In his sleep, M. Vincent realized that he was all three, the boy and the man and the old grandfather, and that he could experience being the man, who churned anxiously through the fog in his powerful battleship toward an unknown destination, and also the boy, who played in the sunny waters waiting for his father to come home, but that the old man remained yet hidden, a stage of life which was still a mystery and filled him with a foreboding of age and decrepitude and helplessness...

He woke, disturbed by the dream of the battleship. He looked at his clock. It was 6:20. Sarah’s warm body lay against him, her thigh over his thigh, her arm over his chest. He was aroused, painfully stiff.

In his mind, he walked through the ritual of washing and dressing which awaited him, clearly aware of each step which, morning after morning, he habitually repeated. Going over them in his mind let him feel as though he had already done them and could go back to sleep, but he knew that would not work.

Next to him, Sarah slept, an inert lump curled beneath the covers. She would, he knew, remain asleep during the time he bumped around the room washing and dressing, went downstairs and slipped out the front door, locking it behind him. He wondered if she would wake then, once she was alone and no longer needed the camouflage of sleep. Would she do something completely unknown to him, open up some part of herself which she could open only when he was gone?

Maybe she masturbated in slow and convoluted ways, using simple household utensils as perverse, unthinkable stimulants to her solitary need. Maybe her eyes snapped open, like the eyes of the Undead, at the clicking of the lock behind him, and then she lay for hours, naked on the bed, her unfocused gaze aimed at the ceiling, her mind moving like a vast oiled machine through dimensions of thought hidden from him, until one morning her essence, like a newly-hatched butterfly, would flutter away into a realm of psychic sunshine and flowers, a realm he could not even imagine, and leave her stiff, discarded body behind. Or maybe she was already out of bed as his car rolled down the driveway, and, careful not to leave any traces, had begun to sift through his books, his notes, papers, letters, his personal things, finding out everything there was to know about him while he went about his daily business believing he remained mysterious.

The truth, he thought, must be more simple. She probably slept a while longer and then got up, dressed, ate breakfast, rinsed the bowls, began her day.

M. Vincent resigned himself to the ordinary. He quietly slid the drawer of his bedside table open, and felt for the tube of K-Y lubricating jelly. His fingers brushed the hard, solid bulk of the pistol in its nylon holster, then found the tube. He squeezed a chilly dollop onto himself and gave it a moment to warm.

He shifted, moving over Sarah, who remained limp as he entered her. She flattened herself under him. He impaled her deeper and