Into Bed

She shimmers there, it seems to him – fanciful suddenly, as he only allows himself to be in thought, and only between two and three in the morning.
The capable, confident self he projects to the partners over lunch and the guys at O’Toole’s on Thursdays would never use a word like shimmers.
Or ethereal.
He thinks that, too, as she slips out of her black cocktail dress and stockings.
She’s ethereal in the pale moonlight that streams into the room, bathing the almost-white walls in a softer light.
They’ve never gotten around to painting.
They’ve never replaced the curtains, either, though the bland non-colour seems to cry out for splashes of paint. Or dirt. Or something.
He leaves them open most of the time. It’s not like there’s any light to bother them here, so far above False Creek.
Anyway, it’s practical to let in the moonlight, so she doesn’t have to find her way in the dark when she comes home late.
She doesn’t like to wake him with the light, she says.
She’s considerate. He appreciates that.
Though she never used to mind if she woke him.
She used to revel in it, startling him awake with the blinding flash of the bedside lamp, laughingly throwing a pillow over his head when he complained.
She’d toss her clothes in a heap on the floor and dive naked under the covers, crawling across him to her own side of the bed. Knowing he’d emerge from under the pillow to grab her. Knowing she’d grab him back and laugh.
Her laughter always sounded silver to him. Like the moonlight, he thinks now, but trimmed in warmth. Silver with purple edges.
She doesn’t laugh like that anymore.
He thinks this as she hangs the dress neatly and crumples the stockings into the wicker hamper.
When she laughs now, it’s crystal. Clear. Tinkly. Breakable.
He misses the other laugh.
That’s why he loves to watch her like this, light brown hair gleaming silver in the moonlight, pale skin almost translucent as she reaches for the old T-shirt she always sleeps in.
At moments like this, he can almost believe they’ll find it again.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t stir as she climbs into their bed, careful not to touch him as she slides under the white duvet and turns onto her side facing the wall.
He won’t reach out for her.
He could. His hands would find the softness of her breasts, the curve of her lower back, the hollow at the base of her throat that he’s traced so often with his fingertips, with his tongue.
She wouldn’t push him away. She’d respond with passion. Even abandon.
But tonight he can’t bear the thought of rote passion without warmth. Without the silver-purple laughter he loves. Wants. Needs.
It’s over.
The thought arrives, unbidden and unannounced, and it startles him that he’s allowed it to enter the closely guarded fortress that is his mind. He hasn’t pushed it away as he usually does, smothering it in excuses of busy lives, looming deadlines, too much stress.
It’s over.
He says it – nearly out loud, but not quite. He forms the words with his mouth, feeling the crisp meeting of tongue and teeth, the rounding of mouth, the soft fall of lips, the rise and fall of three gentle syllables that spell his life.
He’s known it, he sees with the clarity of the hour, much longer than he’s ever acknowledged. He should have seen it sooner. He should have wondered when they never said forever. Never we. Never us.
Always I. She. Me. Her.
He rolls over to face her but can see only the slim back in its cotton T-shirt.
He lifts his hand, reaches out to touch her. Thinks: I could tell her now. I could say it. I could leave.
He feels momentarily free. Weightless. But he knows it’s a false feeling. He knows he won’t. He lacks the courage. The will. When his two-to-three-o’clock self is asleep again, when harsh glare of sunlight replaces the moon’s silver sheen, he won’t speak.
He knows this.
They will drift, he thinks, on a sea of what used to be and what could have been.
He sees them, in fleeting fancy, floating on the grey water in two small oarless boats, heading endlessly towards an indistinguishable horizon.
It isn’t the silver-purple future he used to dream of.
But at least it’s something.
If he speaks, it’s nothing. A yawning emptiness and a single boat to nowhere.
He will not speak. He flips over, away from the cotton T-shirt, absorbing the glowing red numbers of the clock face.
So this is how it ends, he thinks.
Love.
Time of death. Two-forty-seven a.m.