Lying in Bed by J. D. Landis Page B

corporeality.)
    So are my books.
    And whatever we have in the way of security for life in a city as renowned for its violence as its vertu. This is the place, after all—this pinnacle of civilization, this hub of finance and the arts, this seat of learning and lotophagy—where women are thrown off roofs in some sort of post–forced-coital tristesse , where tourists invite the knife by their very blondness, where the automobile siren is the Queen of the Night’s nightly aria, where beggars are our village idiots, and where democracy will, probably in the nick of time, yield to what Arnold called “the refinement of an aristocracy, precious and educative to a raw nation,” or else to the “thou shalt” of the herd. In the meantime, and for all the good they may do us should the hordes of victims of the failure of family planning reach our loft, I have a sword Clara bought me at a flea market, a bayonet from an army-surplus store, a baseball bat my father once gave me in the mistaken belief that the wand makes the magician, and something called a 2-Pound Camp Wonder that combines a hatchet blade, hammer, nail-puller, and pry bar, which Clara and I ordered from The Sportsman’s Guide early in our marriage when, like many couples, bestirred by a bucolic urge and goaded by the apparently inescapable urban image of making love in a sleeping bag, we said we should try camping, though we came to our senses before we’d bought a tent, a tarpaulin, or even the sleeping bag itself. All this is laughable, of course, both in its fire power and its necessity. Or thus I feel it, so ubietously content am I, contained securely in my marriage and my home, which I leave so rarely, my little piece of safe and colorfully quilted (I am tempted to say, as I lie inbed, buntinged) America. We are immune here to the ravages of the dissolution of law in this city, this country, and to the violence of domestic breakdown when love has died and in its place comes, like some aberrant antonym, rage.
    Because I have accumulated fewer things than has Clara, I have volunteered my closet for our financial records, including canceled checks and tax returns. It also holds: a copy of my thesis (I never was able to confront the oral part of the exam); my bust of Nietzsche, which I thought rather audacious, even modish, for my undergraduate lodgings first in Vanderbilt and then in Jonathan Edwards, though now I realize that it probably would have kept the girls away if I hadn’t succeeded in doing that without its help; “The Final Resource of French Atheists” as well as the other erotica with which Clara has tried to enlighten me; and my old violin, which I have kept despite its painful associations and the large sum of money for which I could undoubtedly sell it because it reminds me of that first day in Clara’s shop when she said, “I’d like to see it,” and I said, “The violin?” and she responded, “Your apartment,” and that is what led me to have the courage to invite her home with me that evening and to be with her every evening, every night, since then, which is why it is so comforting to have this night to myself, as I listen to the music that played at our wedding and find myself beginning to grow hungry and wondering if Clara is growing hungry or whether she has eaten by now and where she might be eating and with whom.
    I was very careful not to ask her anything about her evening when she told me this morning she had a dinner date for tonight. I simply said, “That’s nice,” and told her I would miss her.
    In anticipation of her absence, I found as the day wenton that I desired her less, as if my body had been in preparation for this evening and my mind had known enough to start early on its journey toward the kind of self-discovery that can be made only in separation from thoughts of, and desire for, the beloved. I am willing myself to learn the truth