Entr'acte

by

David J. Schow

Just Paul's mouth was showing. He was wound in fresh black sheets and sandwiched beneath two thick blankets, also black, under a comforter of mite-proof silk which itself was buttoned up inside a duvet, all matched. Equally black shams enrobed the pillows above and below his head. He preferred to cushion his forehead against the underside of a pillow, to shield his eyes from morning light on those nights he nudged work till it overlapped the dawn, which was often enough for him to cultivate this protective habit. So there he was, swaddled top to bottom in his black cocoon with just his lips and nostrils naked to the air, just asleep enough to tease around the edges of a sexy, truncated dream fantasy involving a composite of all the attractive women he'd glimpsed during business hours; just awake enough to slide his palm up Delia's heat-radiant, utterly smooth, undeniably real, totally naked hip. The harsh, pre-dawn pop of the glowing numerals allowed him to uselessly observe that it was precisely 5:15 a.m. — Greenwich Mean Time notwithstanding.

Weird trait: He always awoke a beat before his alarm went off. Always, as though his body's security system was set ninety seconds ahead. Something to do with his metabolism, diet fluctuations, stress bad enough to cause periodic outbreaks of psoriasis, and the usual schedule of other people's needs. The dream woman evaporated and Delia turned on her side with her usual sleepy groan, giving her ass to his hand. His eyes opened in the dark, cataloguing the room's points of light. Violet gray, past the windowshade—no daylight to cause a headache, yet. The cool phosphorescence of nightlights benchmarking the path to the bathroom. The somewhat stronger downtime lamp in the bathroom itself. The numbers on his clock. The numbers on Delia's clock. The glo-in-the-dark collar of the emergency flashlight. The head of the little luminescent critter who had begun life as a keychain souvenir. The telltales on the air filter, the white-noise machine, the phone, the keypad for the alarm system. A constellation of little LEDs and liquid-crystal displays. Delia's clock ran behind Paul's by several minutes, he noticed.

The alarm had not yet gone off. It would not go off for a couple of hours, yet. Paul steeled himself. Stupid game to play with one's clock. Wasn't he supposed to be the master of his machines?

Instead, the phone rang, startling him. Actually, no phone in Paul's home "rang." They trilled, they ribbetted, they burbled, they noodled, all in syncopated electronic simulacra designed not to be ignored. None of the phones possessed a bell; all made noises meant to cue certain instinctual responses from Paul. Somebody had gotten paid a bundle of money to sit in a meeting with other idiots to decide what their company's phone should sound like. Did they conduct surveys to determine which sounds were more annoying than others? Did spies from other companies leak secret phone-ringer tone documents and memos to the highest bidder?

Paul did an unusual thing. He answered the phone. At 5:15 in the morning, he answered the phone, even though it would ring only once, even though the setup networked throughout the house was designed so that messages would be recorded automatically upstairs. For some reason he'd forgotten to switch off before nodding into a semi-coma around 4 AM, with his blankets pulled up to his chin and his pillows covering his eyes.

Yeah, he said, taking care not to clear his throat, which might wake up Delia and indicate to the caller that he was more alert than he actually felt. He wanted the caller to know what a bother this was.

The voice on the phone said, she's not human, get out now.

Paul thought of all the outraged things he was supposed to say, of the average, normal responses this alarm was intended to cue. Who is this, do you know what time it is, who do you think you are, of all the nerve, you woke up my —

Delia executed a half-turn and sleepily asked if anyone had died.

Paul, having been cheated of rejoinder by an abrupt disconnection, found himself acting guiltily, as though he'd been caught masturbating. If he hung up the phone too quickly, there would come more questions. If he answered no too quickly, Delia would not buy his haste. All of a sudden he was juggling, and his heart was speeding up, and this wasn't fair, because ninety seconds ago, he'd been asleep.

Delia opened one eye and made a joke about it being one of Paul's lovers, and how she hoped they were in torment.

For some reason that made Paul remember the woman in his dream, the noncommittal composite of female attributes cooked up by his brain to trick him into a somnambulistic orgasm. Her clothing had shifted—first she was partially draped, then brazenly exposed, then barefoot but otherwise fit for public view. Her hair morphed colors and length. Every time he looked, in the dream, she was different. Sometimes her eyes were human.

His cock was tumescent, and felt as heavy as one of those padded exercise wristlets. This had nothing to do with arousal. Paul swung out of bed and followed the trail of marker lights to the bathroom, listening to the unlovely way his breath labored when his passages were clogged with slumber. The clock in the bathroom reminded him that it was 5:17 as he urinated. He watched his dim reflection in the mirror for another beat, dawdling so Delia would be asleep when he returned for the phone.

He stood there in the semi-dark bedroom, feeling the air around his skin, listening, until he had convinced himself that Delia's respiration had resumed sleep meter. Then he gently removed the phone from the base unit. Once back in the bathroom, he shut the door. Keeping the lights out, he punched in the code for automatic call return and got nothing.

Get out now, the voice had said, indicating some sort of danger. It was imperative—now—the sort of threat that meant don't pack, don't dress, don't think, just leave. On airplanes, during the crash spiel, they always told you to leave your personal items behind, and just get out. Now.

She's not human. That was the danger. Did the caller mean she was inhuman, as in cruel, evil, deranged? Was Delia supposed to be an alien or a succubus? Was she metaphorically not human? How was not being human such a toxic hazard that Paul needed to get out now?

He tried to imagine why someone would play a prank on him. Not only could he not think of a reason, he couldn't even come up with a candidate. Most of his friends were hardcore mercantile capitalists, completely materialistic, totally imagination-free.

It all led back to a consideration of Delia. Human or not, she was pretty wonderful. This wasn't really about her so much as Paul's perceptions. He realized that he had not even bothered to check and see if it was Delia with whom he was crawling into bed a couple of hours ago; he'd just shucked his clothes and slid in next to a warm body. Christ, it could just as well have been Charlie Manson or O.J. or the Creature from the Black fucking Lagoon, for all he knew, until he touched her, as bedmates always touch.

By which time she would have been ready to trick him. To change into the form he expected. Did he really take her for granted that way, or pay so little attention? Was that was this was about? Snap Paul into line via phone pal? If that was the game, then Delia's sleep had been all pretend for some time now. Waiting for Paul to do what?

He rubbed his eyes and blotted his face and watched the clock kick over to 5:19. Delia's clock dealt with the past, only now reaching 5:15—the time he'd answered the phone.

His mind did an instant replay. On this trip around, it came up with one decent candidate for phone-freaking—Harry, who was Paul's "friend" only in the sense that the relationship between Dr. Frankenstein and Fritz could be said to be "cordial." Harry was a Paul wanna-be, and Paul tolerated Harry because some egos need spear carriers to actualize their conspicuous consumption. Harry admired Paul's life, which is to say he coveted Paul's possessions, position, and money; Paul, in turn, found Harry's menu of wants kept him quite malleable and always on call—a perfect wind-up for whatever mission at which Paul might care to aim a disposable warm body.

Maybe the call was Harry's way of rebelling against his Ygor status, or something.

Maybe this was the best lame excuse Paul could fabricate at 5:20 in the fucking morning, while he was still more than half asleep. Harry was the only person Paul had ever met who was actually named Harry. Parents no longer named any child Harry. No upside to it.

Maybe it was the thing Paul's analyst had christened the Syndrome. You are guilelessly manipulative, Paul's analyst had concluded, smilingly. It is frosted in convincing charm, driven by inadequacy and self-doubt, and powered by a resentment of your father which you have distilled into admiration—but it is manipulation nonetheless, because its goal is to leverage validation out of people you perceive as authentically talented. Because you need to win your way, and hence the validation, by any means possible, there is a tendency toward ruthlessness...

Did that mean, because Paul could never be wrong, and always got his way, that Delia had to be an alien? He tried to see her features in the dark. She was turned away from him, almost as planned as a camera angle, her physiognomy conveniently shadowed. If he looked hard enough he could almost make out contrail eye-slits and needle teeth, waiting in ambush to deceive him. You could make yourself see almost anything in the dark. The hair looked right. Paul wondered if the hair was a cunning substitute, like the nonexistent bell on his phone.

Okay, it was a human. Okay, it was female. But was it Delia? And who was Delia, really? What did he actually know for sure about this...entity ...sleeping next to him?

Check her nightstand drawer for a pod, or a death-ray.

Dreamily, she asked what was going on. She asked with her face turned away from him, asked into darkness, not expecting an answer, the sort of question intended to make him realize she had been awake all along.

Paul had grown up hating Southern accents, because his formative years had drowned among them. He had to mature, and take leave of the region, before he could find anything to appreciate in its idioms. In his mid-twenties he had hooked up with a lover/mate native to Chapel Hill, one who kindled in him a newfound love for smoldering woodstove speech, twilight speech more appealing than the abrasive robo-twang of the Midwestern newscaster—an American standard for the rest of the globe. It was all in the timing. Then Paul broke up with her, badly, and so hated the entire South anew, until he met Delia, an upswing that had begun in New Orleans and lasted, well, for a long time, now.

Delia was tall, with a good length of leg. Big narrow feet. Bright, smoky eyes. She had bred true to variegated roots, rather like extracting the best ingredients from an already-tasty genetic casserole. She entered Paul's existence bringing thoughtful wit, a non-frivolous education, and a refreshing maturity—age thirty had not smashed her down like a flyswatter, as it tended to do to the less intelligent and the infinitely more frantic. Paul learned that she always came hard the first time, then relaxed into a warm pattern, the duration of which was largely a matter of their own free improvisational notions. Her accent was, therefore, vague, not specific enough rekindle his dislike; not a suffocating blanket of honeysuckle, but a lovely beveling of the vowels that went down smooth as cream in tea.

Or perhaps Paul accepted Delia's accent because it was mixed with something else, and it was the something else he didn't want to think about.

Having endured a hysterectomy during a time when lazy doctors considered this a cure for virtually any feminine complaint, Delia lived in terror of losing a breast, what she called "the real female castration" since its aftermath was more readily visible. Delia possessed notably wonderful breasts, and Paul agreed that to lose one would be a marked drawback, but not a dealbreaker. Staring now at the curve of her shoulder in the dark, knowing now that she had been awake and keeping track of his activities over the last five minutes or so, Paul kept his guard up and formulated a plan.

If she stayed awake, she would repeat her innocent-sounding, middle-of-the-night question. Paul waited in the dark, en pointe, until he was satisfied she was not going to say anything else. He had a special arrangement with the night.

He had always cherished staying up late, teasing the predawn, enjoying the sheer focus that became possible in the magical time just past the midnight of the soul, an hour or two before the whole world stirred. Despite the realities of commercial broadcast, he could pretend it was a time all media were turned off; so late even advertising slept. As a child, he'd pushed the limits of bedtime; as an adult, he still derived a childish satisfaction from rendering such limits completely ridiculous and irrelevant to his life. Before sunrise, there was strength and infinite possibility; come daybreak, the energy drained, the soul yawned, and the eyes began to squint.

It was still dark. Not for long, though. He had decided his plan was to look—discreetly—for Delia's hysterectomy scar. If she were real, the scar would be there while she slept. It was the sort of detail a pod or an alien might overlook.

5:21, and counting. He would have to move to the far side of the bed, stealth away the sheet, try to see in the dark, without waking Delia up. He heard the cartilage in his knees crunch as he knelt. The rasp of his splayed fingers against the carpet seemed like Sensurround. This was never going to play. Leg up, hand down; a slo-motion pantomime of a hound marking territory. Ridiculous, stupid, necessary. His hip rasped against the edge of the futon platform hard enough to force him to grimace. He swore he could hear the sound of his lips pulling back.

Too late, he thought of the flashlight. He could see its glo-in-the-dark collar beyond the far side of the bed, his side, a million miles away. To fetch it now would mean backing out, like a POW forced to retreat butt-first down a narrow tunnel...only to discover the batteries were dead. His nose was inches from Delia's knee. He made a command decision to stick with Plan A.

Paul the cat burglar, too far gone to stop now.

Delia breathed evenly. He counted off heartbeats against the blue numerals of her tardy clock. If he stared at them long enough in the dark, he could see them actually pulse—sixty-cycle household current, in exploded time. There was little chance he could just grab her, and hope to feel the scar, and apologize later.

He decided to risk picking up the clock. That meant navigating it around the junk on Delia's nightstand: lip balm, pain pills, water glass, paperback, hair clips, other potentially noisy items that might tip over or be dragged by the power cord as it played out. What if the wire wasn't long enough to reach?

He knew the topography of her body, and the smooth surface of her exposed thigh led the way to his target. Just looking at her leg—his vision plunging in and out of focus, trying to imagine light were there was none—laced thin needles of guilt through his guts. He wanted to just wrap her up, and spoon into her from behind, and duct heat from her flesh, and fall asleep against her, secure in the knowledge that everything was as it should be.

Slowly, he lifted the edge of the sheet. Midnight blue; they had chosen the set together on one of their birthdays.

He tried to aim the clock, absurdly fearing that perhaps she had set the alarm, and it would go off RIGHT NOW, causing him to shit himself as he fell backward and tried to scare up an explanation. The eerie neon luminescence took its time getting under the covers.

Delia had a brisk little triangle of pubic hair, its exact measurement a matter of calculation and will. It cut just so on the bikini line, and was as perfect as such a vanity could be. Paul was holding his breath. He had not exhaled for over a minute, according to the clock.

There was no scar on Delia's abdomen, and as Paul strained to look twice, her hand closed around his wrist, the one holding the clock.

What's...going on? Same sleepy tone. She wasn't all here yet. But no accent. Not even a trace.

She did not let go of his hand. By the light of the clock, he saw the fingernails of her hand stretch outward like spilled liquid, elongating until they penetrated the flesh of his wrist and locked him up tight. They snaked between the long bones of his forearm and punched through the flesh on the other side, curling. He sucked air and tried to yank back. No good.

What the hell do you think you're doing? No accent at all, and she dragged him onto the bed with surprising strength. They were face-to-face, in the dark, in an instant. Paul could see nothing. He felt sharp edges pressing into his stomach, and surmised that her ribs had emerged from the falconer's glove of her perfect skin to run him through, to hook him and pull him in, to immobilize him as surely as a giant clenched fist.

He could not see her lips move, but her voice was as serious as cancer. "What did they tell you about me?"

Before he could apologize, or explain, or say anything, she kissed him. Something slick, blunt, and far too hot for human body temperature slid down his throat, painfully distending his esophagus.

The last thing Paul heard was a voice, faraway, telling him to go back to sleep, that it was just a dream, that the sun was coming up.

He woke up just a beat before his alarm clock went off at 7:59 a.m. It was a weird trait; he always awoke that way, two or three useless moments before the mechanical summons. The unconsciousness from which he swam up toward wakefulness was like a morphine drunk and did not involve visions of naked fantasy women. Just his mouth was showing from beneath the pillow on his forehead, which kept out most of the harsher light. Delia was not in bed beside him. She had beat him to the bathroom. He sensed running water; steam.

Paul sat up and relished an instant headache. He dug his thumbs into his temples and surrendered to the inevitability of getting up. That's when he noticed there were scars on his forearm. They radiated a pain that was new to him. He counted them. Ten shiny imperfections, as if a hot knife had grazed the surface of a wax candle. As if the holes had been cauterized, then punctured again. Five in, five out.

He did not recall ever seeing these before.

His story caused Delia to laugh as she stood naked in front of the big oval mirror in their bedroom...in which he could see her normal fingernails, normal belly, perfect bush, and hysterectomy scar even though the light was not very good. She teased him about never really being able to know with whom one was crawling into bed in the dark every night, now did one? And she told him, accent intact, that he'd had those little scars on his arm ever since they first met. Silly.

Paul spent most of the day wondering about therapy, drug treatment, and possible suicide. Harry phoned, to borrow some petty cash, and chuckled in a dirty-old-man way when Paul suggested his role in the nightmare.

They, he remembered her saying. What did they tell you about me?

Climbing into bed that night, the lights still on, was more difficult than he could imagine such a simple thing to be. He stared at Delia's normal ribs. Delia kissed him and doused the light. No sex tonight; not only had Paul missed too much sleep the night before, but Delia told him she was suffering some minor yeast complaint, and suggested that a time-out might be a good idea.

Relaxation, as a concept, was pretty much eliminated as well. Paul's gaze kept seeking the clock, watching the minutes tick off. Fear plucked at his heart. Delia settled in with one of her signature exhalations—long, deep, the foreplay to slumber. Sleep? To close one's eyes and surrender, knowing what he suspected? Paul could not conceive of the idea.

But he drifted off eventually, just as he had, and would continue to, every single night of his life.