Coffee to sleep

The moka pot rumbled, and the smell of Italian dark-roast coffee reached Angela's nostrils. The church bell sounded twice.

Angela poured the coffee into the espresso cup she'd brought back from her trip to Italy, from her grandparents' hometown.

She had never been a good sleeper. For as long as she could remember, she'd suffered from insomnia. Her anxiety always found a good reason to wake her a few hours after she'd fallen asleep.

This is the night I wake up and it's not dark outside, she told herself the evening before. She was wrong.

She never understood how most people slept, and how some of them even seemed to enjoy it. "I can't wait for Saturday so I can sleep till ten!" her colleagues would say, nodding at each other, while she never came close to sleeping that late.

But insomnia should be the normal state, and the people who could sleep should be considered strange. Did those good sleepers ever stop to think that the whole of human existence made no sense? Scientists had come up with theories — the Big Bang, evolution, galaxies, and plenty more — but what answers did any of it really provide? How was anyone supposed to wrap their head around how we went from non-existence to existence, and why we ended up here, on this tiny planet, with arms and legs, worrying about silly things, waging war on each other?

Religion had tried a different angle, but its answer was even worse: the promise of living forever. Angela didn't want that either. What would you even do, forever? The idea gave her more anxiety, not less.

Life had never been able to distract her; those thoughts always knocked louder than anything else at the door of her mind.

She'd found that coffee was the only thing that could get her back to sleep, no matter how many people told her it was the reason she couldn't sleep in the first place. But a coffee in the middle of the night had always worked as her sleep aid, and she trusted the evidence she'd built for herself.

As she brought the cup to her lips, she heard a noise. She couldn't quite place where it came from. Her husband, Joe, had been in bed when she'd left the bedroom. Maybe he'd woken up and was watching something on his phone — his own tried-and-true method for fighting insomnia.

Lucy woke up to pee. That stupid herbal tea, the one that was supposed to help her sleep, had the annoying side effect of waking her up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Antony wasn't in bed.

Had he even come to bed that night?

She walked into the living room and found him asleep on the couch, the TV glowing with the words Are you still watching?, waiting in vain for an answer.

He was folded into such an awkward position that Lucy felt back pain just looking at him.

She touched him gently. "Antony?" She tried to wake him.

He opened his eyes. "What?" he mumbled, disoriented. "What time is it?"

"It's two in the morning," Lucy said. "Come to bed."

"I want to sleep here," he replied, still half-asleep.

Lucy leaned closer and pressed her breast against his chest through the silk of her babydoll. "Are you sure?" she asked. "We could take a little break from sleeping, if you came to bed."

"Okay, you've convinced me," Antony said, smiling, and they walked to the bedroom.

As she approached the bedroom, the noise Angela had heard earlier faded, replaced by Joe's snoring. She peeked in and saw her husband lying on his back, mouth open, sleeping happily. The sound had to be coming from somewhere else. She went back to the office. Silence.

Then the noise returned — metallic, somehow, but also like an animal. Or maybe not an animal. Maybe people.

Her heart was pounding. Was there someone else in the house? The sound seemed to be coming from farther away. She held her breath and tried to place it.

It seemed to be coming from her neighbor's house. Angela lived in a townhouse, so hearing sounds through the walls wasn't unusual.

But she knew for a fact her neighbor was on vacation and wouldn't be back for another week. She'd even left her a spare key "just in case something happens" — one of those things people say without really believing anything ever will.

Angela went to the window and checked the driveway. No car. Her neighbor was still away.

Antony was wide awake now, looking at Lucy's body under the pink satin slip she wore as pajamas, and slowly slid it off, revealing the skin he'd imagined so many times before they'd started dating.

"You're so hot," he said, cupping one of her breasts in his hand.

"I know," she answered. "How did you dare choose the couch over sleeping with me?" she teased.

"I'm unforgivable," he joked.

"You really are."

They started kissing, bodies pressed together, skin damp in the heat of the summer night.

"Did you hear that?" Lucy asked.

"What?" Antony said, still catching his breath.

"I think I heard the door downstairs open."

“Hey…hey, Joe." Angela shook his shoulder to wake him.

He stopped snoring with one last loud grunt — the same grunt her grandfather used to make when he dozed off in his armchair.

"What's going on?" he said, annoyed at being woken.

"There's someone in Miss Fenn's house. I heard noises coming from over there — voices, maybe, or an animal."

"Maybe it's her."

"She's out of town, remember? Her car's not there."

"Are you sure it's not just in your head? Insomnia can play tricks like that."

"Come to the office and listen for yourself!" She grabbed his arm and pulled him out of bed. "Fine, fine. If it'll make you feel better."

Joe put his slippers on and dragged himself out of the bedroom and into the office.

"Okay, you're right, there's something on the other side of the wall. I can't tell what, though. Probably an animal."

"Yeah, you're probably right — sounds like something running around and jumping on the furniture. Maybe a squirrel got in. Or a raccoon."

"So what do you want me to do about it?"

"You should go check. They gave us the key for exactly this — to look after the house, in case something happens."

"Shouldn't we call her first? People leave a spare key for 'the shower's still running,' not for 'go fight a monster at two a.m.'"

"What if it's tearing the place apart? I'd feel terrible if she came home to a mess and we did nothing."

“Or you could pretend you're a normal person who's asleep at two in the morning instead of listening for imaginary animals next door."

"Please. I won't be able to sleep until she's back if you don't go check."

"We could just go in the morning. Wouldn't that make more sense? What if it's not an animal — what if it's a burglar? I don't want to fight off a burglar. We don't even own a gun!"

Antony held his breath, his face inches from Lucy's. Footsteps, downstairs.

"Shit. You're right. Someone's in the house."

"Oh my God, what do we do?" Lucy's face had gone pale, her body frozen, Antony's weight suddenly feeling like the whole ceiling had come down on her.

Antony was out of bed and dressed faster than a magician doing a costume change.

"I'll go check. Do you have a gun?"

"A gun? Are you insane?" Lucy said, almost offended. 

"What if whoever's down there has a gun. We should call the police. Or just pretend we're asleep. Is there anything valuable in the house?"

"That's a terrible idea. I thought you were braver than this."

"It's easy to say I should be braver when it's not your life on the line. Why don't you go down?"

"Shit, they're coming upstairs," Lucy whispered, the footsteps growing louder.

They lay frozen, still as corpses, Lucy still naked. The footsteps kept climbing, and a beam of flashlight crept under the door.

Then they saw the doorknob turn.

They both stared at the door as it opened and the flashlight beam swept in, like two deer caught in a car's headlights an instant before impact.

Blinded by the light, they couldn't see the face of the person now standing in the doorway.

Then, a voice: “Miss Fenn?"

“Mister Tower?"

"Weren't you on vacation?"