1
The rock stopper against the bathroom door rolls around on the tile grout when a gust blows through our house. If the winds pick up enough the stopper gives entirely, causing the door to slam shut. It won't bother Sarah tonight--my wife, now asleep, a rock herself--yet it makes me wonder why I still haven't replaced it with one of those rubber wedges.
I wonder too whether it bothers the kid who comes in to hang out with us. Not that it's any personal bother of mine. The kid won't talk, he just likes to make noise. He's already in here, I'm sure, hoping for some attention.
I doze for a bit, then I'm in the kitchen filling a glass at the tap; at this point, the kid starts up. Over the running water his feet patter outside the bedroom. Like always, the patter retreats into my room the moment I'm walking back.
The room is dark of course--it must be between two-thirty and three in the morning--and I can't see where he's settled so I feel my way in, minding my steps so I don't tread on him. Whether this is possible to do, I'm not sure, but hearing him yell would scare me to death.
I sit on the bed before swinging my feet up and over. It's a close call with my feet as my eyes adjust to the dark enough to notice the lump. His lump. His self. He's actually in bed with us, and thought we wouldn't mind.
Yanking my phone out of the wall, I illuminate the potato sack-sized lump between my knees. I pull the sheets down to see him lying here, fetal-position like a novice hide-and-seek contestant.
"Well?" I say.
I bring the phone close to get a better look at his face, but he lifts his hands up to block the glare, making like it's me disturbing him. I'm impatient now so I lean over, my face inches from his left ear to repeat myself.
"The hell are you doing?" Sarah's groggy mumble over my shoulder.
My body has appeared to assume a child's pose on the bed: ass in the air, face buried in the comforter, my mouth ingesting hot sweat which is everywhere.
Yes, the kid is out of here.
Pulling myself up, I'm just in time to catch the sedan through our bay window. It swerves onto our street, speeding past us at about forty-five miles an hour. I hear it execute a sloppy k-turn in that grainy drop-off at the mouth of the beach, before gunning it back down to continue south on Bay Avenue.
The kid picks its times to dip in and out, but the sedan is rather consistent--never before two, always before dawn, with the obnoxious k-turn before the beach.
Sarah exiles me from the bed after rolling into the preponderance of sweat between us. I put up a bit of a fight, but she insists I'm having another of my "nights," so I strip out of my wet t-shirt, and leave the room naked.
The crosswinds bounce in and around the den, calming me down enough that sleep becomes a viable option. I drift off just as the rock stopper does a glissando across the bathroom tiles, causing the door to whip back into the frame in this jarring slam.
A second bout of patter then; the door appears to have scared the kid more than me. He travels from the hall to the back part of the house by the linen closet, and goes away.
Then it's just Sarah's breathing, audible on the exhale. I resettle, wrapping a blanket around my clammy nakedness, before rolling over to relax into the reinstated quiet.
These are my nights.