Lying In Bed Read Online Free PDF Page A

counted.”
    I had an insane desire to tell him that the number was immaterial, that the only thing that mattered was the one letter I could never write because there was no address to send it to. Of course, I didn’t. I had never discussed that last letter from Joshua asking me to write him back and forgive him. Not with Grace or any of my other friends. I certainly was not going to disclose it to a stranger. That I’d even had the thought astounded me.
    He opened the book.
    The fluttering inside my stomach could not have been more intense if he had literally pushed my legs apart with his knees
    Forcing my concentration back to the desk, the scrapbook, my work and the store, I tried to ignore my body’s intense reaction.
    Where was it coming from? Why was it happening? This wasn’t like me – to be attracted to someone I didn’t know.
    Men who are attached to other women yet manage to move you, are dangerous the same way a mercury spill is. The mineral glitters and teases attracting with its pretty, slick, smoothness. Looking at it you can almost forget that it is in fact, poison. But you mustn’t.
    “Here,” I said, pulling the first letter out from it’s the clear plastic sleeve. “You should look at it the way the person does who gets it. The letters are as much about touch and feel and smell as they are about words.”
    I leaned over my desk, awkwardly using my left hand since my right was hurt. His eyes took in my movements and my skin burned where his eyes traveled.
    If he looks up at me now, I thought, I’ll ask him about this combustion. If he feels it too. If he knows why it is happening. But he was already looking down at the letter I had succeeded removing it from its cover and handed to him.
    The words were written in a vibrant, verdant green ink on parchment paper that I had decorated with pressed flowers, a scattering of pine needles and a border of moss-colored ribbon. An original Victorian vignette of a brilliant red cardinal perched on the crossbar of the large capital H that began the first word.
    “You’re an artist,” he said sounding surprised and – what was it? Disappointed? Annoyed? Something I couldn’t figure out.
    I shrugged. “This is only how I earn my living. What I really do is create collages.” I nodded towards my wall where some of my personal work hung. “But it’s not easy to make a living at fine arts and garrets don’t appeal to me. Besides there are no garrets in New York anymore.”
    “No, I imagine not.” He laughed and looked around my little office now, his eyes taking in the sketches on the wall and the three hanging boxed collages. If people even noticed them, they usually merely glanced at them, but Gideon put the letter down on the desk, got up and walked over to inspect my work more closely. He stood, silently, in front of the first, looking at it for a long time, and then gave the second an equal viewing.
    “You have an amazing imagination and great eye,” he finally said and then sat down, picking up the letter again. “So do you design every letter?”
    “Yes. Unless someone hires me to be the author. Then they write it out in their own handwriting on their stationery or cards that they can pick out here.”
    He ran a finger over the smooth nap of the translucent paper and down the satin border. He touched everything, I realized. My hand, the Band-Aid, the cover of the book. As if he knew it better by touching it. Then, lifting it to his face, he inhaled.
    I’d used real pine needles, rubbing and crushing them into the back of the paper infusing it with the green, minty scent. And he was taking it in.
    I expected him to read it, of course, but what I hadn’t anticipated, what had never happened in the months since I had started writing Lady Chatterley’s Letters, was that he would read what I had written out loud.
    But he did. Unlike his own staccato way of talking, the story had an abundance of words and he read them smoothly and much to my