by Lydia Netzer
But Sally wouldn’t submit to the separation. She insisted on calling Bernice every day from the pay phone in her dorm’s lobby, using quarters and dimes by the handful. She took a class, her freshman year, for a humanities elective called The History of Astrology. Topics covered included ancient gods, the birth of constellations, the overlap of the faith of astrology with the science of astronomy. The teacher, a graduate student, was a professed clairvoyant, an astral projector, a mystic.
“Go to the island,” he would say at the end of every class, his way of signing off on his lecture. “There you will find me.”
It didn’t take long for Sally to stay after class and ask what island he was talking about in central Michigan, and from there it was but a short step to them lying in bed next to each other, his hand on her wrist, taking her pulse, his voice in her ear, coaching her.
“I’m dreaming, I am aware; I’m dreaming, I am aware; I’m dreaming, I am aware,” he said.
She repeated it.
“There is an island in water so blue, it’s like emerald.”
“Emeralds are green,” whispered Sally. “Is it green water?”
“Okay, like a sapphire,” continued Dean, without breaking his tone.
“That’s better,” Sally said, giggling.
“Shhhhh,” Dean urged her. “Let your mind become quiet. Let your mouth become quiet.”
“My mouth has a harder time than my mind,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to whisper; there’s no one else here,” he said in a normal tone.
“I’m sorry,” said Sally. “It’s just … show me again.”
Sally stretched her long body next to his and then really tried to still it and settle down. She was so restless, even in bed. Even after what he’d called tantric sex.
“There is an island in water so blue it’s like a sapphire,” he began again. “The island has palms waving in a light warm breeze, and a sandy beach as white as snow.”
“Or pearl,” Sally whispered. “To continue the gemstone theme.”
“Relax your mouth,” said Dean.
“OK.”
“Relax it so much that words stop coming out of it.”
“Maybe we better tantric again,” said Sally. “I don’t think I’m getting it.”
With Dean, she never did get it. But the idea took root, and she brought it to Bernice.
“I miss you!” she said to Bernice on the phone.
“You don’t have a boyfriend?” asked Bernice.
“Well, I do have a boyfriend.”
“Is he boring and stupid?”
“No,” said Sally. “He’s actually pretty wonderful. As a professor, I mean.”
“Naughty,” said Bernice without inflection. “I suppose that makes it hot.”
“Well, he has all kinds of strange ideas.”
“Like having sex with a nineteen-year-old girl?”
“He’s not that old. He’s twenty-three.”
“So he’s a lecturer, not a professor.”
“He’s my teacher.”
“I see. Glad you went to college so you could learn to sleep with older men.”
“Not that kind of teacher! He’s teaching me the history of astrology. And astral projection. And he does have this thing he does, tantricness, where the guy doesn’t even ejaculate, just goes and goes on and on forever.”
“Forever?”
“He’s had a ten-hour orgasm before,” said Sally. “Because nothing ever comes out, so it’s never really over.”
“You are attending the University of Michigan, are you not? Haven’t transferred to the Edgar Cayce School or the New School for the Education of Nascent Prostitutes without telling me or your parents?”
“Astral projection could mean we could see each other.”
“We’ll see each other at Thanksgiving.”
“No, I mean see each other all the time. Like tonight. In an astral plane.”
Bernice stalled.
“Are you there?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I miss you, my little purple bag. I just want to try this. Come on, I miss you so much. I just want to see you.”
Bernice swallowed. “OK, what do I have to do? Burn incense? Ingest substances?”
“No,” Sally continued joyfully, her laugh booming across the phone lines. “It’s all in your mind! I know we can do this! Listen to how it works.” And she proceeded to relay Dean’s explanation of lucid dreaming word for word, although all her attempts at sharing dreams with Dean had failed.
It didn’t work for them either at first. They spent a whole month falling asleep in their separate states, meditating on their intention to join on a subconscious plane that manifested itself as a basketball court. Dean’s tropical island felt too cliché, and anyway Dean might be there. The basketball court was a place with which they were both familiar—Sally as a player and Bernice as a spectator. Bernice visualized taking her place in the stands, looking up, and seeing Sally practicing free throws from the line. Sally visualized dribbling down the court, turning her head to the left, and seeing Bernice in the bleachers.
It was something they both tried very hard to do, while chanting “I’m dreaming, I’m aware, I’m dreaming, I’m aware.” Sally had them doing other ridiculous things like counting their fingers whenever the clock was on :00 or :20 or :40. The idea was that if finger counting became a habit in waking hours, it would pop up in dreamland, too, and in dreams you never get ten fingers or toes. Observing this weirdness is a way to alert your brain you’re dreaming. Then you’re dreaming and you’re aware.
At Thanksgiving the girls met back in Toledo, fully awake. They laughed about astrology and the stuff they were working on, but Sally had a stack of books on various mystical topics for Bernice to read, checked out from the University of Michigan library and not due back until after winter break. With Bernice’s father traveling, they had Thanksgiving dinner at Sally’s, and then went to bed under Sally’s bright blue sheets in the bed where they’d had so many sleepovers, in a time that now seemed long ago.
Sally had a hard time falling asleep, and kicked her feet around petulantly, trying to get comfortable.
“Quit it,” said Bernice. “You’re going to bounce me out of this thing.”
“Tell me a story,” said Sally. “Make it good. I can’t keep my legs still.”
“OK,” said Bernice. “But you have to close your eyes. And if you kick while I’m telling the story, I’m quitting.”
Sally obediently closed her eyes and crossed her ankles over each other, to keep them quiet.
“Once upon a time,” began Bernice, tracing Sally’s eyebrow with one finger, first the left one, and then the right one, “there was a man. His wife of many years had died and left him and his three sons to fend for themselves in a harsh world of commerce and sport. He was a builder of buildings, and a strong, tall man with curly godlike hair…” Here Bernice let her finger slip along Sally’s hairline, smoothing back the little hairs that curled there, like on a baby’s forehead. “But he was sad because he was all alone.”
Sally let out a great sigh and rolled onto her stomach. Bernice knew this meant she was almost ready to go to sleep.
“Scratch my back,” Sally suggested.
Bernice dragged her fingernails down Sally’s back through the T-shirt. Then she worked her nails back up to her friend’s shoulder in little spirals, then back down the other side.
“Story,” said Sally drowsily.
“Somewhere in another part of town, there was a woman with three beautiful daughters. They all had lovely golden hair. Their father, the woman’s husband, had also died, leaving her lonely and sad as well.”
“Great story,” murmured Sally. “I think I want to kill myself.”
“Well, one day, the lonely woman ran into this lonely guy, this fellow, let’s call him, probably in the supermarket,” Bernice went on, her fingertips contracting and spreading slowly over Sally’s spine, up and down f
rom her neck to the waistband of her shorts. “And they immediately knew that this was much more … than a hunch.”
“You ass,” Sally said.
“That this group must somehow form a family,” Bernice went on, louder, starting to bounce on the bed rhythmically with the theme song she was now singing.
“THE BRADY BUNCH!” hollered Sally into her pillow.
“The Brady Bunch!” both girls sang together, now yelling so that the veins were sticking out on the sides of their faces.
“Bernice!” yelled Sally. A dog was barking in the neighbor’s yard. Sally always pronounced her name with an emphasis on the first syllable, like BERN-iss, when she was joking around like she was angry. “Bernice, this is unacceptable. Now put on a blue dress and your whitest apron, and sweep up this mess.”
Bernice was laughing so hard, her stomach was in spasm.
When they settled down, Sally said, “Now I’m all riled up again. You’re going to have to scratch a lot more, and probably sing, too, but no more TV theme songs. I want Compton and Batteau. And hum the violin parts. You owe me. Hey, when we have our kids, we should teach them all about Compton and Batteau. It’s such an obscure act, when they find out they both know the songs, they’ll feel it’s fate for sure.”
When she was finally asleep, Bernice leaned over to look at Sally’s face. The wide mouth was open, a bit of drool descending onto the pillow. The eyelashes were pressed against her cheek like little marks left by a stylus. The eyelids fluttered as if something beneath them was held in captivity. Bernice wanted nothing more than to press her lips to Sally’s temple, feel the vein that pulsed there, blue and deep, and press their warmth together while her friend slept. It would have been a violation, she thought. It would have been a sin. So Bernice left Sally unkissed, and curled back around into the space in the small of Sally’s back, and went to sleep.
*
Later that night, Bernice was dreaming. She was in a mall, but an ugly one, and she was passing by a men’s clothing store. Inside the store, Bernice could sense a problem, like you do in dreams. She knew instinctively that something bad was happening. Then she herself was inside the store, moving through the aisles. She saw a woman, standing next to a display of brightly colored shirts, and the woman was naked. The woman was embarrassed, but nobody was really noticing her, so Bernice wanted to tell her it didn’t matter. The woman turned and Bernice knew that it was Sally. Then she saw, like a hammer to the head, that it really was Sally. Not a dream Sally, but Sally having a dream.
“Sally,” she said. “It’s OK, you’re dreaming.”
Sally looked toward Bernice, but it was clear she didn’t really see her. She picked up a shirt from the table and held it against herself, as if she was thinking it could cover her, front to back.
“Sally,” said Bernice. “You’re dreaming. Hey.”
Bernice had to concentrate hard to stay in the room, in the clothing store, with Sally. She knew from reading the books that the hardest part of lucid dreaming was staying in the dream once you’d realized it was, in fact, a dream. Everyone knows what it’s like to figure out you’re dreaming. It’s what you do with the information that matters. Usually you slide away, or just wake up. Bernice forced herself to stay put, and kept calling through the dense underwater audio of the dream, calling to Sally. Sally only pressed her legs together, pressing up against the table, looking back and forth.
Of all the checks you can perform to let your mind know you’re dreaming, being naked should be the easiest. You might not remember to count your fingers, or look at a calendar, or check a watch. But you should be aware that if you’ve let yourself go out in public without pants, what you’re experiencing is not real. However, most everybody in dreams, Sally included, finds themselves in public with no clothes on, and seeks no explanation—only a solution.
Bernice told Sally what the books said. “Take control. It’s your dream. You can put clothes on. Just dream them on.”
Sally turned toward her then, but still appeared confused, as if Bernice was a person she could not clearly see.
So Bernice did the only other thing she could think of to save Sally from the embarrassment of the naked dream, and that was to reach up to her throat and pull her own clothes off. Dreaming, she didn’t bother with zippers and buttons, but just tugged the clothes off like they had already dissolved. Then Bernice was standing there in the clothing store, naked, too. Sally could see her now, though the other patrons still remained gauzily indifferent.
“Bernice,” said Sally.
“It’s OK,” said Bernice. “See? We’re only dreaming.”
12
Irene saw George sitting in the dark. It was the back of his head that she saw first—a man’s head, boxy and large. She came into the room through the back door, and it was him that she saw right away. Something about the way his shoulders lay back against the seat, or the way his chin was tilted to the side, looking up, made her say, “Mine.” Something in this man her heart recognized. Or, not her heart but her throat. Not her throat but something else, something that might live inside you but not be made of blood and flesh. If there was such a thing available for people to have, Irene hadn’t known about it until last night, when hers had jumped and strained, yearning for George. It was disorienting. Like being sick.
She had come to hear a lecture from a visiting professor. The room was dark, and the star machine was on. Irene didn’t like that.
George turned to look back, and saw her. He waved vigorously, and motioned that she should come over. George had left a seat for her right on the aisle. She sat down next to him and leaned over without looking at him to get her laptop out of its bag.
“Hi!” he said. He put one hand on her knee.
“Hello,” she said into her lap, still reaching into her bag.
“It’s great to see you, Dr. Irene Sparks,” said George.
She sat up with the machine, opened it, and said, “It’s great to be seen, Dr. George Dermont.”
“Do you have any gum?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I don’t like gum. After all, what’s the point of it?”
“It’s for chewing,” said George.
“I don’t like chewing,” said Irene.
George took his hand back and fiddled around with the notebook on his lap, curling and uncurling one side of the paper. Irene switched her laptop on.
“So how was your day?” he asked. When she turned to face him, she noted his gaze was hovering down around her collarbone.
“Fine,” said Irene. “Assistant is a bit irritable. You know her, I guess.”
“Yeah, Patrice.”
“Sam Beth, she corrected me.”
“Yeah, she’s a … um … Daughter of Babylon. So they’re big on their ancient names. But for paperwork, it’s Patrice.”
“Yes, I’ve heard a bit about that,” said Irene. “The Daughters of Babylon, huh?”
“Some kind of Internet cult,” said George cautiously. “Astronomer priestesses.”
“But I guess you know her pretty well?”
“She told you?”
“She did.”
Sam Beth had approached Irene at the banquet, just as she was trying to leave. Her face was flushed, and her eyes cut back toward George’s table, George’s parents. “I’ve had sex with Gilgamesh,” she said urgently, clutching a wineglass. Irene had continued piloting Belion toward the door, but Sam Beth caught her by the arm.
“Sorry?” Irene had asked. “What did you need?”
“With George,” said Sam Beth. “He’s looking for his Inanna.”
“I don’t get it,” Irene prompted. But this explained the way Sam Beth had behaved in the office. Something inside Irene felt disappointed, and a little sad.
“He’s slept with almost everyone around here who has brown hair,” Sam Beth explained impatiently. “Fuck and run.”
“How odd,” said Irene. “Well, that has nothing to do with me.”
“That’s
right, but your hair is brown,” Sam Beth said. “Not a good boyfriend for you. Look away. Walk away.”
“Well, I appreciate you trying to look out for me,” Irene began.
“No, I mean really, walk away, walk away from me, right now, don’t talk anymore.”
Irene had walked away, but when she got home and to her computer, in the back room of her mother’s little house, she did a little research and found a few strange Web sites with wall-to-wall text and exclamation points that described Babylon as the “mother of harlots.” Girls in graduate school will believe anything.
“Oh,” said George, in the planetarium. “Those other girls—”
“George, I have a boyfriend, and you … well, you know. All the harlots.”
Irene turned back to her laptop. She felt each breath coming quickly into her lungs, as much as she was trying to control it. She opened a new document and typed “September 5th. Guest Lecture. Nathaniel Lebernov.”
“Who’s Nathaniel Lebernov?” George asked.
Irene turned to face him and said, “The Lebernov differential? You don’t know him? Are you serious?”
She typed the equation on her laptop, her wrists snapping and fingers twisting into shape to make the special characters and punctuation.
“That’s the Lebernov equation.” She typed underneath it. “Did you not read ‘The Spectronometric Analysis of the Geomagnetic Particular Radius of Dectrite Gas Molecules’ in last fall’s International Journal of Physics?”
George looked at her.
“Are you only here to pick up chicks?” she asked him sternly, out loud.
“Actually, I’m here because of you. I knew you’d be here, and I wanted to see you.”
Irene blinked very fast, forced her chest to stop convulsing. She felt unhinged and didn’t like it at all. She made her feet touch each other at the heels and imagined those heels on the edge of a building, forty stories up. She had to calm her blood down. She took a sideways glance at George, and he was lying back in his seat, looking straight up, utterly relaxed.