Watch Out Now, Take Care, Beware
Emma was not nervous for long because there were signs that calmed her. Morning light blossomed as a form of greeting. A bird was perched just outside the front door. A cat yowled halfway across the field, sounding as if it were asking a question. She was at the house on the lake on Antonio’s birthday.
She felt something in her hand and remembered suddenly what it was: a car key. She had been given instructions and now meant to carry them out. She closed her fist around the key and remembered the time years earlier when she had first arrived at the lake. It was Antonio’s birthday that day also, and she had two identical boxes in the passenger seat of her car. One held a present and the other held a cake, and the whole way there she kept looking at the top box, the one with the cake. She was worried that something would happen to it, preoccupied to the point of madness. When she arrived at the house by the lake, she had lifted the box gingerly, only to find that the top box contained Antonio’s present, a pair of shoes she had paid a man an exorbitant sum to make. That meant that the cake was in the bottom box, and this tipped her into panic. How had that happened? Hadn’t she taken care to put the cake on top? Was it crushed now? Was his name smudged or smeared? She opened it with a sense of falling. The cake was fine. She was not. She went inside, hugged Antonio weakly, and collapsed on the sofa, where she stayed for most of the afternoon.
She had never married Antonio, and she told herself that the only reason for this was that she had never married. There was a line, even if it she could not quite trace it, and he was first in it, for now and forever more. She thought about how long she had known him. It had been years, though it did not seem possible given the freshness in her memory of even their earliest meetings. The first time they had met, they had been in the city. A week had passed. They were in love. Antonio’s birthday was only days away. “Come to my house,” he said. “It is in the country.” She nodded mutely, thinking everything. She found a shoemaker and paid him to make shoes for Antonio. She acquired a cake. She drove out to the house, unsure which box was on the top and which was on the bottom. That night, they had eaten the cake and he had told her he loved the shoes and would try them on, though instead he took her to bed. The next morning, Antonio had done what he often did: he told her what to do. He planted a flag out in the yard, some distance from the house, and told her to go get it. When she returned, he gave her a handful of money and told her to count it. The money was only a fraction of the larger reward, which was Antonio’s love. He had so much love to give. He had, some years before, buried a wife and it was unclear whether she was still somewhere on the property.
She carried out orders. That was how she presented herself to Antonio, in that helpful spirit. Every once in a while she objected to his tone, or to the specifics of a task, but she preferred to increase her power by doing what he told her to do. Days were long and satisfying. Days had orders in them and then periods where orders abated. Days ended with Antonio standing, stretching, and announcing that he was going upstairs to sleep. She stayed downstairs, stayed away, thought of Antonio up there sleeping. She had given her life to a man who was asleep. She was in love with a man who was not awake. She went upstairs, stood by the door of the bedroom, and watched him. His chest moved only slightly and if she blurred her vision she could imagine that he was not breathing at all. She was the living among the dead, and she thrilled to her special status.
Antonio’s sleep was filled with dreams. When he woke, he told Emma about them. “This is a full account,” he said. “I am leaving nothing out.” In any other man, this would have driven her away. But Antonio’s dreams fascinated her. They were filled with stories of distant lands in which terrifying events occurred, and sometimes she would get into bed with him and close her eyes and think about how thankful she was to be safe at home. She listened to Antonio’s stories until they took root in her mind and grew until they threw shade over her own thoughts. This was, for her, the purest form of relief, and she thanked him for this gift. Afterwards, he pulled the sheet up over their bodies and went to sleep to dream again.
