Sleepwalker (2 page)

But Richard, how do you know if this is real, that you’re not dreaming?

He slumped back down against the pillow, his breathing still strenuous, the fear still lingering. He closed his eyes, hugged himself and clenched his teeth--a customary anti-anxiety practice--determined not to faint. The voice, the woman’s cry he’d just heard, whether dreamed or not, seemed so real, and the unpleasant anxiety it raised propelled him to hold each shallow breath in his lungs for as long as possible, the very process of which helped to prevent an unmanageable wave of hyperventilation, and further discomfort.

“Richard?”

Heart hammering, he again startled upright. He twisted his neck to face the source of the nearby voice.

A figure stood against the wall, alongside the bathroom door.

He rubbed his eyes, shook his head. When the blur diminished and the sleep-induced flashes of light cleared from his sights, he saw Pamela staring back at him. She had one hand on her elbow; the other nervously gripped her cheek. Her face was pale, brows knitted into triangles of worry. Her grin was tight and mean.

“Pam?” he coughed, wiping spittle from his mouth. He was shocked to see her, yet relieved in a sense that it was only her and not somebody dream-worldly. “What the hell are you doing here?” His voice was a dry crackle, mouth and throat on fire, tongue coated as if stuffed with cotton. Despite this unpleasant state and the scare of finding Pamela in his bedroom, he felt somewhat comforted to be finally awake and conscious of the second dream-invading voice.

“I...I need something to drink,” he said.

Pamela frowned, silent and ignoring of his request. She dropped into the chair cornering the room, the
highback
Richard used for his dirty clothes after the hamper took its fill. She wore jeans and a brown knit top that hugged her body and accentuated her cola-bottle figure. She crossed her legs and gently tossed her wavy brown hair just as a mild breeze entered through the screened window. The wind felt cool against Richard’s clammy skin.

“It rained all night, Richard. You left the window open.” Usually her ice-blue eyes retained a cool comforting aspect; now they burned red hot.

She was angry.

Richard propped himself up, making a few awkward attempts to seek comfort against the soft pillow. His back ached: a burning sensation that ran up his spine and tightened the knots of tension in his neck. Tiny hammers beat their chaotic tune against his skull, sending jolts of pain through his trapezoid muscles. “I like the sound of the rain,” he lied. He peered at the nightstand. Drops of water coated the polished surface, as well as the clock-radio and the base of the ceramic lamp.

She frowned. “You’re being childish, Richard.”

He ran a hand through his mussed hair. “Pamela, please. I’m not in the mood for this.” He closed his eyes and tried to rub the sleep away, wondering how awful he must’ve looked to the woman he’d always tried to impress, to love, to be loved by. Pathetic, no doubt, a mentally frail man whose strong-willed efforts went mostly unrewarded, making him appear pitiable, aloof, and at many times cold and distant. When he opened his eyes, Pamela was temporarily lost behind dancing blotches of gray haze that dissipated just soon enough for him to indisputably conclude that this scene was no dreamscape--much to his disappointment now. As dreadful as many of his dreams were, the waking world could be just as painful, and Richard had to remind himself that at times it took a while to distinguish the two states of awareness. Dreams equal terror. Awake equals heartache. Here and now the emotional pain seemed too intense, too real to be part of a dream. Indeed, he was awake.

But she doesn’t look like her normal self
, his conscience noted.
You’ve never seen that look in her eyes before. Even when angry she’s always showing some compassion. There’s nothing here but cold hard perceptions, filled with acid and irrationality. Yeah, she’s different alright.

“I was upset about our argument. I must’ve forgotten about the window.”

She shook her head, her face contorting even further into the land of the angry and annoyed. “I came to return your key,” she revealed, dangling it tauntingly by the chain. “I tried to call before coming but your line was busy. When I got here, I let myself in, and guess what? The phone in the living room was off the hook. Gee whiz Richard, I wonder why?”

He shrugged his shoulders, uninspired to answer the sarcastic question she already knew the answer to. Bullets of painful tension raced from his traps into his brain.
You know what she’s thinking, Richard. Damn basket case has been out for another midnight amble. Had himself an imaginary conversation with the dial tone, left the phone off the hook after all good-byes were said and done. God knows what else he’s got himself into. Digging through the fridge in search of gold?

“You look like shit, Richard.”

At first he didn’t want to respond, determined not to let her ruin the start of his day. But she was right, and he knew it. Without looking into the mirror he could tell that his brown eyes were glassy, the whites red and crusty, black circles floating on prominent bags beneath; his skin pale, looking jaundiced, having not been exposed to the sun for months. Yes, he
did
look like shit, felt like it too. Yet still, he felt a need to defend himself, to continue their circuitous conversation. Her unmoving gaze remained fixed on him--a last lick awaiting a challenge. He answered
defeatedly
, “Been a bitch of a night.”

Tears filled her sharp blue eyes, an emotional response hardly a product of sadness, Richard knew, but a reaction brought on through resentment. He’d seen those tears many times before, had grown accustomed to the familiar sight when things didn’t turn out exactly the way she wanted them to.

“Look Richard, I’m sorry if you’re--”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he interrupted, grabbing the bull by the horns. Her words took a side-route of pity, and he felt no desire to travel down that road. He wanted no continuation of last night’s affairs, the crying, the yelling, the name-calling. “I didn’t lose any sleep,” he said sarcastically. In truth, he never did, over Pam or anyone else, even though he sometimes wished and prayed that he could spend just one night tossing and turning with a harried mind, collecting images of the prior day’s ordinary events. But that never happened.

Now, his expectations of losing Pam were finally turning into a reality, and it hurt deep down inside. She was the only person he ever trusted enough to share his secret world with. The one and only close acquaintance who was altogether willing to look past the chaos in his life in an effort to perpetuate a long-lasting relationship. She’d been incredibly understanding at first when he told her that she couldn’t sleep with him--as in spend the night
sleeping
. He knew her interpretation of this was more or less ‘an inherent attempt to commence their relationship the old fashion way.’ The sex had been quite good at first, each sharing a docile, reasonably trustworthy approach to lovemaking. But when the volume of sex they shared increased and their intimacies flourished to a point where their relationship should have held no secrets, Richard maintained his rather odd, belligerent demand with no rational explanation: that they never sleep together.

Sleep
, as in simply spending the night doing just that.
Sleeping
. For reasons unknown to Pam, this had been Richard’s source of tribulation, a rather perplex hang-up that placed an emotional burden on their relationship, making Richard
Sparke
one damn difficult person to be with.

 
“Well, it looks as if you were awake all night. You could play outfield for the Yankees with those circles under your eyes.”

“Please don’t play games with me. We’ve been through all this before.“ Up until last night, Pamela had never acted rudely, but Richard wasn’t entirely positive that this cutesy knock had intended to be cynical. She’d become so damn frustrated, and many times he’d considered giving in to her simply because he loved her. But he reminded himself time and time again that if he did succumb and give her what she truly wanted--allow her to spend the night--it would very much grant her full understanding of his impervious situation, something he absolutely, positively could not do. It would prove to be a fate worse than just the end of their relationship.

And it was here, immediately after her snide remark, while she stood staring and thinking and waiting for some kind of cue, that Richard
Sparke
saw something truly foreign in Pamela Bergin’s magnificent blue eyes. A tiny spark notably distinct from the sweeping pain and sadness filling them last night. This observation shocked Richard, not unlike her cry that startled him awake. He’d never noticed anything quite like it before, in her or anyone else for that matter, and he immediately feared that something might be very wrong with her.

Still sitting, she stared him down, the strain in her features--dilated pupils eating away the blue of her irises, flushed skin, veins bulging at her temples--was an irregularity he could only interpret as incalculable
rage
.

Pamela Bergin, the woman he knew and loved and was about to lose, looked very different. All of a sudden, she
was
a different person.

A monster.

And damn, it scared Richard
Sparke
to death.

Pamela Bergin had maintained the patience of a saint throughout their four month struggle to secure a relationship between them. Little did she know at the time that it would do her no good in the end.

They’d met by accident after Richard decided on a whim to follow up a painful therapy session at Doctor Delaney’s office with a trip to the bookstore for some additional research into his ongoing problem. Stafford’s Coffee House had supplied not only a wide spectrum of books and magazines and music to suit nearly every cultural preference, but also offered a fair-sized eat-in cafe with an acoustic folk duo performing sixties covers, and of course, nearly twenty flavors of coffee. Not to mention the desserts, truly satisfying to a wide variety of palates. Richard had found a seat in the cafe, one at a fairly safe distance from the small crowd developing in front of the band, and started reading up on REM-related sleep disorders over a cinnamon scone and cafe mocha. The stimulating combination of caffeine and sugar had picked him up a bit, and the sounds of soft music distracted him from his real reasons for being there in the first place.

Evidently the two female guitarists had earned a nice following, and although the cafe filled up rather quickly, Richard found the crowd to be generally passive, and unassuming. They were there to drink coffee and enjoy some smooth, gentle music. For the first time in months, Richard was enjoying himself.

“Is someone sitting here?”

The first thing he noticed were her eyes, crystal blue with flecks of red that divulged only the purest and most honest of personalities. Her wine colored lips screamed
taste me
, and the bronze tone in her skin told the story of European ancestry, something Richard bore a soft spot for.

“Are you okay?” She squinted as if unsure of her decision to share a table with him.

He shook away his reverie with an uncomfortable laugh. “No, I’m...yes. Of course I’m okay. I was just having some coffee.” A sneaking, sensory sluggishness and curtailment of decision-making abilities were two of the many ill effects Richard had come to associate with his sleeping problems. When he’d first met Samantha, he’d had no trouble performing the slyest of strategies courting her; here and now, when it fell into his lap like hungry cat sucking up to its owner at mealtime, he embarrassingly stumbled over his words, sounding much like an over-zealous second-grader revealing a truly special item during show-and-tell.

She placed a hand on the back of the chair.
No ring
. “If you’d rather be alone...”

“Yes, no, of course,” he interrupted. “Please sit down.”

She nestled into the seat opposite him, placing a napkin and a cup of coffee on the table between them. She crossed her legs and Richard couldn’t help but check out the soft denim skirt riding high above the knee. When he peered back up, she gave him a delicate, near eye-contact smile.
Caught with your hand in the cookie jar, eh, Richard?
That assured his immobility for a while--he’d have to allow ‘things’ to settle back down before standing up.

He pretended to go back to his perusal, fingering the pages in the book but not really reading the words. His mind had lost its initial focus, now settled on the beautiful woman only two feet away.

He sipped some coffee; it was cold. Here and there he glanced at tan-blue-eyes-dark-hair, but she kept her attentions to the band. Richard turned in his seat to face the music, trying to appear interested. He didn’t possess a taste for folksy renditions; he liked his tunes with more of a progressive edge, singing Stratocasters with distortion and reverb and
wah-wahs
. The acoustic duet was nearly lost behind those seated in front. They were in the middle of a
choicy
version of Tom Petty’s ‘Free Falling’.

“They’re pretty good, huh?” he asked, looking not in her eyes but somewhere between her lips and neck.
Skin so smooth. Delicate.

She smiled. “Yep, they always are.”

From this straight-on, face to face angle her voice sounded a touch deeper. It had a
DemiMoore
raspiness
to it, and he knew that if she ever whispered close in his ear he would damn near turn to jelly. “Do you know them?”