by Darryl Halbrooks
(10/19/05)

Warren Wilson's sleep disorder wasn't so much a matter of not being able to get to sleep as not being able to stay asleep. In fact he could fall into a state of unconsciousness just about anywhere. If he sat too long at his computer without typing or clicking his mouse, he would drift off. He avoided the exceptionally long light at the intersection of Third and Main whenever possible, to keep from nodding off while waiting for the green.

This night, like most others lately, he put off going to bed for as long as he could. Ellen, as was her habit, had gone to bed at about eleven. But if he were to lie down, he knew he would immediately fall asleep for his usual solid two hours -- before waking to stare at the ceiling fan for the remainder of the long night.

Their eighteen-year-old daughter Lisa was out on a date, but according to the rules Warren and Ellen had laid down, she was to be in by midnight. Lisa was a good girl: Honors Society, field hockey team, piano recitals. Her grades were high enough that Warren expected a scholarship to help out when she left for college in the fall.

He watched TV, paid some bills, and read for a bit while he waited up for Lisa. At about 12:20 he heard the boyfriend's car pull up. Lisa and Luke had been seeing each other for most of Lisa's senior year, and the Wilsons had come to trust the boy enough to allow Lisa to break their curfew now and then, as long as it wasn't too late. Luke, the son of a local grocer, was not the person Warren would have picked for his daughter, but he seemed to be a nice enough kid. Soon Lisa would be away at school, and despite any promises of eternal love, college, as Warren knew, had a way of changing one's outlook. More interesting prospects would certainly come along. Warren had met Ellen in college and remembered the painful experience of breaking that news to his high school sweetheart, Janie. What had become of Janie?

Now that Lisa was home, he decided to go to bed. He crawled in beside Ellen, who had turned out the light and was already snoring softly. In a matter of seconds he joined her.

He woke with a start and propped himself up on an elbow in order to see over his wife's hip The bedside clock read 2:45. Not bad, but he knew his attempt at a full night's sleep was over. He tried, as usual, to remain in bed, hoping that sleep would return, but it was no use. A last he got up to get a glass of milk. When he passed through the darkened hall on his way to the kitchen, he noticed light coming from the living room. It was the pallid bluish glow of the TV. He started in turn it off when a motion caught his attention. Something white flashed on the couch in front of the set. As his eyes adjusted to the image, he realized it was Luke's naked butt. Slowly, the scene came into focus. The little shit was fucking his daughter, right there on his new leather couch, right there in his very home -- right there in front of his new five-thousand dollar, 42-inch, high definition plasma TV.

He tried to think of some appropriate remark. It would register his shock and stop their activities while minimizing the humiliation factor for all concerned. He could think of nothing.

The longer he watched, the worse he felt. The couple was obviously making every effort to go about their business as quietly as possible. Nevertheless he could hear little sobbing sounds coming from his daughter's open mouth. Doing nothing was tantamount to approval -- and there was another thing. He had become highly aroused.

"Yes, yes...Oh, give it to me," she whispered breathily.

Warren found himself straining to listen and watch. They were going at it doggie style, their backs to him. He could actually see it going in and out. In and out of his own little girl. This thought was inconceivably vile. This porn film starred the same little girl that he had carried on his shoulders at Disney World, the one he and Ellen had watched -- proud smiling parents -- as Lisa recited her lines in the church Christmas play when she was six years old. He remembered going with his wife to buy the material for Lisa's costume. They had laughed about the woman who helped Ellen pick out the fabric when the clerk explained to her co-worker how cute it was that the little girl was going to be playing the part of the innkeeper, "the lady at the motel."

He couldn't just stand there watching his own flesh and blood perform this obscene act.

But he did.

At last he turned away quietly and went into the bathroom, making a display of flipping on lights and closing the door. He ran water. He flushed the toilet. He turned on the noisy exhaust fan that his builder had referred to as the 'fart fan.' Above these noises he heard scrambling from the living room, followed by the quiet closing of the front door. He could imagine Luke pulling on his pants and stumbling toward his panicky escape. He stayed in the bathroom for a few more minutes. When he emerged the TV was off and Lisa's bedroom door was closed.

"Did you get any sleep?" Ellen asked, touching his shoulder as he read the paper at breakfast

"You know," he said, "the usual." Her hand slid over the light film of sweat on his forehead.

"I'm worried about you," she said. "I think you ought to try going to that sleep clinic at the university."

"I want to try to lick this myself. Besides, I sleep, just not as long as most people. I don't want to go up there and have those people watching me, monitoring me. It'd be embarrassing."

"Oh, you're always so worried about being embarrassed. Look at you. You've got dark circles under your eyes. It's not hot in here and you're all sweaty."

"Listen," he said, "have you had a good talk with Lisa about -- you know -- sex?"

He whispered it: sex. They were not the kind of people who talked openly about these things. They were Hoosiers, for God's sake. He and Ellen didn't even talk about sex when they had sex. They had never been particularly avid bedmates, even as youngsters. And lately their interludes had slowed down even more, but Warren, and he assumed Ellen as well, had seen this decrease in sexual activity as normal, part of the comfort and lack of urgency of a mature marriage.

"Well, of course," she said. "We had that talk years ago. I know you worry about this, but Lisa is smart. She knows about everything. She wouldn't ruin her future by doing anything stupid."

"But," he said, "she stays out with that Luke way too late...and...and she's seeing too much of him. I just...I mean, does she know about...protection?"

"Of course she does, but don't worry so much. It's summer. Girls want to have some fun."

"I've heard the song," he said.

"She doesn't have school, and besides, she'll be going away soon. She's not..."

Ellen cut her speech short when Lisa walked in.

"Hey."

"Good morning," the girl's mother said cheerfully. "I'm making pancakes."

"No thanks, just some juice."

The Saturday morning tradition for the elder Wilsons included a leisurely sampling of high calories, and coffee accompanied by a thorough scouring of the newspaper. But Lisa had gone low-cal years ago. Warren thought he detected a suspicious glance from his daughter as she came around the table to kiss him lightly on the cheek. He felt a flush overtake his face and a strange and inappropriate stirring overtake his libido. This was not right.

The remainder of the weekend passed without incident.

At work, he had difficulty concentrating. Every day at noon Warren played basketball at the Y with his regular bunch, a mix of accountants, professors from the university, and software engineers like himself. They banged and sweated against one another, saying little more than "Pick left -- nice shot," or "My bad."

In the locker room chatter was limited to a few comments about the game or who would or would not be there tomorrow. His group was basically polite and diverse, but with little in common. They never socialized despite the fact that they had been practically intimate with one another every weekday for fifteen years.

He knew more about the vulgar lives of the noon runners who dressed and showered in the same locker room as the basketball players. He had been surprised at first at the loud-mouthed joggers, a type he would have expected to be quiet and dignified. They were constantly making sexual innuendo about women they knew, women they saw, or the women who occasionally accompanied them on their lunchtime runs. Warren usually tried to block out their raucous, tawdry commentary but these days he found himself listening. When he returned to his office, his mind wandered to some of their sexual remarks. Several times he had to go down the hall to the bathroom -- to jerk off, his head filled with unwelcome hallucinations that left him racked with guilt. He thought about going to confession, even though he had stopped practicing his faith years ago. Besides, what was the point of confessing anything to those sleaze-balls? The priesthood was a haven for child molesters and perverts.

"Not tonight dear, I'm too exhausted and I have a headache," Ellen whispered. She rolled over, giving him what was supposed to be a comforting pat on the leg. "Maybe in the morning."

Warren had picked up the pace of his requests for sex lately. Ellen had been accommodating, even pleasantly surprised.

"What's gotten into you?" she had asked the last time, after two nights in a row.

But he understood his wife's reluctance to keep up this new urgency. He found himself in the bathroom more and more.

Since that first time, he had caught Lisa and Luke in the act only once more. On that occasion he stood quietly and watched, with no thought of interrupting. Where had she learned these things?

The next time he managed to persuade Ellen to fool around, he coaxed her wordlessly into some positions that until recently he had been unaware of. During this, his mind was alive with unmentionable fantasies. Ellen had gone along for the ride he thought to himself, but afterward she reluctantly brought up the subject of this recent escalation of amorous behavior.

"Honey, I...you know I love you...but I just can't keep this up night after night. Are you all right? Is it because you can't sleep?"

"I'm fine. Just...kind of horny, I guess."

"Well, you're going to have to calm down a bit. I'm not twenty-five you know."

He hadn't thought about his sleep problem for a while. He suddenly realized that it had gotten much better. He still woke up around two or three each night, but after sex of one sort or another, he was usually able to sleep until daybreak.

"Morning, Daddy," Lisa said as she brushed by his seat at the breakfast table. "Mom," Luke and I are going to a party at Tina's tonight. Would it be OK if we stayed out until like, one, because we've arranged a surprise for Cindy Carlson and it needs to take place at midnight? Tomorrow is like, her birthday. We'll be home right after that, I promise. And also, I need about twenty dollars."

"You'll have to ask your dad."

Asking him should be simple enough, he thought, since he sat right there, being largely ignored by the two of them until a request from the 'planning and budget committee' was required.

"Daddy, is it OK if I stay out a little later tonight?" Lisa asked. She knelt beside his chair squeezing his arm. She drew the arm close against her breasts. "Please." Her big brown unblinking eyes looked pleadingly into his shifting ones.

"Well, I...I guess it's all right."

He looked at Ellen to see if she noticed anything inappropriate. He was flushed. He tried to pull his sweating arm free without causing a scene. Had she always used this technique to get her way? He couldn't remember. Things were different now. But Ellen seemed to take no notice of this little drama. There was tension in the air, but it seemed to be only his tension. At last he freed himself, but he thought he saw his daughter give him a little wink.

At three a.m. he got up to pee. By this time he knew to proceed from the bedroom with caution. Too much noise would startle Lisa and Luke. He didn't want a big embarrassing scene. And also, he admitted to himself now, he liked to watch. Was he actually hoping to catch them again? He tiptoed to the doorway. Good, no television, but then he saw a movement. The streetlight illuminating the closed mini-blinds created a halo-like glow around the conjoined couple. This time Luke was on his back facing Warren. The object of his lust obstructed the boy's potential view of his girlfriend's father. Lisa sat atop him, backwards, straddling his legs. Her hands on his knees supported her weight. Her long hair hung down over her face as she rode slowly up and down. As Warren stood, once again transfixed, Lisa sat up and moved her hands behind her, placing them on Luke's thighs. They were moving faster now. Lisa's small perfect breasts bobbed rhythmically as she looked straight into her father's eyes.

At work the next day, Warren sat at his computer, supposedly designing new software which would enable the end-user to transfer analog video images to digital, thus allowing editing on a home computer. There were already other companies with similar software, but competition made things better and cheaper. He had been looking at the same screen for twenty minutes while the movie inside his head looped over and over. This is sick. I'm sick. I'm one sick, incestuous son of a bitch.

He had been thinking lately about incest, the word, the act, the meaning. It was one of those words that could have different connotations. Was it incest if it existed only in one's thoughts, if it were never physically acted out? Did that count? And the word -- it was a nice-sounding word -- much nicer than its meaning. Like carrion. Carrion was a nice-sounding word. He vowed to stop what he had been doing...thinking of doing.

That night he attempted once again to arouse Ellen's interest, but she gently pushed his hand away, patted him lightly, and rolled over. He gave up and determinedly went to sleep. At around three he heard a noise and felt movement. Groggily he realized that it was Ellen, who had gotten up to go to the bathroom. He was pretty sure that Lisa and Luke were in the living room. If they were up to their old tricks, the excrement was about to hit the ventilator.

This was the moment he had been dreading. Ellen would scream and throw on the light-switch. She'd demand that Luke get the hell out. There would be crying, doors slamming, tires screeching, followed by long days of tense silence at the breakfast table. He and Lisa would exchange terrible secret glances.

He waited, barely breathing -- listening -- for a long time. What the hell was going on?

At last Ellen's silhouetted form padded into the bedroom. Light from the distant exit of the interstate highway spilled dimly into their room. In the glow he saw her pull off her top and push down her pajama bottoms. Naked, she slipped in beside him, and reached between his legs.

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