Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies Read Free Page B

he worked inside, and his breath filled the air with potential.
    Regina was tired and deliciously filled, and that satisfaction at least was hers. She luxuriated in it and slept.
    In the morning, she lay alone in the bed. She flung off the covers and padded into the living room, pulling down her rucked-up nightgown, shivering against the morning chill. He stood by the window again, naked, not caring if people on the streets looked up and saw. She stood beside him and gently enclosed his upper arm with her fingers, leaned her cheek against his shoulder, a motion that came so naturally she surprised herself with her own grace. “What do you want?” she asked.
    â€œNo,” he said tightly. “The question is, what do you want?”
    â€œI’ll get us some breakfast. You must be hungry by now.”
    â€œNo. I’m not. I don’t know what I am or how to feel.”
    â€œI’ll get some food,” she continued obstinately, letting go of his arm. “Do you like milk?”
    â€œNo. I don’t know.”
    â€œI don’t want you to become ill.”
    â€œI don’t get ill. I don’t get hungry. You haven’t answered my question.”
    â€œI love you,” she said, with much less grace.
    â€œYou don’t love me. You need me.”
    â€œIsn’t that the same thing?”
    â€œNot at all.”
    â€œShall we get out today?” she asked airily, backing away, realizing she was doing a poor imitation of some actress in the movies. Bette Davis, her voice light, tripping.
    â€œI can’t. I don’t get sick, I don’t get hungry. I don’t go places.”
    â€œYou’re being obtuse,” she said petulantly, hating that tone, tears of frustration rising in her eyes. How must I behave? Is he mine, or am I his?
    â€œ Obtuse, acute, equilateral, isosceles, vector, derivative, sequesential, psych - integrative, mersauvin powers ...” He shook his head, grinning sadly. “That’s the future of mathematics for the next century. It becomes part of psychology. Did you know that? All numbers.”
    â€œDid you think that last night?” she asked. She cared nothing for mathematics; what could a man made of words know about numbers?
    â€œWords mix in blood, my blood is made of words.... I can’t stop thinking, even at night. Words are numbers, too. Signs and portents, measures and relations, variables and qualifiers.”
    â€œYou’re flesh,” she said. “I gave you substance.”
    â€œYou gave me existence, not substance.”
    She laughed harshly, caught herself, forced herself to be demure again. Taking his hand, she led him back to the chair. She kissed him on the cheek, a chaste gesture considering their state of undress, and said she would stay with him all day, to help him orient to his new world. “But tomorrow, we have to go out and buy you some more clothes.”
    â€œClothes,” he said softly, then smiled as if all was well. She leaned her head forward and smiled back, a fire radiating from her stomach through her legs and arms. With a soft step and a skip she danced on the carpet, hair swinging. Webster watched her, still smiling.
    â€œAnd while you’re out,” he said, “bring back another dictionary.”
    â€œOf course. We can’t use that one anymore, can we? The same kind?”
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” he said, shaking his head.
    The uncertainty of Webster’s quiet afternoon hours became a dull, sugarcoated ache for Regina Coates. She tried to disregard her fears—that he found her a disappointment, inadequate; that he was weakening, fading—and reasoned that if she was his mistress, she could make him do or be whatever she wished. Unless she did not know what to wish. Could a man’s behavior be wished for, or must it simply be experienced?
    At night the words again poured into her, and she smiled in the dark, lying beside the warmth of