Intruders Of Sleepless Nights by Pamela Painter, 1982
The magic trick:
Making details that appear to be about characterization turn into critical plot points
Wow, what a phenomenal story. Definitely make 20 minutes today and read it. The link is below. OK? OK.
The story bounces around between three perspectives – a husband and wife both awake in bed, and the man who has broken into their home. The Chekhov Gun here is expertly used, and I’m not even ruining anything when I say that it’s the husband playing idiotic leverage games in bed, pretending to be asleep to fool his wife. Those leverage games he’s playing wind up being crucial.
The payoff at the end is surprising and extremely satisfying.
And that’s quite a trick on Painter’s part.
The selection:
He resents her relaxed movements when she thinks he’s asleep. He himself lies here tense, missing Nan, finally drifting into a dense exhausted sleep where he dreams of moving into his first apartment, an orange U-haul and four drinking friends to help. His wife—and Nan—are both waiting for him. The apartment has one bedroom but two kitchens, although neither woman cooks. He practices saying, “I want a divorce.” But he would have to turn to her. Even now, even thinking it, his back feels vulnerable. When he sleeps with Nan, she curves around him, her knees behind his, her stomach breathing him to sleep. He pictures her large bed where she does everything, reads, eats, polishes her nails, studies chess books, talks to him on the phone. During their first month he insisted on the formality of the couch for at least cocktails, but she sat so stiffly, as if she were still at her drafting board, that they were soon back on her bed, pillows propped against the headboard. It is the only detail of their affair, this cave-bed, that he has kept from his shrink. Cracker crumbs everywhere like a sandbox. Crunching—the springs like that squeak on the stairs.
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