Lying in Bed by J. D. Landis Page A

rushing down to the lobby and leaving the elevator while it was still bouncing as he limped to Frank to describe the lascivious pleasure he had taken from his oeillade and to ask Frank if the dead man had spoken to him too and did he think that woman might have been the one who brought him to life with her fabulous backside and the light in her plummy eyes.
    â€œHave you been away?” she asked as she began to walk into the apartment and I followed, as if it were her place and not mine.
    Did the apartment look so uninhabited, I wondered, that it appeared I didn’t stay there or perhaps even live there?
    â€œNo,” I answered, “I haven’t been away, not for a while. I used to go abroad at every opportunity, but lately I’ve been staying here in the city. Why do you ask?”
    She walked through the front parlor and the music room and into the library and headed toward the formal dining room, where not a morsel of food had been eaten since the renting family had departed. I followed her within this maze of my life. “Because the elevator man said it wasnice to see you again. That’s what people usually say to someone who’s been away. But you haven’t been away. Maybe he’s been away.”
    â€œWho?” I wondered if she thought I was made up of more than one person. The very idea made me feel desirable, and it was all I could do to keep from sprinting so I might catch up with her and put my arms around her from behind and press her to me and feel the roundness of her buttocks at that place on my upper right thigh where my testicles slept, we being the perfect height for one another.
    â€œThe elevator man,” she explained.
    â€œOh.” I stopped for a moment, but she walked right on. “No, he hasn’t been away either.” Now I hurried my steps just to be able to see her as she went through the kitchen and then the pantry and opened the door to the laundry and tried the locked door to the wine room, which would have been too cold for her despite her three little shirts, and found the door at the rear of the kitchen that led to the back of the apartment. “He didn’t really mean it was nice to see me again. He sees me every night when I come home. If I get home by eleven, that is. If I get home after eleven, then it’s Juan who sees me. Juan is the night elevator man. What Eddie meant was it was nice to hear me again. I had stopped talking for a while. I hinted at that in your shop when I said that language had failed me. I stopped talking for over a year, actually. Today’s the first day I’ve said anything for over a year.”
    I thought that might make her halt her self-guided tour of my home, but she just kept on going. “I’d like you to tell me about it. I assume the bedroom’s back here?” she asked.
    She went on down the long corridor that led to the bedrooms and various bathrooms and the maids’ quarters andwhatever else might be back there in some room I hadn’t slept in and so perhaps had never bothered to open.
    â€œAll the bedrooms are,” I answered.
    â€œI meant yours.”
    â€œI sleep in different rooms,” I confessed.
    â€œNo wonder,” she said with utter lack of condemnation as she opened one bedroom door after another. “I don’t know how anyone can live like this. All these rooms. All these walls. Everything cut off from everything else. Did you know there didn’t used to be bedrooms? People slept right in the middle of the house. In the great hall. They didn’t go off into private chambers. They didn’t try to hide. They even entertained there. Their guests would walk around the bed in what was called a ruelle . But what about you? Don’t you have a room where you usually sleep? Don’t you keep your clothes somewhere?”
    She had finally stopped and had turned to look at me. She was lost. She needed help. The apartment had defeated her as it