He felt her smooth legs. They were cool, like dreams half-remembered.
“I love you,” she whispered into his ear, “so much more than you know.”
He kissed her for answer and his detached self almost fused with hers, almost made a union, almost died and made him free.
Carla turned on the light. It was two o’clock and they had been asleep for almost an hour.
Robert Holton lay quietly on the bed, his eyes closed, his breathing regular, one arm over his forehead as though to defend himself. She leaned over and kissed him lightly, then she got out of bed and went into the bathroom.
Her face shocked and pleased her. “How depraved I look,” she murmured to herself. Her face was glowing and her eyes shone and glittered. There were red marks on her white skin. His beard had scratched her and made her usually white face pink. With a sudden gesture she swept her hair back out of her face, held her dark curling hair captive.
Holton appeared behind her then and he put his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. She shuddered and closed her eyes. She could not look at light with so much inward light behind her eyes. They stood like that. Then he let her go. They looked at each other: two people now, so recently a single world.
“Happy?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ve never had it like this before,” he said. “It never meant as much to me as this.”
They walked back into the bedroom and sat down side by side on the bed. Modestly Holton drew the sheet over their laps. They sat quietly without speaking, their bare arms around each other. When Carla looked at the window she could no longer see stars and lighted windows; she could see only their reflection on black glass.