She's been lying there for almost an hour now. That's it, just laying there, her head resting on my thigh and the rest of her body stretched out along the length of the couch. Not unlike a cat, I note.

I wished she'd shift ever so slightly though, my leg is becoming numb.

Maybe she's dead!

Could it be? I can't remember the last time I saw her blink. If she is dead, how long has she been laying on me that way? Shouldn't I be traumatized, shouldn't something like your dead girlfriend dying in your lap make you feel just a trifle panicked? Just as I'm about to flick her in the nose to check, she glances over at me giving me a curious look. Her eyes look like they somehow sensed that I was up to something and give me the, "Whatever it is you were about to do, don't" look.

Bah, she's getting too good at this.

I stare at the television, it's screen strangely devoid of anything interesting except our images reflected off the ghostly grey surface. "I've seen this show before", I thought. If I could just reach the remote, I could bombard my senses with something other than this persistent silence! Alas, it is just out of reach and getting to it would mean displacing this disturbingly beautiful head, if only for a second... Maybe she'd understand....

I can sense those eyes upon me again. The Look. She knows, and no she most certainly would not understand.

Somehow my hand has intertwined its way into her hair by its own accord. It feels comfortable there, although I'm not sure I can get it back out again. We might have to cut it off like that time with the gum. I can't help but snicker at the thought of that, and I can feel the eyes swivel dangerously around even before I can see them.

My mind is a whirl. With one hand lost to the forests of her hair, I am still trying to figure out how to get the remote with the other. This is going to require some covert MacGuyver-like ingenuity. With my free hand I slowly reach my shoe without attracting her notice. Ever so slowly, I manage to take the lace out of the shoe.

Now the hard part.

With agonizing care, I fashion the shoelace into a crude lasso, and try to rustle up the remote from the plains of the love seat cushion. So close! I try again, and this time I think I've got it. Pulling on it bit by bit, it inches closer. Finally making sure, I am still not being watched, I reach out.... just a bit farther.... Got it!

Triumph ringing through my bones like a well-struck tuning fork, I press the button that will give me my sweet relief.

Nothing happens.

I try again. And again. I press the button maybe a hundred times before my mind wonders how stubborn I may have become. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the corners of her mouth form the ends of what appears to be a smirk.

"Might need these", she says as she pulls out two batteries out of a pocket. Quicker than I thought possible, they are deposited safely back in her pocket before I can make a grab for them.

Still with a slightly dumbstruck expression on my face, she calmly reaches up and takes the remote away and tosses it across the room onto the floor. "Hmmm.... out of shoestring lasso reach", I think. "I'll need a longer rope, and another source of batter...", I start to think when she speaks. "Hey, you, unless you want me to leave right now, shut up and lie here with me."

"But I haven't said anything", I thought. "You haven't shut up", her eyes say.

Then she locks my eyes, and says, "I like it when the silence between us is comfortable."

"Oh", I think as my other hand now becomes occupied with hers.

Oh.