A Way Home by Theodore Sturgeon

Author:Theodore Sturgeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Lois turned again. Now she was looking up at the ceiling with him. Think of that! he thought acidly, here we are sharing some antiseptic moonbeams.

His biting thought was protection for a very brief while. His heart began again. It shook him with each beat. It shook the bed, the walls, the building, the beaten cliff outside, making it hurl back the sea with even greater violence.

There was the softest butterfly-wing touch on his chest. Beverly had opened her eyes.

Yancey thought madly, it’s like one of those meaningless conjugations they give you in first-year French. I stare up into the darkness, you stare up into the darkness, she stares up into the darkness...

Beverly moved. She wriggled up closer. She put her hand behind his head, pulling it toward her. She put her mouth on his ear. He felt her warm breath. Barely audible, her breath said, “Darling. What is it? What do you want?”

What did he want? Nothing, of course. Nothing he could have. Nothing, certainly, that he should have. He shook his head.

Beverly crept back until her head was on his shoulder again. She lay still. She slid one hand over his chest, to rest lightly on his hammering heart.

Lois sighed quietly and turned over, away from them. The wind laughed and laughed outside, and another breaker smashed and spouted. The room grew black, then silver again.

Abruptly Beverly sat up. “I can’t sleep,” she said clearly.

Lois was silent. Yancey watched Beverly. The silver light made everything in the room look like an overexposed photograph, but Beverly’s flesh seemed pink—the only thing in the whole mad, pulsing world that had any color but grey or black.

Beverly swung her legs out, stood up, and stretched in the moonlight. She was small and firm and—pink? Was she really pink, or was that a memory too?

What a beautiful complementation, he thought hotly; how balanced an equation expresses this chaos! Beverly, small and fair; open, simple, direct. Lois, tall, slender, dark, devious, complex. And each so clearly lacking just what the other had.

Beverly said, “I have nineteen chapters of Anna Karenina to read. Take me about an hour.” She knelt on Yancey’s bed briefly, reached across to the night table, and scooped something up. Then she went to the highboy and got the book. She went into the bathroom. Yellow light appeared starkly under the closed door.

Yancey lay quite still, looking at the line of yellow light.

At last he rolled over and looked at her. He could see the sliver of yellow again, across her eyes. She was half sitting, resting her weight on one slender arm. She was looking at him.

“What was it she picked up from the night table, Yancey?”

“Her watch.”

Lois made a sound, perhaps “Oh.” She sank down slowly, until she rested on her elbow. She was looking at him now.

He lay still, wondering if Lois could hear his heart. She probably could. Beverly probably could, through the door. He wondered, with shattering inconsequentiality, whether Beverly liked red curtains.

Lois made a slight motion with her chin toward the yellow gleam.

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