Quickies

"I have to." His jaw tightened and he left her standing there, trudging toward the snowmobile. It was running, the headlight a beacon in the darkness. She turned, making her decision, knowing she couldn't go with him and turn their discovery over to the rest of the world.

"Hey!" His voice, calling her, made her turn back. "Mary! Quick!"

She couldn't see well enough in the darkness, but his voice was panicked, and she broke into a run. The snow under her feet was lightly packed, but it had stopped falling at least, giving her a clear path to him.

"What's the matter?" she gasped, and then turned to where he was pointing, his eyes dark with anger.

"Did you do that?" His voice was angry, and she winced.

The bags on the back of the sled were empty. She knelt beside them, running her gloved hands over the surface. The ice cores were gone. They hadn't melted-there was no water or residue inside-and they hadn't evaporated, either, because the bags were completely flat, as if nothing had ever been in them in the first place.

Mary looked up and met Finn's accusing eyes. "I didn't. Finn, I've been with you the whole time!" It was true, and he knew it.

His shoulders slumped, his face falling. "Then what…how in the hell?"

She took his offered hand, letting him help her up. "I don't think we're supposed to understand."

"Oh fuck that." He threw up his hands, reaching over and turning off the snowmobile. "What the hell are we here for, if not to understand?"

"We can't see it…touch it…taste it…" She turned her face up to the sky, completely clear now, the stars even brighter than before. "We can just feel it."

"I don't feel anything," Finn growled, kicking at the sled.

"I think you do." She reached out and squeezed his gloved hand, feeling him give, just a little.

"Fuck," he muttered, but he slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her in closer.

"Look." She pointing to the horizon where a slow, lazy rainbow of colors danced in the sky-the aurora borealis, a rare event this time of year.

"Goddamnit, Mary." Finn's voice was choked as he pressed his lips to her forehead. "I love you. You know I do."

She smiled, her eyes filled with the ever-changing, infinite light of the universe, and spoke the truth with a certainty she'd never understood until that moment.

"I know."

All These Years

She likes adventure with security

And more than one man can provide…*

I'm supposed to tell you how old we were, how long we were married and all that stuff? You want to know how many kids we had, what we each did for a living, and just exactly how it all happened, down to the last rationalized detail, do I got that right?

That's how these tales are spun?

Like it matters.

That kind of stuff was like the water all around, and I was just a fish in the bowl, bumping up against the glass.

I sure wasn't thinking about any of that on my way home, an awful ache in my belly from eating at some damned new Mexican place down the street for lunch. I'd asked a buddy to punch me out and left an hour early just to get home to the minimal comfort of my own toilet, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it, even then.

Molly's car was in the drive, and I smelled supper before I even opened the back door. Something experimental, I could tell already, thick and heavy with spice, and that made my bowels clench in agony as I passed the stove. The menu was on the refrigerator-she liked to print them out, for me, she said, so I'd know every day what we were having, no surprises, on thick white paper with funny dancing silverware on the top-but I didn't stop to read it.

I only had one thing on my mind. Two left turns, and I had my hand on the bathroom doorknob. I hadn't even stopped to wonder where she might be-the TV was off, but that wasn't unusual. Her laptop wasn't open on the kitchen table, either. No music was coming from the basement, where she had her elliptical and her rowing machine all set up. But I wasn't thinking about any of it-her routine, how she moved through her day without me there-it was like water, air, life. It just was.

And then, it wasn't.

A man knows the sound of his wife's pleasure. He knows it like he knows the sounds of his house settling, the ticking of the furnace, the creak in the boards by the stove. After a time, it becomes a familiar sound, a comfortable sound, one that carries heat and light, like the lamp that goes on by the front door every night at six.

I understood that sound, and how to elicit it, as well as I understood how to turn on the switch to the light above our bed. My fingers knew their way in the dark, where to touch and grope, just the right pressure, how to ease that tension past the point of resistance. It was an easy movement, practiced, sure. No surprises.