The Better to Hold You by Alisa Sheckley Page B
Authors: Alisa Sheckley
Tags: Fiction, General, Romance, Paranormal, New York (State), Werewolves, Married People, Animals - Mythical, Metamorphosis, Women Veterinarians
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different from the others. I was back in the subway train. Pressed up against strangers, I could feel someone rubbing slowly against me. In real life, I would have been horrified and repulsed, but in this dream, the subtle touch against my back and bottom felt like waves lapping up against me, sensual and impersonal, anonymous and erotic. A male hand gripped my waist, and I thought, This is like that story by Anaïs Nin, about the woman and the stranger on the train, and I gave myself up to the illicit plea sure of it. As the stranger moved in sinuous motions against my backside, I felt my thoughts drifting to this faceless man, and then, without warning, I was that man, struggling to hold myself in check and to restrict myself to just this small necessary contact. I could feel my breathing quicken; I was losing control. And then I was back in my own body. I looked up and saw a barn owl perched on the handrail, swiveling its head a disconcerting 180 degrees to give me a long, slow wink. I realized that the man touching me wasn’t a stranger—well, not a complete stranger, at any rate.
“Stop,” I said, trying to break free from his embrace. It felt as though recognizing him had broken some kind of spell.
“Hang on, sweetheart, I’m almost done,” came Red’s response. He sounded like he’d been running hard.
“I don’t think so,” I said, pushing him away. Behind me, I heard a woman gasp.
“He’s written all over you,” said a woman, lifting my shirt up and peering at my bare back. In the dream’s logic, it didn’t seem peculiar that his touch had penetrated the fabric of my clothing. It didn’t seem strange that I could suddenly see myself from above, my back covered with scarlet designs, like an aboriginal story or a shamanistic spell.
I came instantly awake, alone in the bed. The bedside clock read three A.M., and it was still completely dark outside. Swinging my feet from the bed, I padded down the hall.
“Hunter? Are you up?” As I checked the apartment for my husband, I wondered why I was having erotic dreams about a scruffy redneck when the only man I’d ever wanted was finally turning to me the way I’d always hoped he would.
But Hunter wasn’t home, and though I went back to bed and forced myself to remain there, I didn’t sleep any more that night. It was only in the morning, when I stepped into the shower, that I noticed the fading red marks on my back. I knew they were simply the imprint of the wrinkled sheets on my skin, but for a moment, in the mirror, they resembled arcane symbols.
Hunter came home just as I was leaving for work, looking sweaty and disheveled. He had gotten up early, he said, to go running.
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it’s difficult to get someone to understand something when her marriage depends on her not understanding it. But even I was coming to recognize that a few short weeks after it had begun, my second honeymoon was coming to an end.
Still, I allowed myself to pretend for a little while longer that I didn’t know why it was ending.
SEVEN
On Sunday, October 7, I ran out of denial time. Because I wasn’t working, there was nothing to distract me from the fact of my thirtieth birthday. Like all birthdays that end in zero, this one demanded a certain amount of attention. I was entering the decade in which life decisions carry the most weight. My mother always used to say, In your twenties, you can have a first career and a first marriage that turn out to be nothing but a footnote later on. In your thirties, however, you are making your adult life. You could remake it in your forties, of course, but still, turning thirty was a very big deal.
Not that I expected Hunter to make a big fuss about the day.
He had established early on in our relationship that he felt birthday and Christmas presents were for children—grown-ups surprised each other by commemorating more inventive, personal dates. Which, to give him credit, he sometimes did—a bouquet of
“Stop,” I said, trying to break free from his embrace. It felt as though recognizing him had broken some kind of spell.
“Hang on, sweetheart, I’m almost done,” came Red’s response. He sounded like he’d been running hard.
“I don’t think so,” I said, pushing him away. Behind me, I heard a woman gasp.
“He’s written all over you,” said a woman, lifting my shirt up and peering at my bare back. In the dream’s logic, it didn’t seem peculiar that his touch had penetrated the fabric of my clothing. It didn’t seem strange that I could suddenly see myself from above, my back covered with scarlet designs, like an aboriginal story or a shamanistic spell.
I came instantly awake, alone in the bed. The bedside clock read three A.M., and it was still completely dark outside. Swinging my feet from the bed, I padded down the hall.
“Hunter? Are you up?” As I checked the apartment for my husband, I wondered why I was having erotic dreams about a scruffy redneck when the only man I’d ever wanted was finally turning to me the way I’d always hoped he would.
But Hunter wasn’t home, and though I went back to bed and forced myself to remain there, I didn’t sleep any more that night. It was only in the morning, when I stepped into the shower, that I noticed the fading red marks on my back. I knew they were simply the imprint of the wrinkled sheets on my skin, but for a moment, in the mirror, they resembled arcane symbols.
Hunter came home just as I was leaving for work, looking sweaty and disheveled. He had gotten up early, he said, to go running.
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it’s difficult to get someone to understand something when her marriage depends on her not understanding it. But even I was coming to recognize that a few short weeks after it had begun, my second honeymoon was coming to an end.
Still, I allowed myself to pretend for a little while longer that I didn’t know why it was ending.
SEVEN
On Sunday, October 7, I ran out of denial time. Because I wasn’t working, there was nothing to distract me from the fact of my thirtieth birthday. Like all birthdays that end in zero, this one demanded a certain amount of attention. I was entering the decade in which life decisions carry the most weight. My mother always used to say, In your twenties, you can have a first career and a first marriage that turn out to be nothing but a footnote later on. In your thirties, however, you are making your adult life. You could remake it in your forties, of course, but still, turning thirty was a very big deal.
Not that I expected Hunter to make a big fuss about the day.
He had established early on in our relationship that he felt birthday and Christmas presents were for children—grown-ups surprised each other by commemorating more inventive, personal dates. Which, to give him credit, he sometimes did—a bouquet of
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