You've had another fight with your girlfriend, and it was a good one. You have them about once a month or so, which is coincidence, and has nothing to do with the phases of the moon. You know these fights must occur, but they make you so damn mad. And in the cycle of fights there are cycles, and this was a fight of fights. You said some things you maybe shouldn't have said, and then she said some things that she wouldn't have otherwise said, only she had to defend herself. She's so damn stubborn. That's probably why you fight.

So now you're both pouting: you're in your room, reading, and she is looking at the television, maybe watching a show. The book is a collection of short stories by a bunch of old dead people. You are just getting to the point when you are forgetting the fight and starting to pay attention to what's on the page. The story is very complicated, and you have read the first several lines several times just to keep it all straight. Later, one of you will approach the other and make some sort of gesture of apology. It won't be kiss and make up, exactly, and there won't be the typical love making. But you will snuggle up and although you don't like to have her breathing on your neck when you sleep, you will make spoons for a while and everything will be all right again

At least for another month.

The story is very complicated. A man is watching a woman, because he thinks she is being dishonest to him. That is how the author puts it: she is being dishonest to the man, he thinks. But the man is married, and it is he who is being dishonest. Actually, the woman does not even know him, but he wishes she did, wishes it so much that he feels she is being dishonest in not knowing him. And he is being dishonest to his wife, wishing like this. The story is very complicated, and you flip forward through the pages to see how long it will last: about twelve more pages.

You look over at the clock, and wonder if you should undergo your other bedtime rituals. The washing of the face, the brushing of the teeth, the touching of the toes. You used to never do these things before; you used to just fall over on the nearest soft pallet whenever fatigue struck you, usually late at night or early in the morning after a night of reading or watching television or staring at a computer screen. But now you have rituals.

Maybe if you go through your rituals, she will hear you and make the same efforts. She will ignore you with a slack expression on her face, and answer any questions you put to her in a dull, noncommittal voice. You used to think that this sort of behavior was a forecast of tears, that she was keeping it all in until you accidentally made mention of some obscure thing, some non-sequiter to the fight-of-the-month that would start with a few squeezed out tears, then a few blinked out tears, and then a gush, runny nose and all. Nothing's so convincing of genuine distraughtness like a runny nose. But later you learned that her behavior like this after a fight was not a prelude to tears, it was just fatigue. You take some satisfaction in that every fight you ever had has been won by you, or at least tied, and that she stops from fatigue only when she hasn't anymore the energy to push her point. Your opinion is that it's not worth pushing; ergo, you must be right, because your own is worth pushing.

You decide to finish reading the story, since you're half-way through it and it will be a good exercise of your will. Interestingly, the fight had some similarity to the story, in that there was confusion as to who had been doing what to whom. Most of the fights are based on misunderstanding, and a little humility on your part when you've figured this out would end most of them a lot more quickly and with considerable less angst. But you know there has to be fights if there's to be companionship, and one big fight a month is better than four little ones. She would fight you over everything if you showed such humility too often, right?

The heater turns off, and the room becomes silent. For a moment you muse on the fact that you didn't even know that the heater was on, that you didn't even hear it at all until it turned off. You can hear the TV downstairs, and either she is watching some chaotic channel or she is surfing with the remote. Now there's a stereotypical topic that the two of you have never had a problem with. Neither of you care for TV much, really, and believe it's function is like that of heroin or some other euphoric drug, it's there to dull the mind, and except for the 700 club or the Home Shopping Network, any channel will do. You try to concentrate on your book over the sound of the television and finally manage it; at least you decide you must have when your ears perk up at a certain commercial with which you're familiar, and you find you've read a few more pages.

You are situated like this: you are on your back, with your head and your shoulders propped up with three pillows. There's your pillow, her pillow, and the communal pillow which you share, transferring it back in forth through the night, as you are both restless sleepers. You have on your sleeping clothes, and you have one leg under the covers, an almost token attempt at being in the bed. You are holding the book with one hand, your left, and your other hand is lying at your side, and there's something light on it: maybe it is a hair.

You realize that your are noticing something on your hand, and that it is a hair or maybe a thread from the sheets. You lift your hand up even with the book and look at it, it is not a hair or a thread; it is a spider.

You regard the spider. It is about the size of your thumb, and as a matter of fact is standing on that part of the back of your hand between your thumb and your wrist. Your fingers are slightly curled behind it. It does not look particularly menacing, although you can see quite easily each of it's eight legs, it's head, and the back part, the thorax or whatever it is supposed to be called. The spider is not moving. You can make out with certainty the joints on each of the legs. It is black and hairless, and almost shiny in the light coming from bedside table. It is a spider.

Then you remember that you are terrified of spiders. Even the tiny little white ones that you see on a piece of wood that has been overturned send shivers up your spine and make your face flush. If you see one on the sidewalk you invariably step around it, going so far as to walk in the street to avoid being near it. In the house, seeing one skitter across the wall makes your stomach drop and you usually bombard it with shoes or cushions, whatever is handy. Most of the time they're not moving, however, and when you see one lurking in the corner where two walls meet the ceiling, you find your mind frozen, unable to do anything. Trying to kill them at that height is out of the question- what if it drops down on you? Whenever your girlfriend drags you into a pet store, you always make for the insect department, and gaze with horror and satisfaction at the fat tarantulas in their plastic cages, surrounded by foamy webbing, and the furry wolf spiders, hiding amongst the leaves and wood shaving put in there with them. Every time you have ever come across books with pictures of spiders in them, you always put your hand on the largest picture, and chew your lip, and close your eyes, and then close the book and wipe your forehead and consider yourself brave.

There is a spider on your hand. It is looking at you, maybe just a little bit over your shoulder. You find that if you concentrate on it enough you can feel each of its eight legs on your skin, can feel its minuscule but certain weight distributed on eight points on your skin. It is the single most terrible, most horrifying thing that has ever happened to you. It is without a doubt so unutterably disgusting that you literally cannot move. You cannot breath. Slowly, more slowly than anything you've experienced before, the spider picks up one of its legs and moves it forward, toward your wrist. At any moment the spider could just dash with that infinite spider-speed up your arm and into you shirt, for after all you are wearing only a tank top, and it could easily get onto your chest. The spider picks up another leg, and you can feel it leave your skin and come down again, a little bit closer to your wrist. After the spider gets in your clothes it could go anywhere: it could go into your shorts, into your underwear, or even around to your back, on your neck, into your hair. The spider picks up another leg and brings it forward. You have never seen anything move so slowly, so surely, in all your life. The leg is halfway down again when all of a sudden you realize the TV has been switched off. The spider knows it too, because the leg has stopped moving. It is balanced on seven of it's eight legs, the other one, thin and jointed, connected to it's fat body by a small protrusion of black plastic, hovering in the air above your wrist. There is silence, and you still have not breathed. The spider sets it's leg down again, somehow slower than it had been moving before.

You are staring at the spider, and now it is certainly staring back at you, with all of its eyes. Spiders have more than two eyes, you know this because you learned about it, read about it somewhere, saw it on one of those nature shows on TV your girlfriend is always watching. This black spider is looking at you with all of its eyes, and standing on you with all of its legs. There is absolutely nothing you can do, because if you move, if you even think about moving, if you so much as let one cell on your body shift position anywhere, the spider will do something so horrible there is no way your mind can ever imagine it and still remain sane. You know this. You have made your heart stop beating, there are no synapses firing in your brain, there is no maiosis, no digestion, absolutely nothing. You and this spider are are still as marble and as silent as stone.

Your girlfriend's face appears in the doorway, and for a moment there is a puzzled expression there, because she does not know why you are sitting with your hand held up, surely it is an uncomfortable position? But you feel nothing, you know nothing, there is only the spider. Then she sees it and inhales sharply, and suddenly you can move and so can the spider. It dashes towards your elbow and you throw your arm at the wall and the rest of your body follows, pulling you half out of the bed. Your hand smacks the wall but maybe the spider was not killed; it could still be on you. You defy gravity and roll back on to the bed, thrashing your arms and legs, scooping the sheets and blankets and pillows into a wild array. You kick and hit at the bedding, twirling your body around in a mad frenzy. Your hands and fingers race over your body, thrashing through your hair and your clothes, looking for the spider. You shake your head crazily, jack-knifing and straightening at the waist as you spin around and hop and flip on the bed. There is a noise, it is your throat through gritted teeth lest the spider leap into your mouth. The back of your hand smacks against your nose because the spider might try to get in there, too, and the you slap at your ears because spiders of any size can get into any hole, no matter how small. You continue to leap and thrash on the bed, your skin itches and burns and sweats and maybe there is more than one spider. Spider mothers lay egg sacs which release thousands of spiders and where one spider can go a hundred can follow. They could be all over the bed, hiding in the shadows of the sheets, so you must kick and flail your arms and yes, you must scream because the great big fat hairy spider was sitting on your hand while you were reading and then when you looked at it it stayed on your hand and it even started to crawl on your hand and then

You come to a complete freeze, with no deceleration. You are on your side. Your knees are drawn up a little and your hands are tucked into your chest. You are sweating heavily and breathing very hard. Your ears and nose are hot where you hit them, and you feel something running on your lip. Is it blood? You wipe you hand on it and look, it's only snot, which you proceed to absentmindedly wipe on the front of your tank top. Your hands are throbbing and your feet have that clammy feel they get when you've woken from a bad dream. You look up at your girlfriend. Her eyes are still wide like they were when she saw the spider but she is looking at you. If she were looking over your shoulder you'd know why and maybe pitch another fit, but she is looking at you.

She says, did you get it? and there is real fear in her voice. You say yes, I think so, very quietly and very calmly. Then with deliberate slowness you get up and stand in front of here. She raises her hands a little, and you step forward, and then you are hugging.

Arms around each other's wastes, you walk into the bathroom. She snaps on the light, and you get your toothbrush. She gets a washcloth and wets it. When you are done you trade utensils, and she brushes while you wash your face. The cold wet cloth feels good, and you scrub until your skin burns a little bit. While she rinses you touch your toes, ten times, stretching your legs and your back until they ache.

When you are finished you follow her into the bedroom. Boldly you arrange the sheets and after a moment she helps you straighten them out. Then she flips them back and the two of you crawl in. You give her a kiss and she smiles and looks into your eyes with her own half closed. You smile back and then curl into a ball, and she wraps herself around you. You can feel her breathing on your neck, and it is warm. It feels wonderful.