Falls back to sleep holding her the same way but not as tight. She doesn’t seem to have moved from the position she fell asleep in. (So? So he’s just saying; he thinks it’s interesting, but if he later feels it isn’t or it holds things up, out it goes.) Dreams he’s at his apartment desk, typing. “This is the quai of strays, go to the fire, don’t stop for pyre, do thumbthin but sucking the shit, as life isn’t made to be staid sense of in a day or end yesterday, nor think a crown or two will help you bob.” Reads what he typed and says, “This is how I want to write from now on: dream walk with multiple illusions, or at the em and em till I’ve boringly exported it. I sow I’m in deep but when I alake I want to pure all these merdes down jest as they art ear. In crap they’ll be the earth turds of my nest crook and will set the bone and smile for the best of it, one driveling into the udder before I’ve something that seeps. Now get a cake. That’s a delivery!” Wakes up, has turned over, fingers around for his memo book and pen to jot down what he dreamt. Room’s dark, no moon, and he doesn’t want to turn the light on to write and wake her, so he’ll print it in big letters on several pages. Finds the pen and book, opens both, but forgets what he dreamt. A concept. Something about fests and fakes? Rests and wakes? Neither; and he’s sure nothing of that dream jungle can be used if he did remember it. Her body shivers and he gets an erection because he has his hand on her breast again and his groin’s up against her bottom and he thinks wouldn’t it be nice if she intentionally shoved her buttocks into him this time, usually a sign she’s interested if she jiggles it and then turns her face toward his for a kiss, and he squeezes farther into her, makes sure the covers are over her shoulder, runs his hand up and down her leg and then around her nipple and she doesn’t stir, and he thinks what can he do to get her interested and not infuriate her, and says—
Dreams he’s sitting at the desk downstairs. “There’s a pen,” he says, “and there’s a paper.” Takes the paper and starts writing with it on the pen. Looks closely at the pen and nothing’s written on it. Directs the gooseneck lamp to it and holds his city dictionary magnifying glass to where he wrote, and still there’s nothing. What happened? he thinks. Why does he always lose his best ideas because of malfunctions or personal blunders or because they take place in his sleep? “You don’t write it that way, that’s why,” he says. “Nothing will come out of paper. It only comes from the bed. I mean, that too can be true though not absolute, but for what you want to do, words only come out of the pen onto the paper.” (The bed remark was a slip he’s going to keep and probably same with what followed it.) He writes with the pen on the paper but nothing comes out. He inspects the nib and sees it’s straight. It’s last summer’s pen, he thinks. She must have left it on the desk over the winter, and the ink froze. But it would have unfrozen by now so either the pen’s dry or the nib’s bent or there’s no reservoir or the pen’s just here for decoration, like the old spice products and loose-tea boxes in the kitchen, a holdover from the cottage’s owners, who last summered here ten years before Sally started renting it. Tries straightening the twisted nib but sticks himself with it and bleeds blue-black blood that quickly turns red. Symbols, symbols, he thinks in the dream. Wants none of them, and sticks the nib into his finger cut and looks for something in the pen to draw the liquid up but no part of it opens or unscrews. Searches the desk drawer for another pen and then his pants pockets. Everything’s empty. Slaps his shirt but he isn’t wearing one with a pocket. All the pens are in New York, he thinks, and he wants to start something new that’ll carry him through the next two months. First draft first, which should take him about as long as it takes him to scribble it out — maybe an hour, maybe two — and then he’ll work on it page to page as he always does, refining and perfecting it, building it, no doubt expanding it and adding rooms and maybe a second john and definitely a new shower stall, for the one that’s here is rusty and cracked. But he has to put in a real cellar first; the one they have is just earth. And before that, a foundation, which will be an enormous undertaking, with him hand-digging a vast hole with only manual tools. All this labor will give him something useful to do this summer and also keep him fit and out of her hair. Forget constructions. Rule one: stay seated and start writing and something will come from it as it has for the last thirty years. Where’d he get “thirty”? Barely twenty, but first he needs something to write with. He’d normally use a typewriter, but he left his in the city. She said there wasn’t room for it in the car. That to take it would mean leaving behind one of the cats, and they’re a family she reunites for a month or two every summer and they thrive for the rest of the year because of their time up here. That’s not what she said. (And “that’s not what she said” and then saying what she or he really did say and then possibly contradicting that is something he’s done so much in his writing that he should stop doing that, too.) She knows the first thing that goes with him for even a weekend away is his typewriter. He thinks she even reminded him in the car before they set out: “Did you remember to take your manual?” and for some reason he said yes. But he left it because he thought that for one man he’s done more than enough writing for a lifetime, if that’s to be gauged by the number of pages, or more than the most ardent reader of a writer would ever want to read, and he wants to take a long and maybe even an endless break from it. No, he forgot his typewriter: got to be honest. He often sets a time he wants to get something done or leave a place by and then rushes like mad to meet that deadline and usually makes it or is late by just a few minutes, but messes things up and causes bad feelings with any other person involved with him in it. (Mouthful? You bet, but he’s so close to the end, go on.) The typewriter’s still in its case on her living room floor, standing on its end and waiting to go. If it could speak it’d probably say, “Why’d he abandon me? Haven’t I been a faithful and helpful servant for years, and don’t I only break down when he abuses me? And doesn’t he think that after working continuously for ten months in the city that I could also use a change of scenery? What does he think the humidity here does to my keys?” Typewriter abuse, he sees himself being charged with, if that typewriter brought him to court, his other no-longer-used broken-down typewriters over the past twenty years acting as corroborating witnesses against him. He banged away on them mercilessly sometimes, often kept them uncovered and unclean. Took out his aggressions on them, and there were plenty of those — forget what he says about his soft spot for manuals and how he prefers them to all other writing machines because of their simplicity and portability and pianolike keyboard action — till they were broken beyond repair. He’ll have to drive to New York for it, there’s no other way. Head out later today and start back early tomorrow, so only missing a night’s sleep with her and one more workday. Bunglers and malefactors. Wishes he had the dough to buy a new one up here. Or could arrange for someone to get into her apartment and pack his typewriter and send it to him. But that might take days and be too much to ask of anyone, and the typewriter no matter how well packed could get damaged along the way. He has two reams of paper and plenty of typewriter ribbons, correction tabs, and eraser pencils, which he forgot to take out of his suitcase before he left, but nothing to write on. She comes into the room and says—