Sleeping with the Dictionary (3 page)

He can see her from another room. He likes to whisper at her while a record is playing. That's how cool he can be. He'll ask which books she 's been reading. She could give him a list and we could discuss them later. We could gossip about books, which was one of his favorite activities. He didn't want to forbid her singing in the bathtub, but she would notice that he flinched a little, so she tried not to do it when he was around. She had not inherited the gene for music, just as his blood had distinguished itself from the red stuff of his ancestors. At all times he tried to indulge her, having heard the story of her austere childhood. She in turn would try to soothe and distract him from the score of abandonments that caused him such pain when remembered. They both had violent histories but longed to live in peace and so it was a pact sealed in blood, a sweetheart contract in which there were provisions for each to get the
upper hand. Even though she bled every month, she always had someone to blame; while he noted that each time he touched her, her body was there, which had not always been the case with her predecessors.

She listened to his lists and made her own in secret. A grocery list was necessary because he avoided buying food, preferring to spend cash on inessentials because they bought more satisfaction. “But you,” he told her, “are impossible to satisfy because you never seem to want, except to sleep and eat.” She lives in his house like a sleepy cat though once he joked he might pay to keep her here, because even a woman with no wants must have money to supply her needs.

He never seems to sleep or eat but lives on a mysterious energy source, adapted for life on her planet. That's why she can't laugh at his jokes, because humor is local. He was born far away but feels at home. Or he was born close to home but feels far from there now. Nothing touches him now except her hands, her mouth. He touches her hair. Her wet hair. He makes her a gift of his solitude. Solitude is something she misses. He takes hers with him when he leaves. She goes out for short walks, looking at sidewalks. He takes her to mountains and deserts. He seeks out old trees. They walk until she 's out of breath. “Chill,” he says, and she feels cold, suddenly noticing the air.

Quantum mechanics fixed my karma wagon

Gypsies want to hold my hand

Dr. Duck recommends

soap and ream therapies

With remedies like these

who needs friends?

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Thus is just a nothing to thaw you from your warpath and genius during our assonance beguiled two-time yellow agony. Those conversions chapped my thistle in manzanita waylay. In particular, they held a deer and latex impaled on my thistle. Not a deadbeat goes by when I donate this of you. That's why your silhouette remains, for me, sadistic and painterly. Won't you writhe or crawl? Let's mambo and be frisky. Your jiffy jockstrap.

This is a story I have heard:

Entwined in a passionate embrace
with his beloved wife,
the holy one exclaimed,
“I have reached enlightenment!”

His devoted partner responded,
“I'm truly happy for you, my love,
and if you can give me another minute,
I believe I'll get there too.”

K was burn at the bend of the ear in the mouth of Remember. She was the fecund chill burn in her famish. She came into the word with a putty smoother, a handsewn farther, and a yodeler cistern. They were all to gather in a rosy horse on a piety sweet in Alligator Panorama.

When her smoother and farther wrought her chrome from the hose spittle, her cistern fought the piddle ably was a girly heeded bawl. A bawl that dank silk, booed, burgled, rabbled, fried, and tweed in wipers. This was not a bawl that swept in the joy blocks with her rather joys. This was a giving bawl that wasn't a joy like a fluffed fan mail. Oh no! This was her grand blue piddle cistern that cold knot talc for a song time, but lonely fried and braid rather voices that the yodeler one cold knot rubberband.

It shook a few ears until they cold talc to gather, tall yolks, shear sacreds, heave a conversion or a dish cushion. That was laughter they kissed their handsewn farther who wind sway to Cheap Cargo, Ill Annoy. Mum and gulls made their mauve to Foreword Text. As swoon as they cold they boasted fetters in the snail to him and he relied as mulch as he cold.

Their inelegant smoother was a reacher who muddied lard, learned debris, and wept them upon the prosper pat. Reaching them fright from strong was her per rental doodly. They threw up and wind soft to mercy rule and hinder guardian, then on to
sedimentary, fecund dairy, and slide rule. They were wood in all those paces, and waded to knowledge at Cutie Ostentatious.

The smoother and her dodders all learned debris to gather. Evidentially, two quirked as proofs in the loony varsity. K was quirking for the slate of Taxes Hysterical Remission. Laughter a schmaltz fart with a wanky lurk, K fond her Sanity. A proof of reckoned comics. K quirked to learn her nastier debris and latter she rave burps and becalmed herself a smoother.