Iwake at five.
She is asleep on her side, one hand under her cheek, the other on my stomach low where the scar is. The lamp is off. The rain stopped somewhere in the night. Grey light is at the edge of the curtain. Her hair is on the pillow and on the front of my shoulder and on her own mouth. I lift the strand off her mouth with the back of one finger and I move it.
I lie still under her hand.
I did not get up early this morning. I do not have a shift. I have a meeting at nine downtown with Val and Kessler and the arson board, and the meeting is the meeting that will tell me whether Val has held the line another forty-eight hours.
I am letting myself have an hour in this bed because I do not know what kind of woman is going to drive away from this cabin at seven a.m.
I let her sleep.
I lie under her hand and I count the shape of my life.
I let myself look at her.
She is startlingly beautiful all the time.
She has a small bruise at the inside of her left thigh from the table. She has a small bruise at her hip where my hand was. Her lower lip is faintly swollen on the side I bit. Her hair is darker at the temple. She is the most beautiful thing in this room and the room is full of beautiful things, the cedar ceiling and the brass lamp and the quilt my grandmother stitched, and she is more beautiful than any of them.
The things we did sexually in the kitchen last night. I have enjoyed a lot of sex in my life, but never as much as I am with her. There is an innocence to her, a curious light in her that burns so brightly and I just love to watch her come apart for me.
I bend and I kiss her shoulder.
She makes a small sleep sound.
I get up.
---
I make coffee.
I bring two cups back. I set hers on the table on her side. I sit on the edge of the bed.
"Hey." I say and she murmurs in response. Half asleep, her eyelashes flicker awake.
“I made coffee."
She murmurs again.
"Open your eyes, baby.”
She opens one eye. She looks up at me. Her face does the small thing it has started to do when it sees me, which is a thing I do not have a word for and am not in any hurry to have a word for.
"Hi,” she says and her voice is raw and gravelly and thick with sleep.
"Hi."
She sits up. The quilt slides. I put the cup in her hand. She drinks.
"Good," she says.
I smile and nod.
"What time is it?”
"Five-twenty."
"You don't have a shift today?”
