Read Strange Mammals for Free Online

questions.
    Diane had waited at the foot of his bed while the police asked their questions, and resumed her seat next to him once they left. She held his hand and looked in his eyes, and Winston could see such pain there. Even as she smiled at him, tears tracked down her cheeks. He reached up and wiped a tear away with his thumb. “S’okay, Dee,” he said. “I’m all right.” At this, she leaned down to put her face on the bed, muffling her sobs with the blanket. Winston stroked her head and made reassuring sounds.
    “Oh god, Win,” she said between hitching breaths. “I didn’t know where you were, what happened to you. I thought I’d lost you forever.” She raised her head and attempted a smile. “But you’re okay. You’re awake and all right and you’re here.”
    “Tha’s right, hon. Right here.”
    They kept him in the hospital for another week just to make sure he recovered. Diane came by every morning and every evening after working her receptionist temp job. At the end of the week, Winston had exhausted the crossword puzzles she’d brought him, and daytime television drove him up the wall; he was absolutely itching to leave. Diane didn’t say anything during the drive home. Winston was still a little woozy from being supine for a month, so she had to help him out of the car, up the elevator, and into the apartment. The coolness of air conditioning greeted him like an old friend. Despite the nurse’s statement, it appeared Diane had found the time to finish unpacking and decorate the apartment. On the wall above the sofa hung five of Winston’s favorite personal photographs, the center one taken of a laughing Diane during a picnic when they’d first started going out. He loved the unbridled happiness of her face in that photo, the bliss.
    “I wanted to surprise you,” she said, looking expectantly at him as she helped him down to the couch.
    “It looks great, Dee,” he said.
    Diane smiled and couple of tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. She laughed nervously and quickly swiped them away. “Oh Win, I was so afraid you’d never wake up. I don’t think I could ever handle that. Do you remember anything at all about being in the penthouse?”
    He shook his head. “The doctor said I must have been hallucinating after the guy at the U-Haul place hit me and took my wallet.” Winston rubbed his forehead at the headache that was starting there. The doctor said he’d probably have headaches for a few months. “It felt real to me, though. So the penthouse was empty?”
    “Yeah. No sign that anyone had lived there in years.”
    “So what happened to Lucas?”
    “Lucas? Who’s that?”
    Winston abruptly yawned. He leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. “You know, the guy who was living up there. We drank his honey mead.”
    “Win, you’ve been through a lot. Maybe you should take it easy. Are you hungry?” Diane asked. “Anything to drink?”
    “No, I think I’ll just go to bed.”
    She helped him into the bedroom and undressed him, pulled the sheets up to his chin. Though it was only afternoon, she undressed too and climbed in next to him. A small rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and Diane wrapped an arm around him. Thunderstorms always made her more than a little amorous. She kissed his neck, and the fatigue dissolved away. He wanted to lie in bed with his wife, and touch her, and reaffirm that she was real. Winston leaned over and kissed her long and slow.
    When they separated, she asked, “Do you want to?”
    He nodded. A butterfly fluttered in his stomach, and he couldn’t help but picture her with Lucas. “From behind.”
    She looked startled for a moment, and Winston was convinced more than ever that what he’d seen in the penthouse had been a mental fabrication, but then she smiled, a grin that went all the way to her ears, and said, “Okay.”

Avoirdupois
    After parking, a stroll past the playgrounds, swings, teeter-totters, slides, the boat