Asleep
poopoorama
In the other room he reads the novel she’d set aside when she turned in for a nap, the story of two women vacationing in Tuscany, one of whom had married well but was bored and unhappy, the other who married poorly but has a deeply fulfilling affair with a poet. He reads leisurely, turning the pages with ritual slowness, pausing now and then to sip a little Cabernet from a glass—one of three remaining from a set of six they bought when they moved into the apartment. He listens to her breathing as she sleeps, and he wishes he was a poet like the lover in the novel, and could tell her how he feels in words as rich and mellow as the sunshine on a Tuscan hillside.
She sleeps as lightly as goose down. The distant murmur of Sunday afternoon traffic filters through the window, soothing as the rippling of a brook. Through the light blanket of sleep, some distant part of her mind registers the comforting sound of pages turning, slow and regular as a heartbeat, a soft whisking sound dependable as breath itself. She dreams of a poet in Tuscany, and the insistent touch of hands that have never known a callus.
Soon she will wake from her nap, rested and relaxed, and together they will prepare a light meal while they finish the bottle of Cabernet. Over dinner, to his own surprise, he will impulsively say they could likely afford a holiday in Tuscany in the spring if they are frugal through the winter, and he will be delighted by her unexpected blush.
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