Dreams of Rescue by Laura Shaine Cunningham
Author:Laura Shaine Cunningham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2003-07-15T00:00:00+00:00
Someone Is Always Watching
What possesses me? I wake to the sun streaming over the duvet, to a brighter morning, and yet I cannot banish that specter from the windowpane. I know it must have been an optical illusion—the reflection of the moon. A literal man in the moon. The moon was full last night; doesn’t that mean something? Magic? The tidal pull? Lunacy?
I must go across the lake and question the man who lives there, the man in the glass house. I have never met him, but I know so much about him from Jake Taylor, the mailman. His name is Winsten; he, too, is from the city. “He’s some kind of writer,” Jake once told me. But mainly I know this man Winsten is in over his head—in the actual sense: His flat-roofed glass house is not suited for this northerly clime; each blizzard buries him, and he comically tries to dig out with the tiny fireplace shovel.
I have to meet him now, today, and know why he is signaling me. What other explanation can there be for the flickering light, synchronized to my own?
I am incurable, I suppose, in this romantic tic—the visualization of heroic men who might save me, then love me. I wonder if he is flirting. I conjure a Mr. Winsten, who is exactly right for me, a bit older, a streak of silver in his hair, handsome, well built, if ineffectual against blizzards. A bespectacled and kindly man who will take me to his chest and put his arms around me and let me, for one minute, rest. That is my dream for the day: a moment of peace in a man’s embrace. Maybe it isn’t even sexual but soothing: Can comfort exist between men and women, without another motive? In the movies, comfort—let’s face it—is the prelude. Very few women are comforted on screen without having sexual congress shortly thereafter.
In my own scenario this man Winsten says, “I signaled you because I sensed your despair and I wanted to hold you.” In reality he has an unlisted number.
Of course, with a fantasy like this, I can hardly wait to cross the lake. If I had a dogsled, I would be in it, scooting over the ice. But, especially in my current circumstance, I am a great respecter of privacy. I settle for running out to meet the mailman, and slip Jake Taylor a note to deliver on the morning route: “I live across the lake. I saw your lights last night and would like to speak with you. As your phone is unlisted, here’s my number.”
Jake Taylor accepts the letter but issues an advisory: “Mr. Winsten, he don’t like to be disturbed, no, no; he got Keep Out signs all over the driveway, and puts a chain on, too, except when the garbageman or the town plow need to come through. Sometimes, even then, he don’t take the chain down. That’s how come he stays buried,” Jake concludes, with a rustic cackle. “I wouldn’t wait to hear back from him.
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