Cassandra sat at the edge of the bed. The curtain was open and the snow fell under the street light. I looked at her white back. It was early in the morning and she was awake again. She didn't sleep much for days. Then she'd fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon, wake early in the morning and sit on our bed looking out the window. She'd always been thin. She was losing weight. I could see the edges of her vertebrae and the outline of her ribs.
"You're awake," she said. "I'm sorry." She didn't turn around.
"I just woke up," I said.
"You yell in your sleep," she said. "You do that a lot. Then you bolt up and look around. Do you remember that?"
"Sometimes."
She turned to me, her black hair swinging over her shoulder. "What wakes you up like that?"
"What I remember? I forget it when I fall back to sleep."
"Some people don't remember their dreams." She turned back to the window. "You say a woman's name sometimes. Sarah -- the one that died."
"Yes."
"You don't talk about her. But you call her name after all these years."
"It gets better."
"But you still call her name. That was twenty years ago?"
"Twenty-two."
"People have mates, I think. When they die, you don't forget them."
She stood and walked to the window and opened the curtain wider. She crossed her arms and I watched her in the yellow light.
"Come to bed," I said.
"You were with her five years?"
"Yes."
"You were very young."
"It was a long time ago."
She ran her hand across the curtain.
"If the neighbors have a camera, you'll end up on the internet."
She opened the curtain and exposed her entire body to the window, put her hands on her hips, leaned forward and shook.
"They're asleep."
When she was amused, her voice rose. There was life in her voice then. She'd brighten up for a second, then go back to her silence.
She came to bed and lay next to me, facing the wall. She was quiet for awhile. Then she spoke. "People are stupid. This war is stupid. Our mates die. I think everything is going to die."
I put my hand on her shoulder and drew her to me. It was like we had been together a long time.
"The permafrost in Alaska is melting," she said. "The carbon monoxide levels are higher than they've ever been."
"The world will grow cold," I said. "A ball of ice in space."
She took my hand. "That's from a poem. Which one?"
"I don't remember," I said. "A Turkish poet. The ending is something like, 'You must love like that.'"
"Everything will die, and there's nothing we can do, so we must live in the moment, for love?"
"I think he meant something like that."
"I think it's crap," she said. "But it sounds pretty. Kevin didn't know much poetry, other than song lyrics. He played in a band, you know. Country songs on the weekends, some '60s rock and roll, that song by Wilbert Harrison, 'Kansas City.' When he got drunk, he'd do 'Brown-Eyed Handsome Man' and shake his butt at the girls. I used to laugh my ass off."
"You need to remember things like that."
"You think that's why I'm not sleeping?"
"What you were saying," I said. "About losing your mate."
"I don't think I've ever had a mate, she said. "Maybe that's why I'm not sleeping."
She was forty-two and her husband had been dead for two years. He was in the National Guard, and he'd been killed in Iraq. They had been married since she was seventeen, when she got pregnant. Her two daughters were away at college. When she was in her mid-twenties, she started painting, mostly watercolor landscapes and animals. She sold some. Her husband was a UPS driver and had life insurance, so she was OK for money.
I'd met her at an art gallery opening a year and a half ago, where I was appearing for the mayor. I am one of his aides. My job is primarily to appear at various civic events to show that the mayor is an unwavering supporter of whoever is holding the event. I am an attractive, well groomed man, and I wear a suit and smile and give speeches, most of which I write myself. Before Sarah died I taught poetry. But I stopped doing that a long time ago.
We were standing next to each other looking at a painting of a waterfall. I had noticed her in the crowd. She was an attractive woman -- thin, with large blue eyes.
"Do you like it?" she said.
"Yes," I said, although I didn't. When I am working for the mayor, I do not make critical comments.
"No you don't," she said.
"I do."
"I painted it," she said. She smiled then. "I don't like it much. I just paint things to make money." She touched the painting.
She turned to me and ran her finger across my cheek. No one had touched me for a long time. Since Sarah had died I had always been passive with women. If they came on to me, I usually took them up on it. But I never asked.
"It's a cynical time. But I don't think you're that cynical. I don't think I am either. But lately I've felt that way. It's not good." Her eyes were sad. She looked at me as if she were making a decision. "You were watching me during your speech."
"You're a beautiful woman," I said.
"You have a nice ass," she said. "When are you off?"
I wasn't expecting that. Her eyes glinted. She had a wild look. The sadness was gone.
"You have beautiful eyes," she said. "How can you stand to do this shit?"
"It pays the bills," I said. "Just like your painting."
"I'm sorry what I said about your ass," she said. "It just came out. My husband's been dead for six months. I've grown strange."
"It's all right. I'm sorry."
"I think you are," she said. "Take me home."
Three months later we were living together.
When I woke in the morning she was gone. That was unusual. If she wasn't in a deep sleep, she usually stared out the window in the morning, watching the snow. Sometimes she'd watch the news, but she hadn't been doing that lately. She said she couldn't stand to see Bush smirk anymore.
She rarely spoke about her husband. I was like that when Sarah died, so I didn't think it was unusual. Her death was sudden as well, and I went on for a few years without feeling any grief. I don't know why. Two years after her death I was sitting on the couch, and I felt a physical sense of loss. It started in my stomach, like an unbearable pain that had to be released, and worked its way through my heart and into my throat. I shuddered and I began to wail. I lay on my side, chest heaving, sobbing. I couldn't think. I just felt a physical loss. When I stopped crying, the sense of loss was gone. That was the only time in my life I knew grief.
People grieve in different ways and at different times. Maybe this was the way it hit her, sleeplessness and anger. I was glad I had got it all out at once. It was better that way.
Things were quiet at the office. I called home twice, but got no answer. At noon, the mayor buzzed me and told me to come into his office.
The mayor's office was clean and devoid of books or paper. Portraits of past mayors hung on the walls.
There also were paintings of local nature scenes, the kind of things that Cassandra did, but none of the paintings were hers.
The mayor sat behind his desk. His aide and mistress, wearing a tight red dress, flanked him, sitting in a leather chair, her face full of exasperation and denial, the way she looked when someone insinuated that she slept with the mayor, an open secret which they both denied.
"Your girlfriend," he began, then stopped and shook his head. He turned to his aide. She raised her chin in my direction.
It was bad news. The mayor truly liked people. He didn't like to give bad news. At first I thought something had happened to Cassandra. But the aide's face was not cast in her look of sorrow, which she reserved for public funerals and firings. Instead it was the face of indignation, which generally was used to deny unfavorable events.
"Did you know about it?" she said.
"About what?" I said.
"He didn't know about it," said the mayor.
"How do you know that?" said the aide.
"'Cuz I know him," said the mayor. "Tell him."
I turned to the aide. "Tell me."
"See," said the mayor, "He doesn't know."
She rolled her eyes. "Your girlfriend chained herself to the federal building this morning. Naked."
"Naked," I said.
"Without any clothes," said the mayor. "Like what's her name, Lady Godiva. Nice body for a woman that age. It's all over the internet."
"You're disgusting," said the aide.
"What the hell," said the mayor.
"You will need to disassociate yourself from her," said the aide.
The mayor studied his fingernails.
"How do I do that?"
"You say that she's having mental difficulties, and that you support the war on terror. If you can't say that, say you support our troops."
"How do I know she's having mental difficulties?"
"Chained herself naked to the federal building in the middle of winter," said the mayor. "Shouldn't be too hard to figure out."
"A large percentage of the voters in this district are veterans. They do not like public demonstrations. We must disassociate. Do you understand?"
When I got home, Cassandra had the stereo cranked up. She hadn't listened to music in a long time. Old Motown -- Martha and the Vandellas doing "Heat Wave." I walked up the stairs to the bedroom. The window was open. She was packing.
"How did you get out?" I said.
"Personal recognizance," she said. "No record and they think I'm crazy. Too much trouble in jail."
"You chained yourself naked to the federal building in the middle of the winter. Don't you think that's crazy?"
"No," she said. Her face was different. She always had looked anxious. Now her face was calm. She looked very young. "Not at all."
"I see. You're leaving?"
"Yes," she said. "As soon as I pack."
"Where are you going?"
"To Oregon." She was packing sweaters. "It's cold there."
"What are you going to do there?"
"I'm not sure," she said. "I think I'll chain myself to something. Maybe a Redwood. Or another federal building. Haven't decided."
"Are you coming back?"
"I think so," she said. "I'm not sure. Are you in trouble?"
"They want me to disassociate."
"Since I'm leaving, that shouldn't be too hard."
"They want me to say you're crazy."
"I am in a manic phase," she said. She clapped her hands and laughed. Then she ran to the closet and packed her jeans. She had never been happy before.
"You should think about this," I said.
"Why?"
"When Sarah died, the grief didn't hit me..."
"You told me that," she said. "It's not that." She walked to me and ran her finger across my cheek, like the first time we met. "I figured it out last night. You wake up at night screaming her name. It's like you lost part of you. Since then, you just let things happen. Like with me. If I hadn't asked, you never would have done anything."
"I don't understand."
"He wasn't my mate," she said. "I got knocked up when I was a kid. He was fun. But we weren't the same people we'd been. I probably would have divorced him if he hadn't died. I wasn't thinking that way then, but I am now."
"I thought you were mourning."
"So did I. But it wasn't him. It's the waste of all of it. I'm not like you. That was what was eating at me, and I didn't know it until last night. What's gone is gone, what's dead is dead. But the soldiers march on. I have to stop them."
"By chaining yourself to things?"
"It's a mad world," she said. "Do you have a better idea?"
I thought about it. "No," I said.
Because of my long association with the mayor, I disassociated. He truly liked people, which made people, including me, like him. He had treated me well, and I owed him.
Then I quit. I spent a week organizing my books, by subject and in alphabetical order. I had over a thousand books. When I was done, I packed them all away. Then I got into my car and headed to Oregon.
MM
Editor's Note: Mark Wisti is from Houghton County, has been practicing law for twenty years and hopes to be disbarred. He is married to Amy and has three children, Jake, Erin and Nick. He is a member of the DTWG writing group, who contributed nothing to this story.

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