“See, you can’t even stand to hear me say it.”
“Because it’s all nonsense. I mean, you said that stuff would happen in hotel rooms, and it never has. There has not been a single solitary butt-in-the-face incident. In fact, we haven’t even done any of the other, lesser stuff, like comically crash into each other naked, or walk in on each other pooping. So I think we’re safe,” she said, but she knew she didn’t sound sure. Her voice shook on the wordnaked.
And apparently he had heard it.
“Doesn’t sound to me like you believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do or not. I’m not letting you die of hypothermia. It’s been hard enough letting you sleep in a bathtub, quite honestly. I see you wincing when your back tweaks.”
“My back is just old. I’ve been fine.”
“Well, you won’t be here. Now get the tent.”
She pointed at the truck bed, satisfied that she’d won.
It was only when he sighed and started toward the truck that she realized what winning meant. Somehow she’d talked him into doing the very thing she definitely couldn’t handle right now. He had gotten her all turned around, same way he said she turned him around, and now here they were.
In the woods, in the ever deepening dusk.
Him urging her to help with the tarp so he could get out this fabled tent.I don’t even remember him packing one, she thought. But after a moment of rummaging, he seemed to find it. It just didn’t look exactly like one to her. It was a kind of green, heavy-duty-looking tube thatshe couldn’t imagine turning into something they could get inside.
In fact, she almost asked him where the rest of it was. She peered inside the truck bed, looking for a ton of poles and hooks and hammers.Hopingfor them, truth be told, because then there’d be a bunch of setting it up. She would handle the complicated camping equipment wrong, and he would get all exasperated, and then the whole thing would collapse and they’d have to start again.
By the time they got into the tent, they’d be exhausted.
There would be no time to think about any intense weirdness going on.
Then she turned and watched him just kind of toss the thing, and there was a loudphwoomf, and suddenly there it was. A perfectly formed tent squatting in front of them. Zipper at the front, a jaunty little roof, thickly paneled sides—the works. If she had been standing in front of it in any other circumstances, it would have seemed inviting. Incredibly practical, and very warm looking.
But as things stood, she couldn’t approve.
Because he hadn’t been lying. If anything, he had been generous.
It was the size of a fucking thimble. She wasn’t even sure howheever managed to get inside it alone, never mind anything else. One of his thighs looked bigger than the whole thing was across. It barely hit his waist in height. If he’d gone about it carefully, he could have probably stuffed the whole thing up his butt.
Whileit was erected.
Yet he carried on acting like this was going to easily happen. He grabbed thick, fluffy-looking sleeping bags from the truck, unzipped the tent, and stuffed them inside. First one, then the other, because of course both couldn’t be done at the same time. And he couldn’t manage it without really ramming himself in there.
It looked like the entrance was strangling his waist.
For a second she honestly started to panic that it was, and he’d end up on the news the next day.Famous Author Murdered by Tent, Police Suspect Missing Mortal Enemy, she imagined. Though she had no idea how these made-up police thought she could have been involved.
She didn’t have the power to control malevolent camping equipment.
All she had was the ability to stand there, helplessly, as the stakes refused to get any fucking smaller. By the time he was done, and out, and dusting off his hands, satisfied, they felt sky-high. Apocalyptic, almost, and even more so when he shut off the headlights on the truck and locked it up.
He came back to her through almost total darkness.
All she could see were the stars starting to dot the plush velvet sky, the outlines of the trees around them, like soft sentinels standing watch. The shape of his body, deeply shadowed and yet still so heavy seeming. Then he switched on some little storm lamp he had apparently snagged from the truck, and somehow that was worse. It made him almost glow.
Though it was the sounds that really struck her.
That soft sense of the forest whispering. Thingsrustling in the undergrowth; something crying out in the distance. And over the top: every single thing he was doing, heightened by the silence to an almost terrible degree. The shift of his boots against the crackling floor; the purr of his clothes as he moved around. His breathing, slow and steady, but just a little strangely harsh.
As if he were trying to control it, but the effort made it grate.
Unsettling, but also somehow deliriously good.
