Story Fragment

Generally speaking in such cases, it is not the bed which is too short nor the sleeper too long, but the habitual encounters between the two which engender frustration by shortening the one and lengthening the other. The bed may have provided adequate, or ample room for an adolescent or shorter adult, but our present character was a man of 20 when he slept in the bed for the first time, and a grown man of 20 at that. He was used to sleeping in beds shorter than and as narrow as himself, so it cannot fairly be said in the bed’s favor that the occupant were merely a finicky sleeper. No, but it could be said that the sleeper was not used to the intimacy between his sleeping space and the walls engirdling it. Three walls, one on each short side, and one on a long side nestled the loft in our present character’s room. Had but two inches’ length added themselves to the bed, this story would never have been written, I believe, so if the reader successfully kills time in reading this story, or learns a new word, or falls asleep, as his aim may be, let him thank whichever pair of architect and mason planned and completed construction of the too-short bed.

The story of the too-short bed should, and will, begin when it was christened “too-short,” which ceremony took place in the middle of a mid-autumn night, as a storm was sousing the roof covering the bed and its occupant. The sleeper didn’t know, but the previous occupant of his room and bed, in tandem with an experienced female acquaintance of his, had made an eggshell of the ceiling above the bed upon experiencing a stampede of sensation the like of which he had not expected to enjoy in the eternal Bliss of Heaven. The unfortunate landlady, the damage to her property being brought to her attention after evicting the boarder for noise complaints, employed little skill in fitting a piece of cardboard to the wreckage, more in stapling the piece to the ceiling, and exceptional tact in painting the ensemble to look newly redone.

Allow several months of dry, unassuming weather to pass, and we find our present character’s face in blank slumber beneath his landlady’s patchwork. Some drops fall near the sleeper’s nose, some in his ear, and some roll to the corners of his mouth and eyes. The sleeper stirs, disturbed but not awake. He ruffles his sheets until it can no longer be said that the bed is made. More drops fall, and he murmurs and kicks, never awake. The storm passes. The sun rises to find the morning sky as clear as he left it the evening before. The moisture on the sleeper’s face has evaporated, while the unrest it has brought to him is solidified into a crust of icy discontent everywhere the water fell.

“The bed is too short.”

With these words the bed shrunk, and our present character would have been no less certain of the inadequacy of his sleeping place had he hired a doorman to remind him his bed was too short at every greeting. If he had never before noticed said inadequacy, he told himself, subconsciously, it was due to his tendency to apologize for the faults of others and subsist off present circumstances, a fault he chided himself to resolve.

The landlady, the room’s previous occupant and his companion, and our present character will no longer suffice for the cast of this story. At this point, I humbly entreaty the reader to allow me to introduce two new acquaintances, namely our present character’s next-door neighbor and the woman with whom he was sharing a bed. At the risk of sounding vulgar, I hesitate to refer to her by her name, or by her romantic attachment with the aforesaid neighbor because she happened also, from time to time, to be sharing a bed with our present character. Therefore I cannot wholeheartedly say it was her boyfriend who was renting the room next to our present character’s, nor do I wish to reveal her given name as you many know her, and I would not want to imply ill-character on her part. My intention is merely to tell a story, and to that end I will need to call her something, so let her be Lentente and, by the same appeal to facility and courtesy, her roommate Chapusero. As for our present character, the Sleeper should be a sufficient moniker.

Chapusero knew what he wanted from life, to laugh. Chapusero befriended those who made him laugh or laughed with him and laughed at those who were incapable or unwilling to achieve either of these his chief goals. To be Chapusero’s friend, therefore, required an affinity for the humorous bordering on lunacy. He and his fleeting band of friends conjured storms of laughter in each other’s company which would rage until drunkenness overcame them or Lentente successfully petitioned an intimate moment with him. The well of laughter spouted so high one night that Chapusero’s other next-door neighbor interrupted the flow to threaten sicking the landlady on Chapusero if he could not control the noise. Furthermore, Chapusero’s conduct was said to be unneighborly and unacceptable. Chapusero apologized and assured his neighbor he would not be awoken by shrieks of laughter from the room ever again. He returned to his company and announced to them the subject of the conversation, soberly, and, baffled, they collected themselves and swayed home. The next morning Chapusero met his landlady in the stairwell, remarked on her knack for outdoing younger ladies given the same perfumes, salons, coutiers, etc…He plodded until her generally stolid expression betrayed a blush, then asked her if there wasn’t anything she could do about that noisy next-door neighbor of his. “I’ll have a talk with him.” Chapusero never considered his neighbor again.

As much as Chapusero loved to laugh and laugh with, he hated to be laughed at. For this reason, Lentente was a puzzle to him, or maybe she made a puzzle out of him, because she made him laugh as hard as he ever had, though the butt of the joke was himself. Where a man similar to Chapusero might have quit her for contributing nothing but her body and her wit, to Chapusero these qualities amounted to nothing short of all. She detracted much more, as far as I’m concerned.

I should mention how pretty Lentente was. To call her beautiful would be to call a sapphire perfect which was knicked here and there, which I suppose would be natural to the unaccustomed eye. Her prettiness and her wit combined to make a beautiful woman irresistible to whichever average stiff she chose to suckle. Chapusero was not the first. She was broke, 35, and worried more and more that her attraction would not be able to secure her well-being. I don’t understand what her interest was in the Sleeper, though it must have been a piece enticing to risk being caught by Chapusero. I’ve narrowed the possibilities to boredom or genuine liking. She never exhibited any of the latter to me.