Free Something Is Out There by Richard Bausch

for her at every turn; his imagination was boundless. The morning went fast.
    Finally, he pulled the blanket with him, removing himself gently and getting out of the bed, and he stood there, looking around the room. “I expected more religious kinds of stuff on the walls.”
    She saw the gleam of sweat on his chest and abdomen, and the little lines of where her nails had scratched his upper arms. “No,” she said. “It’s just the Bible for him, you know.”
    “A waste.”
    “I thought it was sweet when he and I were first together. I did. I thought it meant he’d be true. And he is. He’s sweet. He calls me angel. And I actually like it when he does that. We have a nice family life. A good life—like you and Marta.”
    “Marta’s a fool,” he said. “But then so am I.”
    “You’re feeling guilty.”
    “No.” He turned slightly, still taking in the room. “A little, maybe. I must not be a very nice man.”
    This upset her. She lifted herself slightly and looked at him. “You shouldn’t talk like that. You’re a wonderful person.”
    “Yeah. Well. I think sometimes maybe it’s me, you know. Maybe I just don’t stir her drink.”
    “Does she get any pleasure—I’m sorry. We’ve been through this.”
    He looked at her. “I gave you pleasure. I saw it and felt it.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    A moment later, he said, “This isn’t where you sleep.”
    “No.”
    “Let’s do it in there.”
    “Okay.”
    “One minute,” he said, and he went into the bathroom and closed the door. She got up, put her robe back on, then stepped to the window and looked out through the little slit in the blinds. No one on the street. The dog was still sending its two-note complaint into the sunny air.
    In the kitchen she put the water on for coffee, and then she went back down the hall to the bathroom door. “I’m making coffee.”
    “I don’t ever drink it. Remember?”
    “Do you mind if I have some?”
    He opened the door. He still had the blanket wrapped around him. “Let’s go back to bed.”
    “Let’s have something to eat and then go back,” she said.
    “We don’t have that much time, baby.”
    She turned the burner off and let him lead her into the master bedroom. But then she hesitated, pulled back, so that he stopped and his hand tightened on her wrist.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “This doesn’t feel right.”
    “You’re kidding me.”
    “I sleep here every night.”
    He looked at the room, still holding her wrist. “That makes it especially good.”
    “Please,” she said. “I know it’s silly. But I just can’t.”
    He let go, and walked by her, across to the other room. She closed the door and paused there for a few seconds. She would never have believed that her life could become as strange as this. Her heart was thudding against her breastbone. She had never felt more alive. Except that there was also a kind of macabre sense that she had opened a little crevice in a fortification on the other side of which something awful awaited—there did seem to be an element of morbidness about all this. She could not decide if it was something she remembered from her upbringing or if it was real. She was not a bad person. She was gentle and loving to her husband, the children, her parents, his, the whole family, everyone she knew. Yet the whole of her previous existence seemed unreal, now, distant, a faint rumor.
    She put her hand on the wall and steadied herself.
    He was waiting for her. There was a curve to his eyebrows that she had liked from the first glance at his picture online. He patted the bed by his side. And she went to him.
    She said his name, and kissed along his collarbone. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “It’s just a silly superstition, and I’m more comfortable here. You want me to be comfortable, don’t you?” He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a sound, moving against her.
    “Nathan?”
    “Don’t worry,” he said. And he put his face down in the pillow at her