Y is a crooked letter

he wakes up long enough to smoke a cigarette, and then he's falling asleep again. sometimes i have to check the bed for the burning stub that's fallen out of his mouth. he's already put holes in both sets of bedsheets.

while he is still sleeping, i get out of bed to watch the sand warm up with the rising sun. the western sky is pale, and on the water lie patches of light in the same broken patterns that fall across our floor through the venetian blinds. it isn't early. it's maybe eight in the morning, by the time the sunrise hits this side.

he has been shaving lately, for his job interviews. i like the smoothness of his jaw and his neck, when we kiss, but i like better to find the scurf of new beard over his face in the morning. i half wish he would take the offer of that guy we met at moondoggies, who pressed a business card on him and dropped a few names to prove there was money and credibility there. he says that was gay; i kind of agree, secretly. but still...

he won't be up until noon. there could be an earthquake--the san andreas fault could open right up under us--and he would sleep through it. i make some instant coffee, and i turn on the stereo, and i dance around in the square of sunlight bleached upon the kitchen linoleum. i hope that he gets the job he's after this week, of course. but today i'm unreasonably and selfishly happy that he will sleep until noon, and then he'll get up and drink coffee with me. i'm glad that today is still all around us, with only the sound of billie holiday and louis armstrong singing "my sweet hunk o' trash" while i wait for him to wake up.

we have practically nothing to do--i work as a waitress and now he's stand-by bartending, while he interviews for real jobs. nothing to do with our degrees. back when he was in construction full time, while the economy was still good, we read a book a week, separately, and then discussed it as if the fate of nations depended on it, on sunday night. a few months after the work shut down, he stopped reading. that was the first time i had been afraid since we had been together.

i remember the last time, before that, when i was afraid. we had been going out, here and there, for maybe two weeks; i was in my friend's dorm room, with some others, trying to pay attention to a movie they were watching, and waiting for him to call. i thought, what if he gets drunk at work, or changes his mind, or forgets, or gets busy with something else. all these ideas played together in the pit of my stomach, hysterically, like puppies tangling over a bone in their midst. i gripped my lips together and lifted my chin, to prepare. i thought, if he doesn't call, then i'm going to forget everything. then there was a knock on the door; i didn't look up, because i was still thinking and preparing, until someone kicked my foot. he was standing in the doorway, having taken only one step inside. i stood up and as i walked toward him in the darkness i could see he was holding a flower in his hand, a tiny pink rose, almost fully opened. he was twirling it in his fingers and he held it out to me when i got near enough. someone else said to him, "how're you?" and he said, "i'm drunk," but i was too afraid to care. he put his arms around me in the darkness, and i tasted the beer on his mouth even before he kissed me; then he whispered, "your heart is beating like a bird's." i stiffened--i was as rigid as a corpse. he pulled his face back and looked at me; i watched his eyes narrow in focus. he looked at me very closely and he said, again, "your heart is beating..." i could feel only that my face seemed to be falling inward, leaving behind a dented, incomprehensible shell. he put his finger on the tip of my eyebrow, and he brushed it lightly to the end, and then he pressed the grave furrow that darted up my brow until it disappeared.

i sip my coffee and think of him in the bed, wanting to rush back in and burrow into his side, under the sheets. if i did, though, i could not see his face. instead, i sit down on the couch and put my feet up on the table, twitching them back and forth to the careless music. i think about his face and his arms and shoulders, dark brown from the long days he spent working in the sun. i wish that the economy would hurry up.

the tough thing about it all is how--i guess--it's just a man's way to think a woman cares what happens. maybe he has to think so, in order to be the man he wants to be, because he can't do it for himself alone; he has to think he's doing it for me. maybe that's how it is, or will turn out to be, for us.

"us!"

i get up and begin to twirl around on my toes. my coffee goes sloshing out the side of the cup. the entire room is a stifling close glow of light and heat. instead of opening a window to let in the breeze, all i can think of is being incredibly thirsty. i rhythmically gulp down two pint glasses of water, thinking, the whole world is turning to ash and sand, we may never survive. i set down the glass and i heave a deep sigh of satisfaction.