The police were interested in my driver’s license and in my companion. I told them it was a gift form Rail. Though they recognized the name, they still wanted confirmation, and I willingly supplied them with Rail’s phone number. Luck was with me; Rail was still in his office and confirmed that the skeleton was his property, on loan to me. The intervention of the police had at least supplied me with one bit of information on my boney ‘friend’ – she was no gift.

The police said goodbye pleasantly enough, though they left me with a stern warning not to frighten any more people. I promised to go straight home and lock her in the bedroom in case, heaven forbid, she should try to escape. The laughter of the crowd was more a sigh of relief, and they scattered quickly, leaving me alone once more with my companion.

“Well, Mary,” I remarked conversationally as we pulled away from the restaurant, “We reminded the temporary living of death, didn’t we?” The sudden jolt of a pothole jogged her lower jaw open, and for an instant I thought she would answer me. The instant passed, and I noticed the tow rows of small, white even teeth. I reflected on this, and mused that my traveling companion had ended her life young, and if young, why not beautiful as well?

I didn’t arrive home until late in the evening. I welcomed the cover of darkness and carried the skeleton, bride-like, into the house through the connecting garage. I brought her to the guest room, where I tried unsuccessfully to stand her on her feet. She collapsed with alarming speed, and I caught her at the last moment before she crashed to the floor. I looked around, and finally decided the only thing to do was lay her out on the bed.

That night I had many dreams; dreaming rarely happens with me. I awoke with a headache.

My throat was dry, and when I got up to go to the kitchen, the room swayed dizzily. I downed a glass of water and headed back for my bedroom, but felt suddenly so weak that I stumbled into the nearest room. It was the guest room. About to fall, I sank onto the bed next to the skeleton and shut my eyes. My heart was pounding as if I had been running. I dimly felt the touch of a cool shinbone of my side.

The telephone rang abominably loud. I reached it with difficulty on the third ring, and it took me a full minute to recognize the voice of my secretary, asking questions about my trip and wanting to know when I’d be back at the office. I told her I had a fever and wouldn’t be in that day.

“Would you like me to come over and take care of you?” she asked in a tone of voice which reminded me we were lovers.

“No,” I answered after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m fine. Just take care of your business.”

“I’ll come by after work then, all right?”

“If you want. But I already have one here.”

“What do you mean?” she asked anxiously.

“You’ll see when you get here,” I said.

“Are you trying to tell me you have a woman there?”

“Well…” I thought a moment. “Let’s say a former one.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she answered irritably.

“I told you, you’ll see when you get here. Excuse me now, I’m very tired,” I said, and hung up. I fell quickly into a deep sleep.

I was awakened by a scream. It was my secretary, Mary, standing over the bed, shocked and confused. I forced a smile as she gestured vaguely towards the skeleton on the bed and asked, “What’s this?” in a trembling voice. “What time is it?” I finally asked.

“One o’clock. Afternoon.” she answered, looking at her watch.

“I thought you were planning to come after work.”

“What is this?” she asked again.

“Not what,” I corrected her, “Who. This is also Mary.”

“Where did you get it,” she demanded.

“A gift.” I was tired of explaining. “Make me some strong tea, please.”

Her mood changed instantly to solicitous concern. She placed her hand on my brow.

“Keep it there,” I said, closing my eyes. Then I asked her again to make some tea. She gave one last backward glance as she left the bedroom.

My head swam sickeningly each time I tried to open my eyes, but I could keep them shut only for a moment, then the spinning sensation forced me to open them.

The live Mary returned with steaming tea on a tray.

The tea was excellent, strong and hot, with a perfect touch of lemon she had thought to add. I felt my strength returning, and as I drank, I reflected that one of the things I liked about Mary was the way she would ask a question, and, not getting an immediate answer, would stop asking and simply wait for me to tell her myself.

When I had finished my tea, I told her of my boney companion. Mary listened indifferently, then asked, “What are you going to do with her now?”

“Love,” I said with a laugh.

“Well, it’s a good choice,” she said slowly. “I may as well tell you now – I’m moving to Florida.”

I decided to keep discipline. “I wish you luck. Is it John?”

John was her beloved, with whom she had lived four yours and then left to come here, get a job with me, and unselfishly become my mistress. I had nothing against this, as my affairs with my employees did not affect our working relationship.

“Yes, it’s John,” she answered.

“Give him my regards.” I turned to face the skeleton. “You’ll have to excuse me now, I must get back to my bed.”

“All right.” She got up to leave.

“How long will you be working?” I asked as she was almost out the door.

“I can stay two weeks, but I’d rather leave sooner.”

“You can leave in a week.”

She thanked me and left. I listened to her footsteps, and the final soft closing of the front door. I stared for quite a while into Mary’s skull. She didn’t stir, and her teeth without lips to cover them seemed bared in a constant smile. She was so close to my eyes that her contours blurred and undulated. I put my hand on her ribcage, and the weight of it made them creak.

I withdrew my hand, afraid of breaking her, and smiled to myself at the thought of the damage a simple embrace might do.

I pressed my forehead against her cold, dry collarbone. ‘You won’t go away to any John,’ I thought sleepily. ‘The men who slept with you have no power now… you’ve no memory of them, no flesh. everything you have left belongs to me.’ I drifted into the living oblivion of sleep, where I remained until late in the evening. The room was dark when I awoke, and my hand had found its way onto her empty stomach, where it lay pressed into her clumsy backbone. I tucked my hand under the blanket and went back to sleep.

I was awakened in the morning by the birds singing outside my window. The fever was gone. I shook my head to test, and felt no pain. My body surged with joy at being cured. The skeleton still lay at my side, and to my refreshed mind this seemed a little strange. Overcoming the lingering weakness in my body, I got up and went to the bathroom where I sat in the tub for my shower, still unable to stay on my feet. In spite of my weak condition, I knew I had to go to the office. My responsibilities there rapidly turned into an unbearable weight around my neck if I let them to go, even for a day.

I remembered Mary’s announcement that she was quitting my company – and my life. Both departures saddened me, though sadness had become a familiar feeling to me because of all the separations I had endured in my life. Mary was an exceptional secretary and mistress, and she had brought definite convenience to my self-contained life.

At the office I sorted through the stacks of mail and phone messages, wrote replies, and generally did everything I could to make up for lost time. I felt weak, but in response to polite of obsequious questions about my health, I responded with the same standard “I’m fine.”

I went home in the afternoon, locking my eyes briefly with Mary on my way out. She was much cooler toward me now that she had made her decision to leave, but she didn’t try to avoid me.

The house seemed unusually big when I got home. It was big, of course, but in the past it had always secretly pleased me to think of all space I wasn’t using. Space that was always there, waiting for me. Today that space reminded me only of another space – the empty space defined by the thin bones of a skeleton. That space awaited me as well.

I entered the bedroom. She lay on the bed, with her legs of bone spread wide apart, with her eternally grinning skull. I envisioned her with muscle and flesh and blood around the white framework, building a woman upon it in my mind, and then mentally tearing her down, undressing her to this final, fragile diagram.

“You know, I’m as lonely as your bones are for their meat,” I said, and the sound of my voice echoed hollowly from the walls. I studied the bedspread through her breasts would have been, slowly letting my fingers fall through the empty slots between her ribs. I then took my hand and placed it inside her ribcage, my fingers reaching and closing around the spot where I knew her heart should have been. But there was no heart, and my fist closed only on empty air.

Still, her heartlessness was no disappointment. It was her silence and openness I felt drawn towards. With her I was calm – as I was with everyone I didn’t love. I sat down next to her on the bed and stroked her skull, its fine smooth coldness contrasted nicely with the other more porous bones of her body. A coldness and hardness that had known life and death. ‘You’ll listen to me,’ I thought, ‘you’ll be with me, experienced, knowing… maybe I’ll even come to love you for your natural devotion.’

The sound of the doorbell intruded on the silence. I don’t like uninvited guests, and I couldn’t think of anyone I would be happy to see. I flung the door open irritably. Before me stood a man in jeans and a jacket.

“Good evening, excuse me for the intrusion,” he said in a gentle voice which seemed incongruous coming from this rough face that seemed oddly familiar. “The boss sent me for the skeleton.”

It was then that I noticed his jeans were made with two differently colored legs, and I recognized the workman from Rail’s estate.

I was stunned. I stared at him stupidly for a moment, then asked, “What did you say?”

“The Boss sent me for the skeleton,” he repeated, more slowly this time.

“I thought it was a gift,” I said wanly.

He shrugged his shoulders inside the loose fitting jacket and fixed me with a steady gaze.

At a loss, I invited him into the living room, where he followed me after removing his shoes. I offered him a drink, but he refused. I grabbed a bottle and poured something into a glass, gulping it down quickly.

“Where is it? Let me get it,” he said.

“Wait a minute. I want to buy it. Her. How much does Rail want?”

A strangely familiar look flickered in the workman’s eyes. “The Boss say’s it’s not for sale. But he’ll trade.”

“For what?”

“The ring.”

Relief flooded my body as if a wave had washed me from head to toe. With weak fingers I slipped the ring from my hand and dropped it into the workman’s outstretched palm. His fingers closed around the ring, making a tight fist.

“Wait,” I said, stopping him at the door. I almost smiled at the look of surprise on his face.

“Give me a receipt.”

1984