At eleven o’clock Irise and I signed back into the KD house and the housemother turned out the lights and the house settled down. The only sound was the furnace and the fans on the back of the refrigerators in the kitchen and the girls dreaming in their beds. At 12:15 I got out of bed and put on my clothes and walked down the stairs to the kitchen and opened the kitchen window and climbed out. I dropped down into the spirea bushes. Then I walked across the yard and out onto the sidewalk and Malcolm was waiting in the car. We drove to a motel and went inside and took off all our clothes and lay down on the bed. Then for timeless unforgettable hours we did it. For timeless unforgettable hours nothing seemed to exist but that room and the strange light coming in the closed curtains and the bed with us on it. It seemed to mean something so vast and endless, as though our arms and legs and bodies were made of marble and each instant was recorded somewhere forever.

“I can see the face of our grandson,” I said to him. “We will be very old and still in love with each other and our grandson will come and visit us and we will tell him about the way we fell in love.”

“God. Don’t say that.”

“Don’t say what?”

“About us being old.”

“Everyone gets old.” I pulled my body away from him. “Why are you getting mad? Why do you care what I say? What’s wrong? What’s wrong with you?”

“You just say the weirdest things. What time is it? See if you can find my watch over there.” I got out of the bed and pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around my breasts and tied it. Then I hobbled over to the dresser and found his watch and went into the bathroom and turned on the light and read the time.

“It’s four-thirty.”

“We’ve got to get you back. It will be light soon. Get dressed. Come on. Let’s get dressed.” He got out of the bed and pulled on his pants and I turned on the light and went into the bathroom and put on my clothes and came back out into the room and tried to look at him but now he was a stranger. He was scared to death of what we had been doing. He was scared to death of me. He thought the things I said were weird and I was tired of the things we had been doing and I was getting angry and tired of trying to figure out how to please him.

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