She too had learned how to avoid
seeing the left one. By diverting her eyes she only ever caught a
flesh-colored flash, nothing more.
She tossed her head into the pillows. Maybe he would understand.
Maybe it was not as grotesque as she imagined. Should she simply
go to him, as she had the other night, and try to explain her
problem to him?
No. She could not, not now. She was too drunk and tired, and had
not showered in two days. But she could be with her fantasy of
him, she thought with painful longing.
She turned off the bedside lamp and reached inside her robe,
touched her breast. If she was going to consider herself
grotesque, she thought drunkenly, she might was well begin to
associate the act with the cause. That way, perhaps she would
eventually banish him from her mind out of sheer disgust. As if
to punctuate this point, she removed the gloves upon her retreat
to bed on Saturday night, and for the first time she could
remember, she had skipped her nightly ritual of creaming her
hands with moisturizing lotion. Already, she told herself, she
could feel them drying out. She switched hands and used the left.
Before she got any further, she froze.
A sound, outside.
She strained to listen...heard the wind through the trees, but
nothing else.
Just when she was ready to discount the noise as her mind playing
tricks on her, she heard it again.
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