My husband has not been sleeping well. More than once he has stolen down to billiards room while the rest of the country slept, shooting pool for an hour or two with one of the Secret Service boys before returning to bed.
    Tonight he screams so loudly, I jolt awake next to him.
    As I wipe his brow's perspiration, coo reassuringly; he stares at me confused, breathing wetly, eyes scanning my face like he lost something there.
    Rodney's voice booms from the other side of the door and he rattles in my arms with a start.
    "No problemo, Rod-dawg!" he shouts hoarsely. "Everything's fine!"
    I kiss him on the cheek only to feel his expression has crinkled into grimace. He quickly untangles himself from me, retreating into the bed's farthest corner. In the dark, I hear him punching his pillows into submission; feel his back towards me, his shoulders hunched away as if I were the one who woke him in the middle of the night with such a scream.
    It wasn't so many years ago that it was me that tossed and turned, while my husband slept so soundly I resented him for it. Especially considering he was so often the reason for my restlessness.
    I'm ashamed to remember that I worried I had married a debutante in cowboy boots, that he would never accomplish anything I could tell my girlfriends about. Now how I pine for those lazy days when his biggest worry was the stock market or who was going to pitch that night for his silly ball team. Back then come bedtime he would kiss my neck with boozy breath and sweep whatever novel away from me with greedy jealous hands.
    Now at night he kneels muttering by the bedside longer than I can keep awake. And when he shoots up in the dark, he rejects my caresses like an embarrassed schoolboy. He suspects that I don't think he's strong enough. My eyes betray me.
    We made love once in the middle of Ameriquest Field. He used to do a Yosemite Sam impression when he drank. There was a time when he cried in my arms after his father called him a goddamn fool in front of the family. I know him and he resents me for it.
    I reach out for him. His side of the bed's still warm.
    I picture him draped over the billiards table; he lines up an impossible shot with furrowed concentration. Later while he sharpens his cue stick he will sigh and make conversation, casually wondering aloud to Rodney or Carl or whosever on duty, what they would do if they happened to be him. "Speak freely," he'll say.
    They all know how to answer. It doesn't matter who's on duty, they all know the President always wins at billiards.



About the author:
Duncan Birmingham received his MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and lives in Los Angeles where he has written screenplays for Universal Studios, A Thousand Words and Telltale Films. He is a 2005 fellow of Maine's Eastern Frontier Society and his fiction has appeared in Satire, The Beacon Street Review, Oxford Magazine, uber, Strawberry Press, Four Stories, Facsimilation Magazine, Four Corners and Seismic Magazine among others. His first novel Hacksville, a Hollywood story about movie addiction, tree-sitting, Catholic guilt and karaoke, will available to publishers in March of 2005 though RLR Associates. He can contacted through his website, duncanbirmingham.com

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