He undressed in
the darkness and the silence.
Half the night through he tossed, keeping carefully to the bed edge, and
often she heard him sigh out and was conscious that he mopped
continually at the back of his hands. Once he whispered her name.
"Lilly--awake?"
She deepened her breathing.
About four o'clock he dozed off, swooning deeply into sleep, his lips
opening and a slight snore coming.
She lay with her eyes open to the darkness, letting it lave over her as
if it were water and she had drowned in it with her gaze wide.
She felt bathed in a colorless fluid of unreality. Those Swiss window
curtains! To what era of her consciousness did their purchase belong?
She and her mother had shopped them at Gentle's. They hung now lightly
against the darkness. The blond girl who had sold them to her must be
sleeping now, too, in this same curious pool of unreality. She lay sunk
in a strange pause. Once she propped herself on an elbow, gazing across
the street to the blank front of her parents' house. They were sleeping
behind that middle upper window, their clothing folded across chairs, as
if waiting.
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