hands over her chest, closes her eyes, and imagines this is the look, the feel, of a coffin. Paul lies down next to her, squeezing onto the same narrow bed. She gets up. She puts a chair against the door and goes back to the bed.

"What about the boys?" he says. "Should we be calling them? Should we be saying good night? Do you have numbers for where they are?"

"Do you?" she asks back.

"No."

"Not even Nate's mother's?"

He blushes. Heat spreads through his face, his neck. He imagines his bald head glowing like a knob, a nut of molten glass-she can see right through him.

"No," he says.

"Liar."

There's nothing for Paul to say. He waits. "Should we check our machine at home?"

"Someone bought the machine this afternoon for five dollars."

They hear Pat and George talking through the wall-getting ready for bed, muffled voices, half sentences, arrangements, sleepy plans.

"It's a lot," Paul says.

"Too much for one day," Elaine says.

And they are quiet for a while.

"Home," Paul says. "Home," he repeats like an incantation. And then he stops. He seems to rally, to rouse himself. "Why'd we do it?" he asks.

"We did it because there was nothing else we could do."

The night-light has a pink bulb. It casts pink light on the pink walls. The room glows, pulsing like an organ. Paul is thinking of the date, of the cell phone in his pocket. He called her before from the bathroom-she wasn't home. The outgoing message on her machine said, "Hi, I can't come right now.. "

Paul's gown begins to puff, to rise like a tent. His cock swells, making the nightgown the big top of his three-ring circus.

"Fuck me," he hisses at Elaine.

He climbs on top of her. The twin bed squeaks.

"We're awful," she says from under him. "We're worse than we thought we were, worse than anyone I've ever met." Her breath is slightly muffled by his weight.

"We couldn't be that bad," he says.

"Couldn't we?"

They slide off the bed and onto the floor. They are in the gully between the beds, deep in the pink shag carpet. He hikes up his dress, she lets out the drawstring of her pajama bottoms. They toss and turn. She is facedown, gripping the carpet threads, thinking they are like the cilia that line the throat, the ear, the lungs. She is traveling, like in the movie Fantastic Voyage, she is moving through the body, the bloodstream. The satin trim of Paul's nightgown tickles her back.

When they are done, she pulls up her bottoms. She cinches the drawstring tight. His hot squirt is oozing out of her, seeping down her thighs. "Good night," she says, getting back into bed.

"Good night," he says, as though they are strangers.

She takes a book from the night table and begins to read from A Wrinkle in Time. "'Go back to sleep,' Meg said. 'Just be glad you're a kitten and not a monster like me.'"

Paul is up in the night.

He is awake and he is hungry. He puts on a robe and goes tiptoeing into the kitchen. She is there, in her pajamas at the table.

"Hi, honey," he says.

"Hello, Paul," she says.

He realizes it's Pat, not Elaine. Pat is at the table wearing pajamas, making lists, graphs, working furiously in pencil. "Sit," she says, tucking her pencil behind her ear.

Paul pulls the belt of his robe tighter, worrying that somehow she will know he's wearing a nightgown. He sits.

She puts four cookies on a plate and warms a glass of milk for him. "I don't sleep," she says. "If anyone ever wants to know how I do it-that's how. I'm up all night. I work ahead. I plan things months in advance. Knowing what's going to happen relaxes me."