‘A game! You call that a game, game, game!’ he wailed, and wept again.
And finally, at last, his crying stopped and he lay against her and she was warm and sister/mother/friend/lover again. His heart, which had crashed, now moved to some near-calm. His pulses stopped fluttering. The constric tion around his chest let go.
‘Oh, Beth, Beth,’ he wailed, softly.
‘Charlie,’ she apologized, her eyes shut.
‘Don’t ever do that again.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Promise you’ll never do that again?’ he said, hiccuping.
‘I swear, I promise.’
‘You were gone. Beth—that wasn’t you!’
‘I promise, I swear, Charlie.’
‘All right,’ he said.
‘Am I forgiven, Charlie?’
He lay a long while and at last nodded, as if it had taken some hard thinking.
‘Forgiven.’
‘I’m sorry, Charlie. Let’s get some sleep. Shall I turn the lights off?’
Silence.
‘Shall I turn the lights off, Charlie?’
‘No-no.’
‘We have to have the lights off to sleep, Charlie.’
‘Leave a few on for a little while,’ he said, eyes shut.
‘All right,’ she said, holding him. ‘For a little while.’
He took a shuddering breath and came down with a chill. He shook for five minutes before her holding him and stroking him and kissing him made the shiver and the tremble go away.
An hour later she thought he was asleep and got up and turned off all the lights save the bathroom light, in case he should wake and want at least one on. Getting back into bed, she felt him stir. His voice, very small, very lost, said:
‘Oh, Beth, I loved you so much.’
She weighed his words. ‘Correction. You love me so much.’
‘I love you so much,’ he said.
It took her an hour, staring at the ceiling, to go to sleep.
The next morning at breakfast he buttered his toast and looked at her. She sat calmly munching her bacon. She caught his glance and grinned at him.
‘Beth,’ he said.
‘What?’ she asked.
How could he tell her? Something in him was cold. The bedroom even in the morning sun seemed smaller, darker.
The bacon was burned. The toast was black. The coffee had a strange and alien flavor. She looked very pale. He could feel his heart, like a tired fist, pounding dimly against some locked door somewhere.
‘I…’ he said, ‘we…’
How could he tell her that suddenly he was afraid? Suddenly he sensed that this was the beginning of the end. And beyond the end there would never be anyone to go to anywhere at any time—no one in all the world.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
Five minutes later she asked, looking at her crumpled eggs, ‘Charles, do you want to play the game tonight? But this time it’s me, and this time it’s you who hides and jumps out and says, “Gotcha”?’
He waited because he could not breathe.
‘No.’
He did not want to know that part of himself.
Tears sprang to his eyes.
‘Oh, no,’ he said.
The end
