Pyjamas, silk, I think. An intensely dark cobalt, with no patterns or cuffs or edgings, just plain panels of smooth cobalt blue, wth the slightest v-shaped dip at the collar. The shirt buttons are perfectly matched, almost invisible. I have a drawer full of pyjamas she's bought me, cobalt, emerald, black, turqouise, maroon.

It's a sort of a joke and a sort of a token and a sort of a reminder. I never owned pyjamas before Randi. When we first moved in we slept in the nude, side by side, staring, but not touching. Lying between us was the enormous bulk of fifteen months of degrees of expectation that would not be betrayed. We had to do it right. I fell asleep staring at the shape of her shoulder, and woke with her sketching me --- the drawing was grotesque, nearly cubist, as if she had drawn me from all sides at once, so full of detail it became almost abstract; she hadn't missed a single mark or hair.

And then that first night after . . . we tried it again, raw and in the raw, this time too afraid to stare, with the curse lying between us instead of the months of expectation. We squeezed our eyes shut and held each other around the curse until our arms fell asleep, and then we slept like lovers, her back against my belly. I felt the corpse of the months of expectation rolling around in the bed with us, betrayed. We slept like lovers, but we weren't lovers. After that she wore a tee shirt to bed, and I wore sweat pants until I started accumulating pyjamas.

In the raw. I'd never heard that particular expression before I heard it from her. I could never say why the meaning was so obvious, that's a puzzle for a linguist. Still, when she said it, I saw her not only naked, but really raw, scraped and beaten down to tender skin by her curse. We learned, without meaning to, how to sleep together in seperate beds. After that first time in Lechtmoor, we never asked for seperate rooms, as though it would have been a betrayal of that first night. Already, like the curse, expectation was lying between us and binding us together at the same time.

I dress in my pyjamas before I chain her up and she never does the reasonable thing, the practical thing -- stripping off all her clothes before the curse can shred them on her back. She wears old clothes, but that's all the concession she'll make. Not much one for concessions, my girl.

We get stupid on nights like this. When we can feel it coming (and these days he can feel it coming too -- like Charlie used to know I was getting my period before I did. Ian can do that too, of course, but a couple of cramps that would kill a water buffalo and a crying jag or two has nothing on spending the night chained up and screaming), when we know it's going to happen in an hour anyway, he wears those sexy silk pajamas without bothering to button them, and I wear clothes that are too small, that have rips already, in strategic places. Today it was hot and I wore daisy dukes -- stupid. Some night like this we're going to pass right through from stupid to dead, one of us anyway.

I sat on his lap on the couch (at least we were bright enough to leave the cage door open) and at first we kissed, and then we really kissed, because hey, I was going to freak out anyway in an hour. Silk let the warmth of his skin straight through to me, except for the eighth of an inch of thigh the shorts covered. Ian kissed my throat, very lightly, and I lost it.

I guess he carried me, he's used to it. I got it back together already chained up, and Ian had a brand new shiner. Jeanne, his makeup girl, keeps telling him about this battered men's shelter north of LA. Between that and the emergency handcuffs in my purse, we must be Skip's wet dream; he's still trying to get me on screen for the entertainment of the whole three people in our audience.

So I said I was sorry, and he didn't leave because I guess times like these he knows he has to be stubborn for both of us. He sat right in the doorway, because we haven't passed stupid into dead quite yet, and we talked. We always have our best conversations like that.

"Do you . . . d'you have a list of things you want to do if I'm cured, you know, little things?"

"When you're cured." he corrected automatically, like it was a grammar mistake I was always making. "Well, not, exactly a list..."

"But?"

"I think first, a grocery trip."

"Groceries?"

"Pick up a stack of vegetarian cookbooks and an icebox ful of greens. I thought we might both go off meat."

"Oh." It sounded good. At first it was great to be back on burgers, but they were starting to pale, even with the huge cravings I get for them.

"And then a bath."

"Okay..."

"Definitely a warm bath. Of course it may be a a bit crowded, but..."

He was teasing me, the gorgeous bastard. "Crowded?" I had the innocent look down cold.

"Didn't I mention you were to share this bath with me?"

"You skipped that part."

"Mm. Well, definitely, there's no one whose hair I'd rather wash by candlelight." He moved over to me and kissed my hair, my forehead.

"Candlelight?"

"Candles we picked up at the grocery store. Did I forget to mention? And once I felt we were properly bathed I think ... yes, carrying you off to bed was on the list." Between that bruise around his eye darkening up and that smile, he looked like some kind of movie hero.

"You forgot drying us off." But I figured he hadn't.

"No no. I understand that it's better to be somewhat damp before applying the massage oil."

"Massage oil?"

"Picked up --"

"--at the grocery store." I chimed in. "You skipped that part."

"I did remember to mention the box?"

"Picked up at the grocery store?"

"No, the jewelers. Did I skip that part?"

I kissed him, even though it was coming, because that's just how stupid I am. And to keep him from saying any more, because I'm really not ready to hear that. Not yet.

And then it wasn't just a tickle anymore, it was the whole sneeze, right there. One time I jerked forward right when it started, and when I woke up, Ian had a bandage over his nose but wouldn't admit that it was broken. This time I managed to jerk back, felt blood on my lip where I'd managed to bite myself. The bastard god of werewolves flicked the switch and I screamed. Muscles started spasming, twisting me around. The cage clanged closed and I could hear every turn of metal in the lock.

Ian had one hand around one of the bars, knuckles inside the cage. I took a flying leap for it and he stumbled back away. I could take him apart, swallow him whole, writhing, screaming under me.

I always walk away from it shaking; it's like witnessing a rape. She once admitted to me that sometimes she likes what happens to her; but she wouldn't talk about it when I tried to ask her later. She never wants to talk about any of it, not even to tell me what fuels her when she's like this -- is it animal terror, hate? Not surprisingly, I dream sometimes that it's lust; I dream of lying in shallow water, and hearing doors shatter as she comes for me. I don't know what the water means.

She began to howl just as I closed the door and hid her away.

I walked out the back door and stood on the patio in my silk pyjamas. The moon that rules us dropped it's stolen, frozen sunlight over the black water and the black sand. A fit blonde couple jogged by, their steps occasionally splashing into the edge of the Pacific. The moon wouldn't bargain with me, so I went to bed.

Howl.

Chains.

Howl.

Bars.

Howl.

Mate never answers.

In my dream I was walking barefoot through the B&B. My father's voice grumbling, and Mum: "Do you know what those two monsters did this time?" Their voices are faded pink and blue light through the door (when is a door?), striking the carpet in the hall, the old carpet, tight colourless stripes. Pass them by. My, our, room -- it's a wreck (Richard's fault). I try to find my plastic model of Frankenstein's creature and my collection of Terror Faces. Instead I find a door that I'd forgotten. Inside is a sumptuous bed, brocade curtains, satin bedclothes edged with fringe and silky black tassels. It fills the entire room, which has marble walls the colour of skin, streaked with white. My father comes into my room; suddenly I remember that I'm not allowed in here I back out, cheeks burning. "Look at this mess." My father says. Music is playing, something loud in the street, and he shouts over it. He looks so tired; I can't ever remember my father not looking tired. "It's a shambles, boys, a bloody shambles." I start to pick things up. "You boys," my father says, his voice joining in with the brassy music outside the window. "You boys!" I look around for Richard, but he isn't here.

I woke up still feeling that nasty clutch of urgency from the dream, and slapped off the alarm. 5:09 AM. I once had a goal of bringing Kristen to orgasm at the library using only my bare feet while we sat across the table from one another -- I could sign my name with my left foot and had been banned from the library twice by the time I succeeded. I once had the goal of making love to Wendy standing up, no help, just her wrapped all around me and my well-developed sense of balance -- never really got a chance to practice. Now my goal is to get Randi out of her chains, cleaned up a little, and into bed without waking her. I'd like to see her wake up once after a full moon in her own bed, as if the night were erased.

First I covered her up; I don't know why -- I know Randi's body already. Then I unlocked her. She almost woke, then didn't, and then did as I picked her up and carried her out. She sighed, just a little, sadly, and tucked her head into my shoulder. "Morning."

"Sleep, Randi."

She put her arms around my neck and kept them there as I put her down on the bed, so that I was pulled down with her. We take foolish risks, sometimes. I kissed her mouth, and felt her falling asleep again.

"Y'know th'first thing I wanna do when m'cured ?" she mumbled, eyes shut. Her voice was hoarse.

"What?" I eased around beside her and dragged her arm out from under my neck, so I wouldn't fall asleep on it.

"Mmm." She said with her face pressed into my bicep. "You."