_Later the same night. They lay husky-like around the fire pit. HIM sleeps, skin bronzed by still warm embers._ ME: _[sotto voce]_ I wish you could see you now. I know it sounds like a line from that stupid song, but. Really. I do. I really do. HIM: _[stirring, snuffling, rising up on one straw-ticked elbow, with a cousin’s mocking grin]_ Really? ME: You asshole! _[makes motions of looking for pillow to throw; there are none—this is a cave— but finds instead a darkly striated chip of wood, which throws. Misses by a girlish mile.]_ _Now, this is the fork. Here, at this moment, re-enacted so often by so many men, the road can go any direction (as in fact it can at any moment, thanks to the legacy of the glow-worms who made the universe, but we can come back to them later). One possibility is that they go back to sleep, dream other dreams, and later ME will find a woman, a fierce one perhaps, or a frightened, soft one; it doesn’t matter so long as she be selfish and giving enough to play the substitute, to act out with him the rest of that scene, as if it had taken a different direction, thus:_ _HIM’s grin retains some gentle mockery, but an openness is added. The lighting changes from red to gold. With one arm, HIM holds sleeping bag open. Firelight bejewels each tiny hair._ HIM: Come here. _ME goes, not as a dog to a treat, nor a cheap novelist to a spurious literary prize, but to his castle, his love, his_ _thousand summers’ home._