*4*
After dinner the women steered the men into the living room. Debra's dad turned on the TV. Brief idle chatter. In the kitchen, Debra and her mom cleaned up after dinner, dishes clinking, water running, delving into the souls of people they had recently touched.
With the TV providing brain static to the back of the men's heads, Bob drifted off into his imagination. He explored the environment, connected with the dark rolling mountains outside, the crickets and bugs, the deer grazing in the dark. He stretched his awareness to massage the ether. Something was resisting. It wasn't Debra - she was fully immersed with her mom. Bob explored a bit more. He extended into his past and future. His future self made contact, shook hands, smiled. Yes, and no, you can't touch this environment. You are being prohibited by me, by yourself, by your future, by knowledge that you don't yet possess. Break off. Bob sighed.
"How 'bout them Red Sox?" Debra's dad asked.
*5*
Bob's restlessness kept him awake. Going from the middle of the big city to the middle of nowhere threw off his balance, misadjusted his sensitivities. The solitude focused him on his unrelenting sexual yearning. Somehow, the heaviness of the air made his thoughts small, separate, just a reflection - a glimmer of normal thoughts. Instead of being on a camping trip and seeing beautiful pine trees on snow capped mountains, he was looking instead at their reflection in a lake. The monotony of the quiet, absolutely silent, without traffic in the distance and the absence of thought waves (just the three people in this house) made his own thoughts seem artificial.
He sat up from the guest bed, reached down for his pants, and slipped them on. He grabbed his jacket from the rounded armrest of a nearby chair, slipped in his arms, and quietly went over to the front door. He softly twisted open the deadbolt, turned the knob, and went outside, gingerly closing the door behind him.
The bleak and piercing Connecticut night sucked the air from his ears. It was so quiet that his ears hurt... or maybe if was from the cold. Anyway, his ears hurt. The Milky Way arched across the heavens, billions of stars glistening. A strange combinations of absolutes, Bob thought. Freezing and empty, quiet and dark, sky ablaze with stars. The rims of his ears were beginning to sting badly from the cold. God everywhere, in between the spaces of the shadows of the backyard brush. In between the spaces of my thoughts.
Bob quietly entered back into the house. He huffed into his hands and cupped his ears to warm them. The contrast between the outside chill and inside warmth made it seem temporarily stifling inside. He sat on the edge of the bed, doffed his pants and thought of Debra, sleeping in the other room.
Their brains connected in synchronized love. He watched dissociated as his body moved now toward her room, his brain numbed by a galaxy of stars and Debra's love. He took off his underwear and slipped into bed next to Debra. She mumbled a few words, rolled over and put her arms around him. In the unconscious thousand-year consummation of love and evolution, Bob coupled with Debra. Without a single thought, just total emotion and love, Bob came inside Debra, fulfilling an unspoken fated destiny.
"Mmm," Debra said afterwards. "You're big." Her thoughts communicated what she meant: Bob was, well, wide. Maybe a little too wide for her in the long run.
In the dark of the night, Bob asleep, Debra sucked the experience from his brain, created equalization, returning Bob to his lonesome path.
