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From someplace back there behind the eyes images project onto little skin screens. Lamplight filtering through blood makes for rosy skin screens. That is an illusion. They are black in an unlit room. Visual visitations come in clear bursts like fireworks in the night sky. A rainbow over a river, an onyx ocean hung in moonlight, a Rousseau zebra the instant its hoofs have left, but not yet returned to the ground; how exotic.

She listens now behind closed eyes. The blank skin screens are rosy with lamplight and blood. The images fly at sound; the opening door click, the crushing tissue paper rustle, the dry scrape of cardboard on cardboard, a whisper of silk. The brass bed had been a gift from him to one of her predecessors, abandoned. His Valentine is on the night table at his side of the bed. A manila folder cut in half, addressed to him in royal blue felt tip ink. When he opens it he will see scrawled across the left-hand side of the fold in royal blue on buff, To My Valentine, 1981, Regina.

On the right side is posted a black and white photograph. The dark afternoon interior of some working class tavern in one of the boroughs. A flat lustrous plane entirely dominates the foreground. The straight flat saw dusted light colored wood surface of the shuffleboard. It narrows quickly to the back of the long bar room.

There is a small table pushed up against the side of this World War II relic. Regina is sitting alone. Her clasped hands set in the center of the tabletop. Her shoulders strained forward. Her chin held high as ever. Her collarbone stands out sharply under her white skin. She looks like a chanteuse. Her smile is thin and hungry.

Earlier in the day she had called his job. They'd told her, "B.W.'s out shopping. This is a very special day, Regina." The big brown bags represent hours of his time and hundreds of dollars he cannot afford. Will she be pleased? He loves her, undoubtedly, when she is happy.
He remembers telling her in the beginning, "I don't want anything to go wrong. I don't want to do anything wrong. I don't want to say anything wrong. I don't want anything to disturb you."

One by one the bags will be opened, the boxes decollapsed, the expensive purchases set in place and covered. The corner of the room where there is a wastebasket will be clogged with dog hair and white tissue paper balls. Big brown ripped open bags will litter the floor. There will be a pile of shiny red boxes. He takes his eyes away, lighting a cigarette, coughing. He puts the cigarette in an ashtray. He forgets it. He looks toward the bedroom door. His big shoulders slump.

Until the moment of acceptance, whatever is inside the shiny red box is no more than an intention. When she removes the red box top, she will see next the white tissue barrier. Anticipating a present is exciting. When she turns back the white tissue sheets, she will know he loves her. The items of purchase will become a gift from the heart, a present.

The cheap paper of the large brown bags is chemically treated into strength enough to get the packages home from the store, provided there is no rain. One bag contains the collapsed tops and bottoms of cardboard gift boxes. Sheets of white tissue paper three times as large in area as the boxes are also provided. You see, the item to be a present must never have contact with the untreated gray insides of the collapsed tops and bottoms of the gift boxes. This is a quirk of retailers in stores, but not of street vendors. You forget the gray cardboard material on the outside, because of chemical coatings, shiny red for the top box, shiny white for the bottoms, but none for the insides. Once the corners are pulled out, you can see the virgin cardboard grayness is just waiting for tissue paper.

Unfold the white tissue paper sheets. The middle third of one will fit flat into the inside of the bottom box. Arrange it so. Place the item to be a present there. Imagine the outer thirds, the surplus at either side of the box, are pages from opposing bindings. Turn them one over the other into double thickness. The shiny white box, now holding the item to be a present in its white tissue shield, is constructed to fit snugly into its mate, the shiny red one.

His fingers fumble, unaccustomed to the procedure. He tosses crumpled tissue paper balls into a corner of the room. He knows there is a wastebasket there. Usually a woman does this for him. If that woman is meant to receive the gift, there are girls behind counters in stores. They are called wrappers. They make their livings wrapping packages men intend for women. For Regina, he will wrap them with his own hands. She will know, then, he loves her. If he does love her. Can he love her?

She is lying back against the pillows. Her eyes are closed. She does not appear to be asleep. The sound of footsteps alerts her. If she opens her eyes now, she will see the shiny red boxes stacked high on his arm. Her eyes open to an undulation of red as two of the boxes in flight lose their tops. Their contents hit her on the shoulder. They land on the pillow next to her head in a heap of icy gray silk and soft gray felt.
The white tissue paper linings have stayed put in the gaping bottoms of the boxes. The ones that didn't open make it to the floor helter-skelter. She reaches to the floor at the side of the bed for the ones that didn't open. She replaces the lids on the ones that did open. She stacks them neatly. She places them on his night table on top of the half a manila folder with his name on it.

"You take these fucking presents, Regina. You take them. I worked hard for those fucking presents. I work fucking hard so you can lie in bed all day."

Back on the pillow, her head does not turn. Her eyes shift from the ceiling to follow his shoulders through the doorway to the kitchen. He is a big man hulking in front of the open refrigerator door. The light from in there whitens his face ghostly. His lips are stretched taut against his short teeth. His facial skin is slack. His bristly hair stands on end. His breathing is asthmatic. He furrows his brow. He has the eyes of a wolverine, she has noticed before.

He piles a serving tray high with what is in the refrigerator. A mountain of food. A turkey carcass, containers of shrimp and chicken salad, jars of pickles, relish and roasted peppers, three zucchini, wedges of Havarti, grapes, grapefruit, a foiled package of Boursin, cheddar and brie, a half loaf of semolina bread, some greasy cold slices of London Broil, V-8 Juice, and sweet whipped butter on a saucer. He empties a box of Entenmann's crème-filled chocolate cupcakes over the pile.

As much food as he can carry is on the tray. He lifts it palm-flat in a practiced waiter's motion to the tip of his shoulder. He spins on his heel to the doorway. Food falls to the floor in his wake. He pretends to push a swinging door that is not there. Regina thinks she is supposed to laugh, but no.

"Do you see this? Do you see this? Food! If you can't eat this, then starve. Because I work hard for my money, Regina, fucking hard. I don't need you calling me at work, because you want a fucking cheeseburger. You hear me? YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?"

The dead could fucking hear him.

He smashes the tray against the wall. He smears food along the wall down to the floor. Wounded animals bellow this way. He is not talking to her. He is talking to someone else, someone unseen, but there. He cannot be talking to her. The best thing is to go to sleep. She can pack in the morning.

"You'll have all day tomorrow to pack. That's what you're going to do, right? Right? Isn't that right?"

From the foot of the bed, the mattress seems to stretch eternally toward the brass headboard. He pulls in a long breath of the air in the room; it smells like her. His features relax for a moment. Her long hair is a mass of nighttime. A strand lying across her breast catches her attention. She picks it up with the tips of her fingers. She begins to twirl the end, tighter, tighter. She does not see in that moment he is crestfallen. She looks only at the tight twisted end of the long dark strand of her hair. He steps quietly around the bed to his night table. He pushes the packages, gently this time, onto the bed next to Regina. His voice sounds stopped somewhere in the bottom of his throat.

"And I suppose you don't want these either, do you?"

Her arm moves from her side in a wide languid arc along the mattress to the headboard. The shiny red boxes are swept almost coincidentally to the floor. He leaves. She turns out the lamp. He rushes back into the room. He turns the light on again. He goes into the kitchen. He turns all the lights on in there. He comes back into the bedroom. He turns the rest of the lights on in there. He goes into the living room. He turns all the lights on in there. His Versailles, a tiny basement apartment, is ablaze in electric light. He makes up the couch to sleep on. He turns the television on full volume. He calls his dogs who come happily.

She swallows three Valium. She falls asleep, arm crooked over her eyes. When she wakes up, the set is still blaring, the lights burning, the presents on the floor. In the pit of her stomach is the anguish. She tiptoes into the living room. She crouches beside the couch. The two dogs lift their heads. She puts her mouth close to his ear.

B.W.?

"Hmmmmh."

Do you remember your dreams?

"Of course. Why?"

I don't remember my dreams.

"That's because you have a weak mind that can never develop strong enough dreams for you to remember."

Did you mean what you said last night? You really want me to leave?

"If you can't change your attitude, you'd better go."

My attitude. What else do I have?

He sleeps again at once, the deep, dreamless sleep, the righteous can enjoy. The dogs settle back into position. His broad, beautiful back broods in her face. She rises, walks into the bedroom. She returns the boxes to the night table. She considers taking the manila Valentine. No, let him suffer the moment he moves the boxes. To My Valentine, 1981, Regina.

She turns out the lamp. She turns out all the lights. She closes the door, leaving her belongings behind her. She regrets only a standing, gold-painted Buddha, whose hands seem to hold up the sky.

From someplace back there behind the eyes images project onto little skin screens. Electromagnetic particles like loose grit on a video screen. Microscopic fragments of light. Or, some of the times, colors, vibrant, brilliant colors. Only some of the times. There is something back there in the head. It acts as a magnetic wand. When it moves, the particles, like metallic shavings behind plasticine film, draw inexorably into shapes meant to break down right away into particles.

They are surprises, presents you don't have to pay for, instantaneous pictures not there and there and gone. An onyx ocean hung in moonlight, a portrait you know you have never seen the subject of when your eyes were open, a Rousseau zebra the instant its hoofs have left but not yet returned to the ground, how exotic, a rain washed willow weeping lush in the remotest corner of a walled garden.