That night, as usual, she dreamed of her dead husband.
In the first dream he was walking with her down a New York street. It was winter, night, big halos of icy blue surrounded all the streetlights. The parked cars were so black they gleamed like schist, and the brownstones all had stately stoops that exactly paralleled each other, like something out of Egypt. It was cold, with a gritty wind, but Nina didn't mind because she had her warmest jacket on and she was holding Augie's arm. He wore a camel topcoat, carelessly buttoned, and though she couldn't see his hands she knew they were balled lightly into fists at the bottom of his pockets. She was looking at the sidewalk; it had small shiny stones embedded in it. Then something went wrong. Nina had the sudden certainty that she was holding not her husband's arm but an empty sleeve. When she looked up they were standing at a broad intersection. Many traffic lights were flashing and the wind was blowing from everywhere at once. Augie was now standing outside his coat. He was naked, pale as egg, and skin was blowing off of him, his face was distorted and flesh was being stretched and torn away like leaves from a tree in the first November storm.
Nina sat up groaning, then leaned back on her elbows. She brought a hand to her throat and felt her racing pulse. She poured some water from her nightstand carafe. A late moon had risen and a dim ivory light was spilling through the thin curtains. It put a soft gleam on the pine-cone bedposts, and the gleam reminded Nina of the delicious and secure fatigue of childhood. After a while she went back to sleep.
When she dreamed again, the dream was gentler. She was on a beach, sitting at the water's edge, letting wet sand sift through her fingers. The sun was hot on her shoulders, the water so flat she could see the place where the earth curved underneath it. Augie was behind her, lying in a hammock. At least she trusted that he was: She could only see his leg, pegged in the sand like a bird's leg, his toes faintly wiggling just below the surface. She was happy. She looked down the beach and saw a black man selling coconuts. He was wearing a big hat of woven palm. She wanted to buy a coconut for her husband. She wanted to surprise him, to see him drink the rich milk through a straw. But there was a dilemma. She was happy as she was, knowing Augie's toes were wiggling. She would be happier sitting next to him and giving him a coconut, but she feared that if she reached for greater happiness she might lose the happiness she had. She glanced up the beach, then back at the hammock. She gestured toward the man with the coconuts. Then her nerve failed and she woke up just enough to break the dream, to finish it without an ending.
She rolled over and smoothed an imagined crease in her pillowcase. Her leg twitched once, she cleared her throat, and some time later her husband appeared to her once more.
He stood before her looking very old and thin, as if he'd been dead for many years. His hair was pure white and hung down past his shoulders. He had a beard dry as tinsel on his sunken cheeks, and his cheeks were not ashen but burned the color of rosewood. He wore a threadbare shirt, a pauper's shirt, and on his shoulder perched a parrot.
"Nina," said her husband. "I've come home."
The widow smiled sadly on her pillow. Augie had never before appeared in such a ghostlike way, never seemed so old, so low, so fragile. Yet his deep eyes in the moonlight seemed at peace. "Augie," she murmured. She froze his image for a moment, nestled it into her shrine of recollection, then blinked herself awake.
Or thought she did. The apparition did not vanish. The widow tried to shake herself out of a sleep that was stubborn as memory, stubborn as love, struggled upward as from a dive where one has gone too deep, but still her husband's image loomed before her. She was dreaming now that she was sitting up, looking past the dead man's tinsel hair at the familiar curtains moving with the breeze, though she knew this could not be.
"Whiskey sour," squawked Fred the parrot. "Pretty Nina."
"Augie?" said his wife.
He sat down on the bed. He'd grown so light he barely made a dent. His wife reached out a trembling hand to touch him. The parrot fluttered in protest and moved to its master's other shoulder. "I'm very tired," said the painter. "Very tired."
He swiveled slowly on his shrunken hips, let himself fall backward, and was sleeping in an instant. The bird jumped onto its bedside perch and sat there preening in the moonlight.