The stairs make no noise. They always make noise.
I keep moving, slipping through the hall to Jon�s room at the extreme right side of the house. He has the door open all the time: I don�t know how he does it without screaming. I have to have my door closed.
The candle flitters demurely at the edges of his sheets: he is sprawled across his bed, sheet just nearly over his hipbones. For all his obsessing over age, he�s got a nice body kept toned by (I suspect) hours of sit-ups when I am not paying attention. This flat stomach reaching up to a chest that�s just defined enough, all a slinky tan color. I sometimes wish that he had a tattoo, but other times I look at his expanses of skin and realize that it would be like, ruining it. I�m standing there like a teen beauty queen, enraptured, when a bit of the wax from my candle drips onto his chest, and he slaps at it like he was stung by a mosquito. I am a very large mosquito. He looks up at me, in all my white glory, and I see something start in his eyes, as though he was spooked but didn�t want to embarrass me. And then, after what feels like hours, he takes my hand and blows out the candle.
I don�t know what sparked this strange action. I don�t know what has made me so strange and tender, so cloyingly needy. I was never like this; I don�t know what has made me suddenly more desirable�I don�t know why I desire. Andrew was maybe a wakeup call? Maybe to tell us: you! You are older, wiser, do not settle! See your maturity and live in it, you�ve made the first hurdle: you haven�t let your souls out, your essences. So thrive, so grow.
No, these words sound appropriately idealo-Marxist, but Andrew wouldn�t have ever said them. He was just a man, a sweet sad man who died too early, victim of madness. I continue to write and rewrite his eulogy in my head: I didn�t even know him. This, I like to imagine, is one of those components of my disease: a feeling of all-knowing, of jack of all trades capability. Maybe it�s not, though. Maybe I am just flawed.
Jon hears me laughing, twists over feeling viperish, and, well, I tell him that I�m just feeling a little giggly tonight. He nods, slowly, and says that he missed me. So sweet!
I go back to sleep, curled up gently next to him, feeling like a kitten in an Easter basket. Safe and protected, here beneath a heavy ceiling and next to a broken man.