Free Reunion at Red Paint Bay by George Harrar Page B

bed, he was sure he would do just that.
    He woke into darkness
, heard a faint rubbing noise, like metal against wood, and sat up. In the shadows an amorphous figure swayed side to side, as if from one foot to the other. Simon squinted to make sense of the broad shoulders, absurdly thin body, and shortened arms. It looked like some fantastic tribal costume.
    The movement stilled and the shape melted away. Simon fell back on his bed, inhaling a long, slow breath to compose himself. He hated waking this deep into the night. The sudden consciousness always confused him. What was dream and what was reality? He took another breath, sipping in air until his lungs couldn’t hold any more, then exhaling slowly. A muskybreeze billowed through the open window. The night was growing a little cooler, another storm blowing up the coast. It was an unusual pattern for July.
    He curled on his side and reached out with his arm. It fell into the empty space next to him. That scared him for a moment. Amy was gone. Davey, too. The only life in the house was him, and Casper, sleeping in some soft spot. The illumined numbers on the alarm clock clicked away another minute of his life, 1:15 turning into 1:16. The night would get no darker.
    Simon shifted onto his back again. A gust of wind spilled into the room, and the human figure in the shadows seemed to dance.

He dresses in black
, head to toe, with a light cap tilted low over his eyes. He leaves the inn by the side door at midnight. No one sees him. He feels invisible, drained of flesh, consciousness without body. A few cars pass him on the way into town, and he wonders what the drivers perceive of him when they glance over.
    He parks across the street and observes the house. There’s little to note, just a single light on in the upstairs front window. After a while a shadow passes by, and the light extinguishes. He waits a suitable while longer, then gets out of the car. He strolls across the street and up the walk, in no hurry. He doesn’t bother trying the front door this time, just continues aroundthe side. The lights next door are out, the neighbors asleep. He turns the backdoor knob. It opens.
    He listens—no dog barking, no noise at all. He steps into the kitchen and lets his eyes adjust to the dim light from some appliance on the counter. He has a choice now, turn back or continue? He continues across the kitchen toward the doorway, hesitates, then passes down the hallway to the staircase. He turns there and puts his foot on the first step. No squeaking, a solid stair covered with a thick rug. He climbs carefully, holding on to the railing. He counts as he goes, one to eleven, an unusually steep incline. At the top he looks right, into a small room with a bed against the wall. No one there. He moves on down the hall to the end where there’s another door wide open. He leans his head around the doorjamb. In the bed a body breathes, the sheet rising and falling every few seconds, the tranquil rest of someone without a care in the world. He hears air expelling from the lungs, then sucked back in again. The rhythm of it relaxes him a little, and he soon finds himself breathing in synchrony. He feels oddly peaceful, as if sleeping himself. He has already gone further than he ever imagined he could. It thrills him to be doing this, floating through the house like a phantom. He has never felt so light, almost immaterial. It’s a surprisingly pleasant sensation. He should leave, of course, before some misstep triggers a chain of events he can’t control. But he wants tosee the man in his most artless state. One cannot pose in sleep. He crosses the threshold into the bedroom and glides over the hardwood floor rather than lifting his weight and putting it down again. He stops a few feet from the bed and stares. The image soon emerges from the darkness—the low hairline, the thin lips, the nose straight and narrow. An appealing face, as it was as a boy. Everything so symmetrical.
    The