So, I went to bed a bit late last night. I'd had a really exhausting day trying to catch up with just about everything, and read a few chapters of a favorite new book, which put on my new ebook reader, and I kept reading much too long. But that's okay. I enjoy those moments of reverie before falling asleep when I can fantasize about my hero and heroine, and watch them fall in love as I'm falling asleep.
I put my usual glass of ice water on my night stand, crawled in bed and pulled up the quilt, and prepared to doze off, this time thinking about my Cornish smuggler Davy and the enigmatic Frenchwoman, Valerie, he rescued in the middle of the night from the wild West Coast of France. I really had not had enough water during the day and the
bedroom felt stuffy. So I woke up thirsty, reached for the glass, and turned on my other side as I often do, drinking while barely propped up on my elbow. Man, was I tired, but that water was so icy and sweet...
Then all of a sudden, the slick, smooth blue glass, which was almost slimy from condensation, slipped from my hand. Faster than I could comprehend, the glass almost spit forward, tumbling over Jeff and onto the floor beyond his side of the bed. Oh, man, was I in for it now! It was so darn dark, I couldn't see where anything was, but I didn't have to see to know the carpet would be thoroughly soaked in icy cold water, with slippery ice cubes lurking in dark spots, just waiting to cause disaster.
I was so tired! Way too tired for this debacle. But I had no choice. Just a minute more, I thought. A minute to get my bearings, just close my eyes a second or two. Then I'd get up and and get some towels to soak it up. I could just picture Jeff, who gets up a lot in the night, stepping down on an icy, sopping carpet, maybe landing on the glass or an ice cube. I could hear the screams in my head. Nope. I had to get it up.
Groaning, I fumbled around the master bathroom in the dark not wanting to turn on lights and make the debacle even worse, and started spreading them out on the carpet by Jeff's side of the bed. I stomped on the towels like the Little Old Winemaker, sopping up the frigid water that soaked up through them into my socks, sending shivers warping through me as if
I had dared to walk out barefoot into the snow. I couldn't see anything, it was so dark, so I had to feel my way around with my feet, trying to find the glass, but I couldn't figure out where it had gone. Neither were the ice cubes.
Feeling around, I slowly began to realize nothing was quite right. I was still in my bed. Darn, I must have gone back to sleep instead of getting up. All that water was still there, just waiting for poor Jeff to land his bare feet into its icy, sopping puddle. I had just dreamed the bit about getting the towels. But I still had time. If I got up now, and hurried to get the towels, I could spread them out and stomp them to absorb the cold water. I did that. And I got down on my knees, feeling around with my hands, trying to find those ice cubes and that blasted blue glass that had already eluded me, or no, wait, that was a dream, and I'm just now doing that. Fumbling around in the dark on my knees with my toes pressing into the soggy, freezing cold carpet, soaking my socks even more, if that was possible.
No, wait, that had been a dream too. And I wasn't wearing socks anyway, so I'd just imagined getting my feet clammy cold. Which meant they couldn't be sopping up icy water now. What the heck, had I dropped off to sleep again and just repeated the dream instead of getting up?
What the heck was the matter with me? I knew I had to get it all cleaned up before Jeff woke up and got the shock of his life. So I started to get up again. Come on, quit falling back to sleep. Get up.
Speaking of Jeff, I couldn't figure out why he wasn't already awake because usually this sort of commotion would wake him up. But then, he'd have his hearing aids out, and gunshots in the hallway wouldn't be enough to wake him up. Although it was odd-- there was really no way the glass could have vaulted over him without some of it dousing him as well as the bed, and I could feel there was no water on the sheet. That brought up the next
question: Why wasn't he sitting up in bed screaming like he'd just been bitten by a snake?
Pat, pat, pat. My hands probed around the sheet, almost to touch him but not quite, because for sure that would wake him, and even more than before, I did not want hm stirring. It was dry. Very gingerly I felt over the quilt. Dry, too.
I put out my hand to my night stand and reached for the glass, where it would be if it had not spilled. There it was. Not the smooth blue glass one I thought I'd spilled, but one of the ruby red cut-glass patterned ones, still full of water, lukewarm because all the ice had long since melted.
And the green glow from Jeff's alarm clock illuminated the room quite well, the way it always does. So did the bright full moon shining through the window.
Hell. Plotting in my sleep again.
