Sleep No More

feet on the hardwood.

“Do you want to talk some more?” Eve asked, looking nervous.

“I don’t know.”

She blinked, her dark eyes still moist. “Do you want to kiss me again?”

He flashed back to the cemetery, to the kiss that had thrown him twenty years into the past. “I’ve thought about it. The way you kiss. It’s…”

“Just like her. Is that what you were going to say?”

“Yes.”

“Think of it that way, if it makes it easier. Right now I don’t care. Just kiss me again.”

Even as he shook his head, he moved forward. She dropped his hand and touched his face, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, his lips. Her fingertip opened his mouth, and then she parted her lips and softly pressed her mouth to his. A shock like a static discharge went through him, leaving him tingling as the pressure of her lips increased. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, cautiously exploring. She bit his lower lip, tugging insistently, just as she had at the cemetery, letting him know the kiss was only a beginning, the opening movement of a symphony they both remembered. Or so she wanted him to believe. And God help him…he almost did. The desire she’d awakened yesterday had wound itself to an unbearable tension. He wanted Eve Sumner as he had not wanted a woman in more years than he could remember. He slid his hands up to her face and held her cheeks, searching her eyes for…what?

“Who are you?”

She didn’t blink. “You know.”

He shook her with sudden violence. “What do you want?”

“You, Johnny. That’s all. I want you. Right now.”

Her hand slid below his belt and gripped him with painful force. Had she done anything else, had she followed a subtler line of seduction, he would have repulsed her. But her animal directness-so unfamiliar to him now- shattered the cerebral restraint of loyalty to legal vows that had not been honored in this way for too long. All thought, all doubt flew out of his head. He bunched the yellow sundress in his hands and yanked it up over her hips. She wore nothing underneath. As he stared, she held her arms straight up, and he slid the fabric right off her.

She stood before him without a hint of self-consciousness, the way Mallory had at the falls, letting him absorb all of her. Then she pulled him to her and kissed him again, her hands working frantically at his clothes until he stood naked before her.

“In there?” he asked, nodding to the bedroom.

She shook her head and pulled his hand down, and he knew then that she’d been ready for some time. When her arms slipped around his neck, he slid his hands beneath her hips and simply lifted her onto him. There was momentary resistance, then none. They gasped and clutched each other like climbers caught in an ice storm, clinging together for warmth. He did not move within her; holding her suspended as she shivered around him was almost more sensory input than he could stand. After a time, a strange purring sound began in her chest. As it built slowly, another, deeper sound blended with a ululation in her throat, creating a strangely haunting music; it was the chimes of the grandfather clock vibrating in sympathy with their moving bodies, the waves transmitted through the seasoned floorboards. The quivering in Eve’s body suddenly focused in the pit of her belly, then radiated out through her limbs like the seizure of some hill woman about to speak in tongues. When the trapped cry finally burst from her throat, Waters’s legs trembled violently, and his vision went black as all the frustration and regret of the past four years poured into her. She was still screaming when his legs gave way, and he flung out his arms to break the impact of the floor.

They lay two feet apart, panting like winded sprinters stunned to find themselves naked together. The clock chimes still clanged on their chains, sending resonant waves through the room. Waters looked down at his hand as though at the hand of a stranger. But it was his hand, unchanged. After twelve years of fidelity, he had finally yielded to this ancient impulse, and the sky had not fallen. The earth had not opened at his feet.

Eve sat up and took his hand. She did not speak, but simply pulled him to his feet and led him down the corridor to the bedroom, where she drew back the covers on one of the three-quarter beds, gently pushed him under the sheet, and slid in beside him.

He lay on his back, looking up at the gathered fabric of the canopy, which radiated from a central circle like the rays of the sun. The light in the bedroom had a fluid consistency, as if a golden liquid were being filtered through the heavy lace curtains. Eve lay close and warm along his left side, for the bed was too small for them both.

“What are you thinking?” she asked. “Are you thinking about your wife?”

“No.”

She kissed his shoulder. “What, then?”

“This. It’s insane. The whole thing.”

“You’re wrong. This had to happen. It was always going to happen.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“I know. Johnny…look at me. Did you feel me?”

He refused to look at her. “I don’t want to talk about Mallory.”

She kissed his shoulder again. “All right. As long as you’re here. That’s all that matters. There’s time for all the rest later.”

All the rest. He turned onto his side and looked into her eyes. “I don’t know why I came here. And I don’t know what you’re doing. What you want out of this. You could be crazy for all I know. The things you say are crazy.”

She nodded, her eyes filled with patience. “But I’m not crazy. You know I’m not.”

He knew no such thing, but he saw no point in telling her that.

She took his hand and placed it over her breast. Her heart beat strongly beneath the swollen bosom.

“I know they don’t feel the same,” she said. “Not exactly the same. But this is a very nice body.” She averted her eyes for a moment. “Better than some I’ve known.”

He pulled his hand away. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I told you, Johnny. You’re not ready for the truth.”

“We just had sex. We didn’t use any precautions. How much crazier can it get?”

“Don’t worry about me getting pregnant. Eve had her tubes tied.”

Her use of the third person confused him; he shook his head, trying to keep his mind clear in the face of her delusion.

“And as far as other worries, I’ve been tested. Eve wasn’t very selective in the past, but I changed her. Slowly.”

“I feel like I’m on acid,” Waters murmured.

Eve giggled, an odd sound after all that had come before. “Johnny? You’ve done acid?”

“When I worked in Alaska, I did a couple of tabs. Nobody in this town would believe that, thank God.” He brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. She had very fine hair; it made him think of an animal pelt.

“Mmm,” she purred.

He let his hand fall to the concave curve of her abdomen, then slid it down to the silkier hair there. She rose against his fingers, pressing into his touch. He moved his hand back up to her face and caressed her cheek.

“We’re through the looking glass,” he said. “I want to hear the rest of it. Finish the story you started in the cemetery.”

Fear flickered in her eyes. “Only if you promise not to leave. You have to let me finish.”

“Why would I leave? I’m the one asking you to tell it.”

“You’ve never heard anything like this before. It might be hard to listen to.”

“For God’s sake. Just start talking.”

She nodded hesitantly, and he lay back, letting his gaze wander along the underside of the canopy as her low voice trembled.

“I told you how it was. The rape. How at the moment I felt I was going to die, when he was strangling me and finishing, I suddenly wasn’t looking at him-I was looking at me. Mallory. I was in him, right? Looking at a woman who lay under him, not breathing. And that woman was me.”