Call Me a Cab

39

After dinner we were invited to watch television with the Hilyerds in their small cramped living room, which had been furnished from an attic twenty years newer than the one that had supplied the cabins. Mr. Hilyerd preferred situation comedies heavy with canned laughter. His wife from time to time would stand in the doorway to watch, then shake her head and make a comment about “foolishness” and go back to the kitchen.

At ten o’clock Mr. Hilyerd yawned, rose, switched off the TV set, and said, “Good night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

I said, “You already fed them, eh?”

He gave me a sharp look while he caught up, then said, “Heh. Heh.”

We went out through the kitchen. Mrs. Hilyerd said, “Breakfast about seven-thirty?”

“That’d be fine,” Katharine said. “Would you call us at seven?”

“I’ll bang on the door. Doors.” Which was the only indication she ever gave that she found our status unconventional.

There were stars out, millions of them, very high and tiny in the soft black sky, and the moon was one night rounder. By its light we crunched over the gravel drive to our cabins. We stopped together out front. “Katharine,” I said. “Jesus Christ, Katharine.”

But she shook her head, saying, “No. This is a dream and you know it.”

“Let’s stay asleep.”

She smiled, saying she also wanted to. “I’ll see you in the morning, Tom.”

The bed was lumpy and I could neither sleep nor read my saga. At two in the morning I took a long hot shower, and some time after three I fell asleep, with the light on.