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By Root 683 0

turned the covers back as a married couple might. They slid against each other and along the silky sheets, and she thought of how, in the early years, they had not had a bed; and that later the beds, like their minutes together, had always been stolen, never their own. And that thought let in a flood of images that had been lost to her, small moments obliterated by all that had come after. She smelled a dank, salt-scented pier, her slip wet with sea water. She saw a bedroom in a foreign country, with its roof open to the sky. She saw a boy, standing shyly in a hallway with a box he had wrapped himself. She felt Thomas’s breath on her neck and a loosening in her bones. She saw glints upon the water as two teenagers sat on a hill overlooking the Atlantic, aching to possess the light as if it were water or food and could be stored for nourishment.

Thomas was whispering in her ear. She reached up and touched his scar, ran her fingers along the length of it. She wondered what his images were, what he was seeing. Or was it simpler for a man? Would Thomas have a sense of mission, fueled by desire, touching her as he was with his exquisite sense of timing, his perfect pitch?

—I’ve always loved you, he said.

She put her fingers to his lips. She did not want words, she who normally craved them, crawled toward them if need be. But now, she thought, just now everything could be said with the body. There were details, small things such as the softness at his waist or the thinning of his hair, that she would not linger over. Denial was sometimes essential for sex or love. Thomas was trailing his lips along her ribs, and it was lovely, and she was glad that this had not been lost.

* * *

A voice in the corridor woke her, and she strained to see behind the shades. It was dark still, the middle of the night. She could feel Thomas’s breath on her shoulder. She thought immediately that their coming together had been archival and primitive. Indeed, in retrospect, it seemed preordained. And for the first time since Vincent died, Linda was relieved that she was alone in the world, that there had been nothing furtive or illicit about making love with Thomas.

A foot had gone numb, and she tried to extricate it from the tangle of their legs and arms without waking Thomas; but he woke anyway and immediately pulled her closer as if she were about to leave him. Don’t go, he said.

—I won’t, she said soothingly.

—What time is it?

—I don’t know.

He kissed her. Are you . . . ? He paused, uncharacteristically lost for words.

She smiled. Thomas needing to be reassured, like any man. I feel wonderful.

And reassured, he stretched his body along her own. There are more experiences in life than you’d think for which there are no words, he said.

—I know.

They lay face-to-face, their eyes open.

—I won’t ask you what you were thinking about, she said.

—You can ask me anything.

—Well, I was thinking about the day we sat on a hill overlooking the water, she said.

—That was the first time I ever saw you cry, he said.

—It was?

—You were crying from the beauty of it, like children do.

She laughed. I can’t feel that anymore. So much of the immediacy of beauty is gone. Muffled.

—Actually, I was thinking about that night on the pier when you jumped in the water in your slip.

—My God, I didn’t even know you.

—I loved it. He held her with one arm and pulled up the covers with the other. Listen, I want to sleep with you now. But you have to promise you won’t leave me while I’m sleeping.

—I promise, she said. Though he and she both knew that promises could no longer, with any certainty, be made or honored.

* * *

The tables were awash with white linen, salmon chargers and heavy silver plate. In the background she could hear the muted hum of a vacuum. There were nearly thirty empty tables, yet still she waited to be seated while a waitress with a humpback consulted a plan. As Linda was led to a table, a man’s pager went off with a musical song.

She liked the anonymity of breakfast, the license to watch others. Beside her an elderly woman and