“We are at night.” She read playfully. She crossed the carpet floor with an un-placeable meaning in her grin. “Shall I write to the rhythm of the tide or by my memories?— I walk the sand. An ant investigates my print…does my story move you?” she stopped and thinking it part of the piece I did not respond. She waited.

“Does my story move you?” she asked again. The term was selfish but I indulged her ego regardless.

“Like the tide.” She looked delighted.

“Oh, you play me so.” She cried slipping the page between her breasts and coming to sit on my lap. How she made me heat.

“Come, tell me one of your stories.” Her breath patted my nose. I sighed.

“She lay beside me—we breathed in tandem.” I began. “Were her eyes open? I saw green.”

“Oh that is enough, I shall faint” she cried making as if she were out of breath. I laughed a fool at her play. Oh how she made me in such a way.

“I my, the time.” She let out “I must leave… oh I’d stay another life as if staying for tea but the weekend is short. This job must be done.” She grasped the cup of pills, they rattled amongst themselves. How I wanted each one.

“Let me off” she stood and made for the door.

“Nay,” I replied.

“Oh not nay, my love. I must deliver these sleepers to my watcher to sell, without them, I am without work.” She shook the pills. “Upon this also, I see the way you look at them. Curse this ungenerous inhabitant in me. Yet I must work and these sleepers you cannot have.”

“You must defy me, as to keep your watcher.” I resigned.

“I will defy you simply then and leave.” She smiled. “Tonight we party and defy a solemn occasion.”

“I shall see you then.” A gathering at night, I thought. I am on the edge of the hour but will wait another half before dressing

The time did not away easily with the sleepers on my mind. Oh to take them, would see me write such words, a source of inspiration I, in myself cannot conjure. Such torment. I’ve done it before, taken one sixteen nights ago and wrote for hours hence. I published the next day but nothing since. Famine— I need what my lady has. But if I take it. My lover’s watcher will drop her like a misbehaving pup that shows no gift at herding. He would miss his pill; he counts the flock by the day. Millions of tiny sheep and he knows them all by name. Half of the hour had gone and I readied for the night.

…

The curtains draw themselves but how did they get that way? I dress, a coat, a shirt, a hat. By mumbles in the next room, the T.V paces my movements. The town is close but surplus time remains so I delay at the slightest spectacle. A ginger cat looks black at night, the water looks black also, I will touch it to see if it is really so.

I hear it before I see it, sounding low beats, a song to dance to but not to sing. The music is out of my taste but I pursue it anyway. Look how they dress. It catches my eyes at every turn of their bodies. Names exchanged like tokens of approval.

I see my lover across the room, pretty in feathers and sequins down her slim legs and protruding hips. “Take my hip” is her only instruction before we pace into the dance. I take it but she leads. I never did know the steps.

We are twirling, arms flailing about and some stop to watch. We are better tonight than before and I feel glad. The dance is done and I take a moment to look around.

The scene is sparse. People here, there, and the door wide open as people drift in on the breeze, caught on the draft of the orange house. I spot an addict. He sits in the corner, sprouting gems from his eyes. Last month he had paid for my lover’s gown and my animal glances back at her, the cylinder of pills pressed out against her thigh. With them I could publish by the hour.

“You can’t have them.” She interrupts my thoughts but I am not annoyed. “You haven’t the money.”

“I might have if you gave me one. Then I would write and sell and we would never have to say ‘we don’t have the money’ again”

“You do not want them.” This did annoy me.

“I want nothing else.” The night went on and my lady’s pills thinned in their jar till one layer remained, the clutter of bills growing in her breast pocket.

It is early morning, my lady is off with another woman, I care not. She had left her pants behind. There is not much hesitation and I surprise even myself feeling them till I find it. I want them so but the watcher will know. I pop the lid without a decision. They rattle; the lid hits the floor by a drunken man’s head and he stirs.

The cliff is only high for those who fall and I bring them to my lips, powdery and dry. They would stick in my throat but how I longed to end the drought, to fill pages and pages with words

The watcher will know.

It is not enough to stop me and I open my mouth. A wolf’s jaw waiting as the sheep cross my teeth. Then my lover is back. She is naked and hot. The pills are not yet swallowed and somehow, in her eyes, I am tempted to spit. She claws my cheeks and out come the white dimes into her hand. But I snatch for them back, prying her fingers. They do not budge. She is stronger than me, she always has been. Then the pills give way…she uncurls her hand. A fine, crushed powder, slightly moistened by her sweat remains and she cries out.

“Oh lord, the watcher, he will know. He will know.” But I try not to listen. “He will kill me for this.” She kneads the paste with her fingers but the pills will not reform.

“I am dead.” She is choking on the words as if under water but I have already drowned.