But I am here, headed to a gambling conference. I recount the small sum I am willing to spend, to fritter away on a dream. For nearly an hour we cruise. Hot, unpopulated strip malls, distant red rockscapes. At some point we drive up into pooled and palm-treed hills, upscale and residential, where I am safe from heat and greed but not the question that beats like a low, steady drum. Why did you come?”
He looked the same on screen as I remembered: sheepish smile and dewy eyes, with a 14-year-old's energy though now he was 35. Not the look of someone who almost suffocated from collapsed lungs on numerous occasions, left his body, talked to a white light, and then came back again.”
It's hard to pinpoint when the easygoing, newly married professional in me intensified into someone who saw only through a fierce, narrow tunnel of domesticity. I suspect this happens to many pregnant women, although the genteel term "nesting" doesn't begin to explain the weird ferocity.”
I want to say it was a just a bad dream, that I don't believe my husband is trying to kill me, or any part of me. When I tell friends about the nightmare, anticipating their dead pause, I laugh first so they know I am not worried. But they pause anyway, wondering, like me, why am I dreaming of my own demise at the hands of the one I love.”
