Times two (or four, or even 11)
Meet the unconscious, he thought, drifting in and out of sleep. He wondered if she shared this sense of another self or selves, more likely, that were often more interesting than his conscious thoughts, expressed or just below ordinary life except at rare moments? How even to ask about this eluded him, but occasionally their bodily interactions led to a brief and mutual clarity in the sense of finally quieting the rest so their heat and breath spoke a common, natural language within which a few essential thoughts could be said between them and then remembered. He would set them down, whereas she would come back to them later.
Some say that the unconscious is our suave companion, while others see a plot. He fell into the former school, in keeping with his benign outlook, while she was unable to see motives for what they were. Strangely, this didn’t blunt her appetite for whatever made her heart race. He tried to extrapolate what her unconscious might be, or possibly she lacked one? That would be a rare thing, but would explain her surface tension, like that topmost layer of water that certain flies can walk on. Below it, too many fathoms to count, self-lighting fish gather around spouts of methane, a depth that rocked the room and made her start violently at night. If this was her unconscious, it was a brute force, notwithstanding those fish.
He searched for them sometimes and she’d stretch out and roll up and stretch out as deep, deeper he tried to find where those fish were hidden.
When they first met, he guessed the tension part but the depths were a surprise, like stepping into the grey ice piled up at a crosswalk and feeling his shoe fill up with cold water. Yet her motive, what passed for it, drew her to him. Mr. Suave and his stunt double worked for her. She held his arm, turned full wattage on him so men were envious. Whatever rose up, rose up at night, visible far off, coming, coming, carrying everything with it. The bed was a sight when this happened, but it didn’t always.
Mr. Suave appeared on those nights of calm. Mrs. Suave, he called her, and he could see clear through her to Australia or some other blue/blond place where she was more normally put together. “Are you there?” he’d ask. “There I am,” she’d answer, pointing at the bathroom or the closet or the window. Then she’d pull him over. Mr. Suave was nowhere around, but somewhere down deep, those self-lit fish were just waiting to be found.
