On a Night Like This by Ellen Sussman Page A

characters, re-envision his plot. He liked that slightly groggy state—it made him think differently, and then the next day, in the light of day, he would take his odd ideas and shape them into something usable.
    Now he couldn’t imagine writing. He couldn’t imagine inventing characters and scenes and dramas. He wanted to escape from his mind, not to explore it. When writing, even if he was working on a script that was far from his own life, his own circumstances, the deeper he plunged into his characters’ consciousness, the closer he came to himself. He became the serial murderer, the lonely housewife, the grandmother shoplifter, the young boy riding the trains. Now he wanted far away from inner life.
    But he did think of his computer, still hooked up in his study, and he thought of a middle-of-the-night activity that jolted him out of bed. He would track down the phone number he had found on the ski ticket.
    He walked into his study, a small sunroom in the back of the house with a view of the bay, now dark. He logged on, found a Web site he had heard about: a reverse Yellow Pages that would give you the address and name if you supplied the phone number. Unbelievable. Within seconds the screen displayed: mr. and mrs. gray healy. An address on Laguna.
    He didn’t know the name. Had never heard Emily mention Gray Healy or his lovely wife. But she had asked Dana to call him from Tahoe.
I’ll be home tomorrow.
    Luke remembered back to the trip, their last night at the hotel, her impatience with him when he tried to make love in the middle of the night. “I’m sleeping,” she had said.
    “But I thought you were stirring; I thought you were awake,” he said, apologizing, still nestling close to her, pressing his penis against her thigh.
    “If I’m awake, that doesn’t mean I want to make love. If I can’t sleep, it’s because of the job I’m working on, the pressure, the deadline. I’m not waking up because I want you to climb on top of me.”
    She drew herself away from him. He stared at the curve of her back, cursing his stubborn erection. But he wasn’t angry. He felt protective of her, sad that this new job was going so badly, concerned that she felt the stress of it so terribly. Fool.
    The next morning they drove back to San Francisco and he remembered that she fled the house the moment they arrived, her portfolio tucked under her arm, promising to be home before dinner. Unless the meeting ran through dinner. Had it run through dinner? Was she wrapped in Mr. Gray Healy’s arms ten minutes later, now urging his eager penis inside of her?
    Luke wrote down the address of Mr. and Mrs. Healy on the ski tag, beside the note:
I’ll be home tomorrow.
    He turned off the computer and headed back to his bedroom. If he wrote tonight, he would only produce pages of his own weak imagination: a story about a man who has been mourning the loss of his beloved wife and discovers her infidelity. Does this man now have to rewrite his own story? Does he have to take every one of his memories and twist them into something ugly?
    A scene at the premiere of
Pescadero:
The wife is dressed in white silk, with her hair upswept, her neck long and lovely. The husband is tuxedoed and uncomfortable. They’re ushered through the crowd and into the party, and the throngs of adoring fans cheer. The husband wants to flee. The wife begs him: “Please, I want this so much.”
    Cut to hotel room, later the same night. Tuxedo trimmings thrown over back of chair. The man wears only the black pants. He stands behind his wife, still dressed, who stares out the window.
    “Why do you want this so much?”
    “Because you give me so little.”
    She doesn’t turn around.
    The man puts his hand on her bare shoulder and her body stiffens.
    “Don’t touch me.”
    He turns and walks to the king-size bed in the luxurious hotel room. He lies down, exhausted. She turns and looks at him.
    “Look at me,” she says.
    He looks at her.
    “You’re