Dreams That Burn In The Night by Craig Strete

something worth wondering about. Our devisings have
become too intentional."
    "We could wonder
about our future."
    "Wouldn't that be
boring?"
    "Perhaps," admitted
Peter Renoir.
    She smiled at him
with all of her teeth. "There is so little of a percentage in it for us. The future, in any case,
is prerational. It is vigorous. It is unconvincing because it intends to be sincere even if it
winds up being second-rate. If we were wise, we should look at the future, and decide not to go,"
said Semina, spreading her legs.
    "Let's screw," said
Peter Renoir, trying to come up with a via­ble alternative.

LOVE AFFAIR
     
    She looked like a
dollar bill, wrinkled and stuffed in some forgot­ten pocket.
    He looked like a
hand that had never known work.
    And they met
somewhere in the dark of the night in one of those lonely little places with bad lighting and
overpriced drinks.
    And she said, as he
approached her, "This seat is taken." When it wasn't.
    And he smiled with
very white teeth, apologizing. "Excuse me, sir, seeing as how you're invisible, perhaps you won't
mind if I sit on your lap."
    And he sat down in
the seat beside her and they looked at each other.
    After a little
while, when neither of them had made a move to say a single cliched thing, she sighed.
    He noticed the sigh
but did not mention it.
    "I guess I'm going
to fall in love with you," she said.
    "I know," he
said.
    "But you probably
won't fall in love with me."
    "Probably not," he
admitted with rare candor.
    "And you'll sleep
with me and tell me that you won't leave me."
    He
nodded.
    "And we'll sit in
bars and darkened theaters and hold hands like we were thirteen-year-olds about to steal our
first kiss. And we'll tell jokes in bed and eat crazy things like pizza with whipped cream at
four in the morning, and when I look in the mirror I won't see someone who's thirty-eight years
old with a body that's beginning to sag, I'll see a woman in love."
    "All of those
things," he promised.
    "And the first time
I touch you, the rough skin of your hand will make me jump with a secret thrill of, not pleasure,
no, not that, of discovery, I think. That first sense that another human body is touching mine.
And all the small moments we share will rise above us, somehow made monumental and larger than
our­selves."
    He bought her a
drink. She bought all the rest of them. They drank quite a few.
    "Maybe we'll go for
long walks and the rain will catch us and we'll huddle together in some doorway out of the rain
and we'll hold each other very tightly and the cold won't matter and the rain won't matter
because the only thing that exists is that feeling, that rosy glow that I'll have inside when you
put your arms around me."
    "Don't forget the
boat rides in the lake. And picnics on sunny afternoons," he said, never looking in the mirror
hanging over the bar, never seeing his own face. He never had to look because he knew his face
was perfectly posed.
    He said, "And don't
forget the nights beside the fireplace, our faces glowing with the wine and the cheery heat of
the flames."
    "Never forget those
things," she agreed. "I'll not forget them."
    She would pay for
the taxi. He didn't even offer because he knew she would.
    "I'm rich," she
said.
    "Good for you,
lady," said the taxi driver, who did not exist as far as his two passengers were
concerned.
    "I knew," he
said.
    "I knew you knew,"
she said. "It's the money, isn't it? That's the only reason, isn't it?"
    Without hesitation,
he answered, "Shall I lie?"
    "Yes," she said.
"Please do. This new honesty. I'm not sure I totally approve of it. I think I'd much prefer the
lies."
    "As you please," he
said, smiling. She was no different from the others, just a little more shopworn.
    "I've never met
anyone like you," he told her, one hand seek­ing hers.
    "Dozens like me,
but go on," she said, watching the meter.
    "Until I met you
tonight in the bar, I thought I'd seen all the beautiful women