But there is!

“—enough. I’m so anxious and so tired.” Pause. “Could you show me where your futon is?”

“I’ll get it out, but you’re not sleeping on it. You’re my guest. You get the bed. I’m going to change the sheets and make it up for you.”

“No—”

“No no’s, Charlotte. This is my place, such as it is, and that’s the way I want it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do have to, because that’s the way it’s got to be.”

She acceded, lowering her eyes and nodding Yes. Then she looked up at him, her eyes big and starry; she fixed them upon his face for what seemed like a very long time. His anticipation rose rose rose rose rose—

“Where’s the bathroom?”

Adam braced for this one. Oh, the bathroom’s out in the hall. Everybody else uses it, too. He tried to speak in a cool, offhand manner: “Oh, you just go out the door”—he nodded toward the entrance to the slot—“and it’s right next to it?—the first door on your left?” He failed. It occurred to him that he sounded like Charlotte, turning declarative sentences into questions.

In fact, she seemed oblivious to the sketchiness of his voice and the geographical implication of his instructions. She was long past caring about such things.

“Uhh…you might want to lock the bathroom door while you’re in there? Just in case?”

As soon as she went out the door, he hurriedly stripped the bed, throwing the random clothes in a pile on the floor, and made it up. His brain and nervous system were once again off in a wild synaptic and dendritic scramble. Yes…but what should he do? What dare he try?

He was in the same state of confusion when she returned. When he turned toward her, she gave him a tender, almost fearful—glorious! glorious!—smile, then once more threw her arms around his rib cage and pressed one side of her face into his chest, and eagerly, eagerly, he embraced her. He took a stray shot at pressing his mons pubis against hers, but he couldn’t find it.

“Oh, Adam, Adam, Adam”—he could feel her jaw muscles moving on his sternum—“someday I’ll know how to tell you—I’ll know how to explain…Last night I prayed to God. I prayed to God to come take me away in the night. But I couldn’t sleep, and God will only come take you in your sleep. You’re a good person, Adam. I’m sure you don’t know what it is like to have so led your life that you will never sleep—”

“Shhhhh. Come on, Charlotte, don’t keep flagellating yourself. You haven’t done anything wrong! You’ve been done wrong to, that’s all.”

She released her grip around him and straightened up. But he still had his arms around her, and she was looking up at him. This was the moment—for a soulful, lingering kiss—but that wasn’t a take my lips look she was giving him. She was shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” she said. “I didn’t mean—I can’t let myself fall to pieces like this and expect you—”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I wish I could explain it all. I’m like…desolate, Adam. You’ve pulled me back from…like an edge. Thank God it was you I hit with that door.” That made her smile…oh so wanly.

“Then I guess we both thank God,” said Adam. He figured that gave her an opening as big as the moon.

She looked up into his eyes searchingly. “I need to try to sleep.” She glanced toward the bed. “I’m so tired. But you don’t have to turn the lights off. If you want to stay up, that’s okay. It won’t make any difference.”

If you want to stay up, that’s okay—it won’t make any difference? Adam took this poorly. He abandoned his embrace. “Oh, by all means!” he said, gesturing toward the bed with his palm up, as if making a formal presentation. “Your bed awaits you.”

He said it with just a shade of irony, which she didn’t get, obviously. She immediately turned, headed for the bed, and got in without undressing. She pulled the covers way up.

Pouting a bit, Adam proceeded to slide the futon out from under the bed and prepare to turn in. The damned thing was covered in dust, which he instinctively blamed on Charlotte, who had accepted the bed after first saying she wouldn’t.

He made a point of not looking at her, but then she said, “Adam? Oh, Adam, I’ll never be able to thank you—you’ve saved my life tonight—saved—my—life, Adam…I’ll never forget thi-i-i-i-i-”—she was sobbing—“i-i-is…Oh, Adam! Don’t leave me…”

He said, “Everything’s okay, Charlotte. I’m right here. Try to sleep.” He didn’t say it as warmly, let alone as lovingly, as he might have.

He turned away, swept the dust off the damned futon, threw a couple of ratty old blankets on it, folded up his damned North Face jacket to use as a pillow, turned off the damned lights, stripped down to his T-shirt and shorts in the dark, stretched out on the damned futon, expelled a big, noisy hangdog sigh, and went to sleep…

The clinic! Great honor! Poor, anorexic girls—pale, bony girls with barely any mammary capacity at all—reaching out to him with their paper-pale, bony arms…Before him: a pale, pale starveling with a potbelly the size of a cantaloupe—asking why? Why? Why? Simple, said the distinguished consultant—who was himself! You’re beginning to eat now, and your body is storing fat where it can draw upon it fastest, which is there—your belly. A beautiful girl behind him—he couldn’t see her but he knew she was beautiful—said in a soft, kind voice, “But that’s not true, Adam…Adam?…Adam?…Adam!…Adam!”—

He woke up in the dark.

“Adam!”—such anguish in her voice. As he ascended from the hypnopompic depths and reached the surface, he realized that it was Charlotte, and she was up on the bed and he was down here on the floor, on the futon.

“Adam!”

“What is it?”

“I—don’t—know—what’s happening!” The words were coming in spurts. “Please—hold me! Please—hold me!”

What time was it? Here in the dark of the night, he had no idea. He threw back the blankets on the futon and knelt by the bed. He could feel the mattress shaking as soon as his chest touched it.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t—know…Hold me—Adam.”

She was lying on her side, facing him. That was all he could make out in the dark. He leaned forward and slipped one arm under her neck and wrapped the other around her shoulder. She was shaking like someone with a fever.

“Adam, I’m so—get in beside me. Lie next to me. Please! I’m so frightened!”

“Next to you?”

“Yes! Hold me in my skin! I’m trying to get out of my skin! Please!”

Baffled, excited, bewildered, thrilled, he got into the bed, and his knees pressed against the undersides of her thighs. She had rolled over, so that her back was to him.

She continued to shake terribly. “Hold me! I don’t know what’s happening! Oh God, please! Put your arms around me!”

So he did. His chest was pressed up against her back. He could feel the snap of her bra. His head was behind her. She kept shaking.

“Oh God—closer…Put your legs under my legs—please!”

She had curled into a fetal position. He had to lift his knees to make contact with the undersides of her thighs again. It was as if he were a chair lying on its side, and she was sitting in it.

He felt no more lust at all. She was finally in his bed, and she was a wreck. Her body was rigid.

“Hold me tighter, Adam…Keep me in my skin…Tighter…”

It was some time before the shaking stopped and her muscles relaxed and her breathing became normal, more or less. During that time, his thoughts raced. Hoyt Thorpe had done this to her. Adam reduced the guy to a coward begging for mercy in a variety of ways. One time he had him in a full nelson, which was illegal in college wrestling, and he gave him a choice of surrendering or having his neck broken. You don’t believe me, you pathetic little shit? Try a little of this…His fingers intertwined behind Hoyt Thorpe’s neck, he forced his head down down down until he screamed, begged, and whimpered for mercy.

Meanwhile, he held the girl he loved in his arms and pressed his body against hers, to keep her inside her very hide.