Only when he got there, it was his room, and it was empty.
* * *Once, in the middle of their brief time together, they’d gone out into the wilderness and made love under the stars. Afterwards she had snuggled hard against him, and he stroked her gently. “What are you thinking?” he asked.
“About us,” Laurel said. She shivered. The wind was brisk and cold. “Sometimes I get scared, Greg. I’m so afraid something will happen to us, something that will ruin it. I don’t ever want you to leave me.”
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I won’t.”
Now, each night before sleep came, he tortured himself with her words. The good memories left him with ashes and tears; the bad ones with a wordless rage.
He slept with a ghost beside him, a supernaturally beautiful ghost, the husk of a dead dream. He woke to her each morning.
* * *He hated them. He hated himself for hating.
3
Duvalier’s Dream
Her name does not matter. Her looks are not important. All that counts is that she was, that Trager tried again, that he forced himself on and made himself believe and didn’t give up. He tried.
But something was missing. Magic?
The words were the same.
How many times can you speak them, Trager wondered, speak them and believe them, like you believe them the first time you said them? Once? Twice? Three times, maybe? Or a hundred? And the people who say it a hundred times, are they really so much better at loving? Or only at fooling themselves? Aren’t they really people who long ago abandoned the dream, who use its name for something else?
He said the words, holding her, cradling her, and kissing her. He said the words, with a knowledge that was surer and heavier and more dead than any belief. He said the words and tried, but no longer could he mean them.