Jack always comes to me. He comes to me during the dead of night. I never know which evening it will be; the mystery elevates my nighttime routine to a thrilling ritual. I think of him in bed with me as I turn down my comforter, as I choose a petite silk nightie, as I moisturize my skin. Maybe tonight?
He knows my house well. He enters through the front door, walks through the foyer lined with the broad-stroke oils that my work has become known for, and up the twelve steps that lead to the second-floor landing and, eventually, my bedroom. He travels it easily in the dark and silently slips into my bed. He gently wakes me as his hand travels up my thigh and encircles my waist, pulling me close to him.
Some nights we lie together like that for hours, like two stacked spoons blanketed neatly in down. All nights we have sex, slowly, mindfully, guided by sensations.
He is always gone in the morning, which allows our intimacies to feel like a dream—a sweet, sensual dream. I savor that time, alone in bed, my memory full of the night before, devoid of the jarring visuals that often haunt me after a night’s sleep. I can think of him and his warm body and his tenderness. I can think of his full lips on mine, of his slightly weathered hands touching me, of his kind murmurs. I lie in bed for as long as that day’s demands allow, drinking in the tangy scent of perspiration he leaves behind.
The night visits were his idea. I’d been his student for several months when the accident happened, when my private life was splashed all over the papers as a terrible tragedy. My husband Michael and I were crossing a street, holding hands, our arms stretched as I pulled him along. I’d seen a puppy on the other side of the street—a mutt that looked like a combination of basset hound and corgi, long ears dragging on the pavement, a short, stout, tailless form. An adorable misfit.
We were holding hands; I was pulling on his to get him to walk faster, and then my hand was empty. I hadn’t seen or heard the car. It wasn’t there when I scanned the streets and stepped off the curb.
I was told that the driver had turned onto the street that we were crossing and drove straight through a four-way stop. The driver was texting a friend, another teenager, when it happened. There was no warning, no screeching tires to attract my attention. Maybe Michael saw the car just before impact? I’d been smiling and looking toward the puppy, a childlike reaction that animals bring out in me. I was feeling nothing but pure joy at the moment I heard the impact. How can that be? How can those two things exist at the same time? There was only a sound, a horrible sound of two things colliding. A slam.
And then nothingness. An empty hand.
I turned and saw a blue Highlander driving away, revealing the broken body of my husband as it went. Michael. Facedown with his head turned to one side, a steadily growing puddle of blood around him. The hand I had been holding was awkwardly twisted, the arm outstretched with the palm facing up. His athletic legs splayed, his feet facing out, one shoe on, one shoe off.
By the time I got to him, he was gone. Lifeless. His eyes were frozen with half lids and, amazingly, a look of calm. I found solace in his expression.
Two weeks after the accident, after the funeral, after my family and friends had returned to their homes, when I was most despondent, Jack came unannounced to my home. He offered counseling and, eventually, after asking about my sexual fantasies, offered the night visits. He said he wanted me to learn how to trust again, to love again. He told me that we could start with this fantasy and, once I was ready for others to be explored, that he would help facilitate those, too. He told me it would change my life. That it would free me.
I’m not ready yet for my other fantasies. I’m not ready to move too far from the place where I am. But I need intimacy, and I need distraction. I need new, happier memories to slowly blot out the old.
Right now, I need him with his compassion—real or manufactured, I don’t know for sure, and I don’t care—and his discretion to come and then to go.