He lies in bed, one arm thrown up so his forearm rests on the pillow over his sideburned head. His eyes are open, squinting at the ceiling. He breathes slowly, flaring his nostrils a little with each breath.
She lies in bed, on her side facing the window. Her hands are curled by her cheek. Her eyes are open, looking out the window at the waning moon. Absently, she slides the edge of one thumb genly up and down her cheek.
He slips out into the yard of the mansion, closes the door almost silently behind him. He moves quietly on bare feet across the cobblestone walk and onto the lawn. He wears only his jeans and the dogtags that glint softly among the hairs on his chest. He slips into the woods.
She emerges from the kitchen with a cup of hot chocolate in her hand. Her slippers slap gently down the hall, then she is out the door with a soft swirl of the robe around her legs. She takes a seat on the low brick wall that divides the patio from the lawn, swings her legs up atop the wall and crosses them at the ankles, leans back against a square pillar. Gazing out into the woods, she sips her drink.
Crouching in a tree’s shadow, his forearms on his knees, balancing on his bare toes, he watches a fox as it passes. He can smell the blood from its recent meal. He can hear its breath blowing in and out of its nostrils. The fox turns its head and locks eyes with the man. It pauses to sniff the air, then continues on its way.
She sets her cup on the wall near her feet. A spider is making its way across the wall, and she places her hand in its path. When the spider reaches her hand, it reaches with one leg for her pinky finger and begins to raise a second leg. Before the second leg gains purchase on her skin, the spider drops lifeless to the wall. Gently, by one leg, the woman lifts the spider with her thumb and index finger and places it in her palm. She moves it about with one finger, examining it.
The man walks out of the woods and crosses the lawn to where the woman sits. When he is ten feet away, she hears him and looks up. As he draws nearer, she lifts her hand with the spider on it, holds the palm before her lips, and blows. The spider flies from her palm toward the man’s chest. His right hand snaps it out of the air and he looks at it, then raises an eyebrow quizzically at the young woman before him.
“I used ta be so scared a spiders,” she says quietly. “When I was a kid. Now I’d really like ta have one crawl all over me, jus’ ta feel it.”
He sits on the ground, leaning against the wall on which the woman sits. His head settles against her robed hip. He whistles softly. “That’d be one lucky spider.”
She reaches out her hand, the one that killed the spider, and brushes the tips of the man’s wildly tousled hair. He turns his head and blows softly on her wrist.
She smiles down and him, shaking her head, then returns her gaze to the woods. He closes his eyes.
They are everything to each other, and they are nothing. They own each other, and yet they are completely free. They can not explain it, but they know it to their cores. They can meet every night, or weeks can pass in between – it’s always there waiting for them. It’s theirs alone, and it makes them both so happy and so sad, as love will to us all.
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