Unbeknownst

Double Bed

4 Double Bed My eyes anchored on a word in the book and the thought-waters of the day flooded over it, mucked-up, disobedient, and then (the knot must have slipped—for how many moments did I drift?) a small bump of arrival and I read another sentence, no more, before an incoming phrase pulled me someplace else, indifferent to the text. Enough was enough. I closed the book. I threw the extra pillow over there, put the book aside and sank. I sprawled: the whole bed to myself. The room below me launched into my head, the cluttered surfaces of the floor and of my desk, the scattered pencils, ashtray, matches, cigarettes, the fan of papers, short stacks of books. Then the image trembled slightly, no more than a rabbit’s caution in the grass. There was import here, and that came next in a close-up on the ashtray with its last cigarette. Yes, I’m sure, I thought, to extinguish the idea, implausible and plainly paranoid, only come to me in opportunity, since was I not, for now, the sole parent home? 5 Still, it was not the kind of thought I often had. Go down and check. I fell asleep imagining the smoldering that would begin in the papers, their corners turning gray, scrolling one onto the other, sending down a fragile threadline of orange, the supply of oxygen diminishing, the smoke unnoticed in the density of sleep, and then my desk become the perfect fuel for that initial push of flames until the fire beneath us was full-fledged, and when I awoke what was burning was the sun, full up and brilliant. ...