Light. Still here. Jessica woke as she usually did, breathless and wide-eyed; a swimmer clawing for shore after sleep tried to drown her. She was eager to escape to her bedroom’s weak sunlight. 6 a.m., the lime-green face of her digital alarm clock assured her. Still here. Jessica sat up beneath the queenly white canopy of David’s antique opium bed. The bed was built low to the ground, smaller than a queen, with regal carvings of dragons in rich teak. The bed and the smell of David’s spicy incense evoked an ancient time and place, but the illusion was broken by the shiny metallic CD player on her dresser and her leopard-print bra dangling from the top drawer. Jessica slipped her bare feet into her waiting white Nikes under the bed, the insoles slick from wear. She wrapped herself in the newsprint bathrobe her mother had bought her during her first internship at the Miami Sun-News, when she was eighteen. The hem’s loose threads tickled her thighs. Thank you, Lord. Still here. She stole out of bed, leaving David sleeping in a mound beneath the covers.
