She is not asleep, not really. Part of her is sleeping, surely, drifting along just beneath the level of consciousness, but a corner of her mind is awake, is aware of the sound of the dripping sink, of an itch on her knee, of the tabletop warm against her cheek, of the fact that another part of her mind is dreaming. She floats in that in-between realm, willing neither to pull herself completely into wakefulness nor to capitulate entirely to sleep. Instead, she hovers, and it is snowing. She is outside and looking up at a black sky, at fat flakes of snow coming down as hard and fast as they seem to fly at you through the windshield when you drive into a storm. And then she isn’t standing outside anymore; instead she actually is driving through the storm. And then the flakes change from snow into stars, the car is gone, and she is speeding untethered through the universe.
It is a strange half dream, born of delirious exhaustion, and for some time she allows herself to linger there, even as the sink drips, even as her cheek is going numb against the table. She lets herself drift through snow, through stars, and then in the distance she sees their own home, the one that she is in now, but instead of being in a town, it stands alone in a dark field. And she can see the lit kitchen window—the only source of light—can see herself through it, a figure slumped over the table, and she drifts close, closer, until finally she merges with herself.
She opens her eyes, looks at the kitchen sideways. She doesn’t sit up immediately, but instead lets herself ease back into the night, the present. She moves her fingers first, then her toes, blinks her eyes clear. She is suddenly aware of being hot, extremely hot, and thinks it interesting that unlike the dripping of the water or the itch on her knee, the overwhelming heat did not follow her into her dream. It makes her wonder what might not have followed her out. She remembers snow, stars, the house, herself, but there could have been something else, something important, which, now that she is awake, is as absent from wakefulness as the stifling heat was from her dream. She can make no sense of the snow, of the stars, of anything she remembers, and she feels increasingly certain that the heart of the dream, its meaning, may have been left behind.
She frowns and lifts her head from the table. The clock reads eleven twenty-eight, and her chest opens with dread. She stands and goes to the sink for a glass of water, which she drinks looking out the window above the faucet. Their backyard comes up against the yard of the house on the next street south, and Nell can see through the gaps in the dividing hedge the kitchen of the Goodsons, their elderly neighbors. The light is on, and Mr. and Mrs. Goodson sit at their kitchen table, a portable radio between them. Nell can guess what they are listening to; they are never up so late. But there they are, near midnight, holding hands across the kitchen table. They don’t look at each other; Nell thinks that perhaps they can’t.
She looks away from the Goodsons, allows her eyes to drift to the portable radio on her own counter. She reaches toward it, and after a moment’s hesitation, she turns it on.
It doesn’t take her long to find the station she is looking for, the chattering voices narrating the evening’s grim affair.
“Time is rapidly running out for Willie Jones,” a voice says. “Over by the jail, they’ve already opened up the truck, it’s all ready to go, all set so that the juice will be funneled up through these cables to the chair.”
“That’s right, Joe. The truck’s ready to go, and the prisoner is about to arrive, and it won’t take long to prep him, strap him down …”
“And perform his last rites, right, Bob?”
“That’s right, I believe those are available should the prisoner wish to—”
Nell snaps the radio off. She doesn’t want to hear any more.