Curled in the Bed of Love Read Online Free

even when he can’t accomplish anything by it. And not only in the persistent effort of his work, testing the rigid laws case by case. When they happen upon a wounded bird at the beach, he’ll wrap it in his jacket and move it to the shelter of a rock above the tide line. Inevitably, when they come back along the beach, they’ll find the bird, its throat torn by vultures.
    â€œWe don’t have natural limits,” Sam says. “Or we wouldn’t have plundered our resources in the first place.”
    Claire downs her first glass as quickly as she can, spends more time preparing the next glass than she did drinking the first. Memory lurks in the taste of the tequila, in the way her hand closes around the wide-bowled glass. For years she has spoken of her relationship with Sam with amused tolerance, another example of her foolhardy waste of herself. Now she recalls drinking with him in a room lit only by dusk, Sam kneeling beside her, lifting the heavy wash of her hair, murmuring her name. She’s frightened: that touch, the pealing of her name, more real than her numb body is to her now.
    She reaches again for the tequila bottle. The liquor warms her. She shrugs out of her sweater while Russell doggedly argues with Sam, well able to hold his own, having earned his convictions by living up to them for twenty years.
    â€œWhat every national park needs is a good bouncer,” Sam says. “To turn back morons in RVS . To kick out the idiots who need TV sets in their campers.”
    â€œBut you’d get to go where you want,” Russell says. “No rules for you. Screw whatever happens as a result. Claire could have been hurt out there.”
    Claire looks at the glass in her hand. When was the last time she threw something? She places the glass carefully on the table and gets up and steps out the back door. She has not been this drunk in years. The stars swim above her, refuse to stay in place. She’s astonished that they can disappoint her in this way, when she has spent hours watching the night sky, enough hours to learn how slowly the Big Dipper sinks toward the horizon, how it never dips far enough to spill over.
    Russell comes out onto the deck after her, her sweater in his hand.
    â€œCome on,” he says. “We should go to bed.”
    Russell didn’t rescue her. She chose him after she’d made up her own mind to change. She twirls away from him, letting the dress billow out around her. Sam, standing in the doorway, applauds.
    When Russell moves toward her, Claire stumbles down the steps of the deck and dances in the garden, her arms out to the night. She is so warm. She plucks at the buttons of her dress, peels back the cloth to expose her skin to the cool air.
    â€œClaire, Claire,” Russell pleads.
    She runs to escape him, feels as if she is floating over the grass. She remembers now how being drunk used to convince her of the grace of her body, how she never stumbled, never got sick, never banged into things. And something else comes to her belatedly: the awe that Sam promised her in the kayak and she denied. She feels wild with the knowledge of their dare, of the absolute moment when they were reeled under the water, when she did not have to ask herself,
Do I want to live?
    Russell looms closer, a blur in the dark, and she runs from him again. Twigs and stones prick her feet, but the sharp sensation doesn’t hurt. She moves flawlessly and silently through the tangle of their garden and down to the bluff while Russell blunders noisily somewhere above her.
    She crouches on the bluff just below the writing shed. The night swells around her like a luxurious blanket, muffling the movement of the body that appears suddenly beside her. Sam claps a hand over her mouth to still her cry of surprise and draws her quickly into the shed, tugging her to the floor. She can still hear Russell, moving noisily back toward the house.
    Sam offers her a sip from the glass of