Suddenly I became aware of a strange sensation: a faint echo of the radio in the unplugged ear. It took me a while to realize the downstairs neighbors were tuned to the same station. I turned to Alex and watched the colors from the movie flicker on her sleeping body, noted the gold necklace she always wore against her collarbone. I tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and then let my hand trail down her face and neck and brush across her breast and stomach in one slow motion I halfheartedly attempted to convince myself was incidental. I was returning my hand to her hair when I saw her eyes were open. It took all my will to hold her gaze as opposed to looking away and thereby conceding a transgression; there was only, it seemed, curiosity in her look, no alarm. After a few moments I reached for my jar of wine as if to suggest that, if anything unusual had happened, it was the result of intoxication; by the time I looked back at her face her eyes were closed. I put the jar back without drinking and lay beside her and stared at her for a long while and then smoothed her hair back with my palm. She reached up and took my hand, maybe in her sleep, and pressed it to her chest and held it there, whether to stop or encourage me or neither, I couldn't tell. In that position we lay and waited for the hurricane.
--Ben Lerner,
10:04
