On a Night Like This Read Online Free PDF Page B

days they were living together. He would wake up in the middle of the night and watch her sleep, amazed by her beauty and his luck. When he met Dana, she said to him, “So, you’re the guy who treats my sister like a princess.”
    “Is that a good thing?” he had asked.
    “As long as you know that she’s not,” Dana had said. Sisterly concern or jealousy? He was never sure.
    And now, in the middle of the night, with some vague scent of Emily still on her pillow, he conjured up memories of their marriage. An argument about having children—she wasn’t ready, she insisted, year after year. An argument about canceling a vacation in Italy—he wasn’t finished with his script, and no, he couldn’t work while riding a bicycle through vineyards. An argument about his Academy Award speech—why hadn’t he mentioned her?
    His legs tangled in the sheets. He was hot, half awake, restless, and he reached for water on his bedside table. To quiet his mind he lay back down and imagined a scene. He had finished work for the night. The writing had gone well. He walked quietly into the bedroom, where Emily was already sleeping. He undressed and slipped in beside her. She turned toward him, smiling. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
    “God, I miss you,” he told her.
    “Shh,” she said. “Don’t wake me. Make love to me. As quietly as you possibly can.”
    He stroked her body while she slept. He climbed on top of her and entered her and they moved together as slowly and sweetly as the tug of the ocean.
    He woke after noon, though he vaguely remembered letting Sweetpea out into the backyard to pee sometime in the early morning. He was groggy and miserable. He dragged himself into the shower and stood there, hot water beating down on him. In the corner of the stall he saw a razor, Emily’s razor. He picked it up—strawberry blond hairs caught under the blade. He tossed the razor across the bathroom, and it landed squarely in the wastebasket.
    He found coffee in the kitchen, found the coffee press stashed away somewhere. It seemed that Emily had left most of the kitchen things. Well, he did most of the cooking. But when he pressed the coffee, he thought of mornings when he prepared breakfast for her and brought it to her in bed, and he cursed her for not having packed up every goddamn thing in the house and taken it with her.
    Sweetpea followed Luke around, from room to room, as Luke searched for winter clothes to take back with him to the cabin. Evenings were cold in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The dog was whimpering—she knew they were leaving. “Where the hell did she store the ski clothes?” Luke muttered, throwing open closet doors, pulling down storage boxes.
    One large box fell on him, then tumbled to the floor. A carton marked tahoe. Taped and retaped. They skied once or twice a winter—she liked it more than he did.
    He tore open the box and found what he was looking for: gloves, scarves, down vests, heavy sweaters, long underwear. Emily’s were there, too—she had forgotten to clean out her own stored clothes. He picked up a ski sweater and held it to his face. It smelled only of cardboard—there was none of her sweet smell here.
    And then, in a moment, he was throwing things wildly from the box: goggles, which crashed against the wall, hats—ridiculous hats—which made him ache for her face in front of him now. At the bottom of the box was a ski ticket for Squaw Valley. He picked it up, wiping at his eyes. On it was scrawled a phone number, a San Francisco number that he didn’t recognize. In Emily’s handwriting. And under it she had written,
Just tell him: I’ll be home tomorrow.
    Luke stood, leaving the mess of the hallway strewn around him, and walked into Emily’s study. She was a graphic designer, had worked from home the last couple of years. Now the study was empty of portfolios and drawings and artist materials, and even her framed work—the posters for his films—was gone from the walls.