Free Elvissey by Jack Womack

bedded,
staring ceilingways, confronting the dark.

    "Iz-?" he whispered.
    "Think I'll pass?" I asked, reclining alongside him, corpus
to corpse. Rolling over toward me, he twitched as if galvanized; raised himself on one elbow and eyed me long, saying
nothing. John studied me so closely as I'd studied myself,
vizzing and revizzing my ashen hair, my watery eyes, my
bleached skin. "Preferred?"
    "Yes," he said. "No. Yes-"
    "Which?" I asked.
    "Both. All. Iz-"
    He caressed my shoulder, as if to demonstrate to himself
that I was more than cloud or nightmare, though no more
harmful than either. Leverett's pills sedated John so efficaciously as had his old prescription, yet not to such degree,
and those emotions he retained intensified anew. His lassitude ceased at once, that afternoon. By evening his soul
seemed nearly to reemerge.
    "You've cat-tongued," I said. "Blurt."
    "Confusion overwhelmed. You appeared ghosted."
    "Foolish," I said, and smiled. "Grave matters you're
minding, as ever."
    "Iz, it's-"
    "What's thought, then? Is my look better or worse?"
    "Unsayable," he said. "You're neither nor. You're a
third."
    Rolling stomachways, pressing my face into my pillow as
if to snuff breath, I wished I had a confessor near, who by
telling me what I should think, would enable me to say what
was thought.
    "What troubles, Iz?" John said. "It's told as seen. Unsayable because-"
    "I'll renew as I was, once returned," I said. "Bear up and
blind eye till then."
    "Unsayable because neither. Better, worse; inapplicable.
Different, nothing other. Beauty surpasses, irregarded."
    My thoughts perversed: whose beauty? With careful move ment, John shifted his legs; during his clinicking the medicis
finalized him for our trip, certifying him limber, reoiling,
restringing, and rehanging all joints. Hauling himself onto
me as if onto a raft, he clasped my face as if holding ostrichfruit, kissing me; I responded, full. Momentslong, all was
nearly as once before; I rolled with him, wrapping myself
round, and he held and crushed and pounded. But as I lay
there beneath him I troubled anew, sensing sans reason that
he'd gone elsewhere again, perhaps thinking of others or
even of me as I'd been. This notion disconnected me, and
however much I should have preferred to remain within my
own body, I didn't, and allowed myself release. As in what
children call cyberdreams, real enough to heartseize, I saw
myself hovering above our bed, observing sans expression
our thrashes below, wondering how it must feel.

    "Iz-"
    "Yes-?" I asked, uncertain from which of my figures my
voice issued.
    "You there-?"
    ` y? "
    As he pushed himself inside me, he descended each time
with hammerblows. I'd thought that as he raged the sickness
would arise, and slow him, yet each violent shove only made
more mindless his thrall. Without warning or desire, my soul
lurched back into my flesh, cleaving body with spirit till both
were bloodied.
    "Hurting," I shouted. "You're hurting me, John-"
    His eyeshades fluttered, flashing the blank white windows
they hid. My husband muted while he bruised, vising me
into immobility, giving no sign of hearing my pleas. My
fright was rising high when he unexpectedly burst, shaking
as if he were bombarded land. Coughing for several minutes
afterward, he enabled air to reinvade his lungs. Reaching
around his great shivering whiteness, I clutched my husband
twoarmed; then, as mindlessly, tried squeezing his breath
out, as if to kill him while I could.

    "Iz-" he said, gasping as he broke my hold.
    `John, " I shouted; recovered. "Bestill. Calm, calm yourself. John-"
    "Where were you?" he shouted, his air regained.
    "Where? With you-" He sighed; lay becalmed across me,
his eyes pinching shut, racking and reracking, wetting my
skin with tears. "You hurt me, John-"
    "You absented," he said. "I felt you go."
    "Forgive," I said, "Forgive, John, forgive, but you hurt
me.
    "All's nulled when only one's pleased. Why did