My husband and I gaze at each other while we brush our teeth, savoring these final moments together before we go our separate ways.
I kiss him goodnight and do a series of somersaults to the other side of the bed. I’m wearing a red slip to make sure this is how he pictures me during our time apart. He hates to see me go, but he loves the sight of my barely covered derriere tumbling away.
Once I reach my side of the mattress, I change into the plaid flannel onesie with closed feet and a butt flap that my husband thinks I donated to Goodwill last spring. Then I practice capoeira to release the last bits of energy from the day before hitting the hay. Without his contacts in, my husband mistakes me for an L.L. Bean fleece blanket fluttering gracefully in the breeze from the AC vent.
Meanwhile, my life partner tosses, turns, and loudly attempts to learn Mandarin on Duolingo. None of these activities requires me to relocate to the couch, which is good, because we no longer have a couch. There’s no room for any furniture in our apartment except the bed.
I get a notification that my iPhone has made a slideshow called “Pet Friends” about our beagle, Professor Noodleman. I watch it sixteen times. My husband used to complain about the garish blue light disturbing his circadian rhythm, but now it’s only disturbing my circadian rhythm, which is already permanently damaged from the past four years of sharing a full-sized bed with a man who falls asleep listening to gruesome true-crime podcasts without earbuds in.
I think about how Professor Noodleman—who’s in this bed somewhere, along with her own bed, water dish, and fifty-three squeaky toys—will likely only live for five to seven more years. Is this going to be my “reward” for a long, full life? Mourning everyone I’ve ever loved? I play “Do You Realize??” by the Flaming Lips on Spotify, hoping my husband will hear the song and understand the nature of my distress. Alas, the pup will probably already have departed to that great big bed in the sky by the time the sound reaches my spouse.
Sobbing, I lace up my hiking boots and wade across miles of memory foam to my husband so he can comfort me. But the journey is so long that halfway there, I’ve forgotten why I was so upset and turn back around. Good thing I didn’t bother him for no reason (unlike the Before Times in our crouton-sized bed, when I accidentally elbowed him awake as I was googling “oldest beagle Guinness record”).
I hop a bullet train back to my coast of The King.
Jet-lagged and exhausted from the trek, I fall asleep immediately. I’m awakened by a visit from several gentlemen callers: Daniel Kaluuya, Steven Yeun, and Michael Keaton. Luckily, there’s room for all four of us, in every possible position. I don’t feel guilty about it, because we have a one-sided open marriage, and the only condition is that I keep my trysts to my side of the bedscape. From another zip code, my husband’s snoring is so powerful that I can still hear it, but rather than kill the mood, it provides a sexy dubstep soundtrack.
At dawn, I climb out of my jumpsuit through the butt flap and change back into the negligee, which clings to my curves as I do a slo-mo Baywatch run over the rolling dunes of the extra-extra-extra-large sheets. I arrive at our bed’s helicopter launchpad, my hair blowing dramatically in the wind as the pilot and I take off. My husband sips coffee while ogling me through his telescope.
The helicopter lands in his hemisphere at midmorning. Thanks to the commute, I have to start and end work two hours later, but it’s worth it since my husband lets me have the side of the bed that’s closest to the bathroom.
I leap into his arms and we share a passionate kiss. The unknowable mystery of one another’s nocturnal activities has imbued our connection with an erotic charge. He murmurs something to me in Mandarin.
Feeling well-rested and perfect for the first time in years, I dismount the bed, solve the Zeeman conjecture in topological mathematics, formulate a peace plan for the Middle East, and invent a canine probiotic that grants Professor Noodleman eternal life.
Then my husband and I call out sick for the rest of the week and get to work on changing the duvet cover.
