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suggestion: a rerun of Rod Serling’s classic “Twilight Zone.”
    They went to bed at 11. Beth felt a fresh stirring of desire and expressed it with her hands and lips. Michael responded, his arms around her, tongue in her mouth, and she felt his growing tumescence.
    His pajama bottoms down, hers off and dropped to the carpet, Michael carefully moved over her. He braced himself on his elbows and she guided him to her core. His “There!” was a satisfied puff of complete immersion inside her.
    For Beth their earlier lovemaking had been a wildly reckless attempt at reunification. It had—thankfully—been a success. Now, Michael moving, she with him, a mutually established, pleasure-giving pace, was a confirmation, the final tearing down of any barrier that might yet remain between them.
    Beth wanted no barriers. She wanted to talk with him. And she was certain she could do that after this meaningful ritual of the senses in that mellow time that would follow when they lay in this cool and dark room together, satisfied and fulfilled.
    Michael’s thrusting grew more rapid and forceful. She thought she was not ready, but scurrying messages traveling the maze of her nerve endings signaled yes, she was. Her hips churned. Her thighs gripped him and she clutched his shoulders.
    She had a flash of remembered feelings. She was a child, racing up the ladder of the playground slide, eager to reach the top for that thrilling fright-hesitant instant before the world-blurring descent. And now… Oh, oh yes !… She was there, as head spinning, a pin-wheeling heat in her belly, she zoomed down, each bump of rippled steel a tremor of excitement that tossed her and made her gasp.
    Beth sighed just as Michael convulsed in orgasm. He grunted, pressing down on her. His weight was not oppressive, not now. Beth stroked his hair, the back of his neck. How helpless, how weak Michael seemed, she thought, his penis dwindling inside her, and she felt a special tenderness toward him.
    Michael rolled away with, “I love you, Beth.” She moved close to him, her head on his chest. He put an arm around her shoulder.
    “Are you asleep, Michael?”
    “No, not really.”
    “Do you feel like talking?”
    “Sure, honey.”
    “I’m glad,” Beth said. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”
    “I know that, honey, and I told you, I let the damned work pressure turn me into a zombie. I haven’t been spending enough time with you, or for that matter, with the kids. That’s going to change.”
    “That’s probably part of our problem, Michael,” Beth said, “but not all of it. I’m to blame, too.”
    Slowly, Michael said, “What do you mean?”
    “I mean…” Oh, the feeling she could talk freely was there, but knowing what to say— how —was suddenly a tongue-twisting challenge. She stammered something about intellect and self-realization, knew it was a cliché borrowed from a woman’s magazine article, and said, “Let me think a minute.”
    It wasn’t until her first year of college that Beth had discovered she was truly bright. Grade school and high school had been easy and therefore dull; she’d been an underachiever. But at Illinois Central University, she’d met teachers who praised her analytical questions, complimented her inquiring explorations of complex issues, and she’d found out just how exciting it was to really use her mind. She’d thought of a career in social work or clinical psychology.
    Then she met Michael, a senior, majoring in business. She fell in love with him. He graduated. She married him.
    And that was that!
    “Penny for your thoughts,” Michael prompted.
    “That’s more than they’re worth,” Beth said, a weak joke that she thought too true to be funny. “It’s… Sometimes I feel so out of it, Michael, like I’m a stereotype of a featherbrained little housewife who calls it a national catastrophe if the supermarket happens to run out of tomato-rice soup or Stove-Top Stuffing. That’s why