She tossed her head into the pillows. Maybe he would understand. Maybe it was not as grotesque as she imagined. Should she simply go to him, as she had the other night, and try to explain her problem to him?
No. She could not, not now. She was too drunk and tired, and had not showered in two days. But she could be with her fantasy of him, she thought with painful longing.
She turned off the bedside lamp and reached inside her robe, touched her breast. If she was going to consider herself grotesque, she thought drunkenly, she might was well begin to associate the act with the cause. That way, perhaps she would eventually banish him from her mind out of sheer disgust. As if to punctuate this point, she removed the gloves upon her retreat to bed on Saturday night, and for the first time she could remember, she had skipped her nightly ritual of creaming her hands with moisturizing lotion. Already, she told herself, she could feel them drying out. She switched hands and used the left.
Before she got any further, she froze.
A sound, outside.
She strained to listen…heard the wind through the trees, but nothing else.
Just when she was ready to discount the noise as her mind playing tricks on her, she heard it again. Closer this time, as though just outside on the ground level, below the terrace.
Except for the faint light from the downstairs foyer lamp that bled up through the open bedroom doorway, she was in nearly complete darkness. The lamp, she thought, turn on the lamp. Shakily, she stretched to her night table, and, unmindful of the champagne bottles, her hand blindly knocked one to the floor. It landed with a solid thud.
Silence.
She hunkered down onto her hands and knees beside the bed to retrieve the bottle. It was the empty one, and it gave her an idea. She hefted it in her hand, considered its weight. Could she use it to protect herself?