Lying in Bed (34 page)

“I've been saving it for this.”

“For what?”

“For when we'd make a child. For when we knew we'd be together forever.”

I know what she means. When you marry and have a child, your blood is joined eternally. It is the only resurrection.

“Help me spread it out.” She pushes all her notebooks to the floor. There's a violence that makes me sense she'll never write in them again.

When the Broken Star is over the Double Wedding Ring, she climbs in between them. I undress and join her. I hold her in my arms.

Libro secondo.

There is nothing more to say, or do.

But as I'm finally ending my pannychous vigil and am embracing with eternal gratitude the irenic contours of marital slumber, I hear her ecstatically drowsy voice: “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Johnny … there's a bike from Take A Wok chained up downstairs … whoever delivered your food must have forgotten it … I suppose they'll come to get it in the morning …”

We sleep.

It's 5:15 in the morning and I just got woken up by a dream that was so strange I can't go back to sleep even though I slept only 2 hours and I'm supposed to open the shop at 10. Maybe I won't open today. I'm thinking of closing the shop anyway. I'm thinking of staying home with Johnny and the baby. I want us all to live like Johnny.

Anyway I'm exhausted but I'm also ecstatic so maybe it was my excitement that woke me up so early and not the dream. But I definitely had the dream. I didn't imagine it. In it I was sleeping just the way I was sleeping. So maybe it was a dream about dreaming. I was in our bed and suddenly there was a man standing over me. He was Chinese from what I could see and was young and kind of good looking and dressed like a waiter with little glasses on the end of his nose. He was looking down at me holding a violin and a violin bow. Then he bent over and put the violin and the bow between me and Johnny. And he walked away through the loft and out the door. And when I woke up the violin and the bow were actually there!

I must have had the dream because I saw the empty violin case when I came home and never got a chance to find out from Johnny what it was doing there. Johnny must have gotten up and brought it into bed. Maybe he'll teach the baby how to play it. I keep thinking about names: Wilhelm if it's a boy. If it's a girl I don't know: Maria Barbara, Anna, Sarabande but called Sara, or maybe even Carla now that Johnny knows everything.

Published by 1995

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

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WORKMAN PUBLISHING.

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© 1995 by J. D. Landis. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-772-2