Audience

The zipper of the dress is down, exposing Bez from the nape of her neck down to the small of her back. Her skin is pale, caressed by the winter light coming through the window, and I think for a moment of going to put my hand against her, to feel the bones just below the surface, to touch and feel the solidity of her, but instead I just curl up on the mattress and rest the side of my head against the cool fabric of the pillowcase.

Bez regards herself in the mirror. She must be aware that I am watching her, but she doesn’t give any indication that she does. She is unselfconscious, spinning this way and that, pulling the dress off her shoulders, then back up again, raising the hemline high up on her thigh, then letting it fall again down past her knee.

We have not left the house all weekend, spending it watching movies and eating spaghetti, instead of bothering with the outside world. I am more than a little antsy from not going out, but Bez has wanted nothing other than to lay under blankets with me, and I am not one to argue such behavior.

Earlier, she made me lay on the floor while she sketched me, for some project she is working on that she doesn’t want to talk about yet. It’s too soon, she says. It hasn’t finished baking yet.

She is drawing me a lot recently, and I let her do it. I can tell when she’s building up to something, some large project that can only be approached at high speed, and reached on steps built from a dozen other smaller works that exist only to slip her mind into whatever gear it needs to be in in order for the entire thing to flow properly.

She doesn’t show me everything she draws. I don’t show her everything I write. Not everything needs an audience. Sometimes the act of creation itself is everything that is needed.

Eventually, Bez pulls the dress over her head and drops it on a pile of her abandoned clothes on the floor before coming back to bed with me.

Tomorrow, we are going for a drive.

Today we are staying in bed.