Sleeper

CHAPTER I Sometimes, just to get my bearings, I think back on the sheer ordinariness of that morning in September. Betsy left before light to start her shift at the Jump Start Restaurant over on 70. I watched her moving through the bedroom, a familiar shadow in the familiar dark. She didn't need to turn on any lights to know where she was and didn't want to because she didn't want to wake me. My eyes were open, as they always were whenever she stirred, but my head was heavy in the pillow and I was as still as a stone in a churchyard. She leaned over and kissed me so lightly that I wasn't sure if I felt her lips or her breath, and she whispered to me, "Kurt, darling, don't let Miriam sleep too late." She stood up for a second, then leaned back down. "Love you, Baby," she said, and she was gone.The first dim glow of dawn crept into the room about an hour later, and I watched the windows take shape as shadows on the opposite wall. But still, I didn't move. There was no work for me today, and I no longer had the energy or the will, or saw the purpose, of saying prayers. The idea passed through my mind, as ideas do in the early morning, that love had taken the place of faith. And if that was so, then so be it.Miriam was in her room, too big for her baby bed now. Her Disney Pocahontas nightgown was all scrunched up around her, and her hair was damp. I like for us to sleep with the windows open and the night air moving through the screens. But last night was too hot for that, I thought. Too hot. And she was so peaceful in the dawn cool. She could sleep as long as she wanted. My baby here in my house in my old hometown in Kansas. Nobody and nothing was going to disturb her, not while Daddy was around.The refrigerator door made a little noise when it opened. I drank the milk out of the carton, then poured myself some of the coffee that Betsy had brewed. The little countertop television was turned on without the sound. She'd just watched it for the time and the weather maps. She didn't care what anybody on it had to say. And now I watched it, too, silently. Smiling faces. Everyone so happy in the morning. So happy. I put a couple of Eggos in the old toaster. The smell of them warming filled the kitchen.The faces on the television weren't smiling now. Katie Couric looked like something had gone really wrong with her day. And Matt, too. I'd never seen him so serious, unless it was when they were talking about colon cancer.That's how ordinary the morning seemed. With the sound turned off, just watching their lips move, I thought they were talking about cancer. Or anorexia. Or maybe the death of somebody who worked at the network. And then they showed the New York skyline, and the World Trade Center towers. One of them was burning. Smoke was pouring out of it in every direction, worse than one of those hotel fires in Vegas, billowing up the sides of the building in gray waves of soot. A shape passed through the corner of the frame, and the second tower exploded.It must have been thirty minutes later, maybe an hour, when Miriam came into the kitchen. She was headed for the refrigerator. She looked at the TV and paid it no attention. She pulled the milk carton off the shelf. She looked at me. She waited for me to say no, and when I didn't, she drank out of the carton, spilling a little on each side of her face. She put the milk back, clumsy and dainty at the same time, and she dragged her chair over to the counter, and climbed up to get a paper towel so she could wipe her face, then wipe up the floor, like Mommy taught her. In case I didn't notice, she held up the paper towel for me to see before she put it in the trash under the sink.I remember all that now, but it was as if I didn't see Miriam when she was there in front of me. The first Trade Center tower had collapsed, and now the second one was coming down. Thousands would be dead. Maybe tens of thousands."Do you want to watch cDickey, Christopher is the author of 'Sleeper', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743258777 and ISBN 0743258770.