by Hodge, Brian
Maybe I’m supposed to change my life…switch jobs, leave Blake, something…and my dreams are wise enough to point out that it’s just not happening.
“She was questioning things. Her job. The, uh…the relationship.” Then Wendy felt obliged to soften the sting. “That doesn’t have to mean anything, Blake. Journals, that’s where women vent just to get something out of our system. It doesn’t matter if the journal is supposed to be for dreams, other thoughts are going to creep in.”
“She obviously acted on them. Thoughts became intentions. Maisie had to go somewhere.” Blake let loose a weary sigh, her brother deflating a continent away. “As long as you have the journal, maybe you should keep reading. It might explain more.”
“What was going on then? I mean, why did she start keeping the journal? She hints at it, I know it was under doctor’s orders, but that’s all. He had to have a reason for telling her to do it.”
As Blake seemed to need time, she began stepping through his cable channels, a silent sequence of talking heads and sports clips and nameless characters having terrible days. She let it linger a few extra moments on some nature show, watching in fascination as an octopus ejected itself out of a tidal pool to wrap half of its tentacles around a crab.
“Maisie was already in analysis when we met. That didn’t start with me,” Blake said. “We went slow out of circumstances. I was busy, she was busy. Then…well, you know how it happens. One day it crosses your mind, okay, this is more than having fun, maybe we’ve got something here.”
Its grip secured, the octopus used its remaining tentacles to scuttle in reverse across the rocks and drag the hapless crab back into the water. A squirming mass, they disappeared into the octopus’s lair beneath a tilted slab of stone.
“Maisie was feeling the same way,” Blake said. “Then that was about the time her dreams started to get weird.”
Dear god. She’d had no idea an octopus could even leave its own world like that.
“Weirder than dreams usually are, I mean. They really changed in character. Maybe it was significant, maybe not, I don’t know—sometimes your head just throws out some weird shit. But she found it unsettling and her shrink was all over it. ‘It’s your subconscious trying to get through to you on something. Better get to the bottom of it.’ So that’s why the journal. To track the patterns.”
Wendy shut the TV off. “From the first bits I read, it sounds like this was mainly when she was sleeping over.”
“And you can imagine how good that made me feel.”
She’d never thought of Blake as vulnerable before. As dwelling on things beyond his control. She’d always imagined him dealing, then moving on. Because he was the kind of big brother who got things done. Who took care of all the problems in his sphere, his own and everyone else’s, and pain was for other people.
“Christmas day, when I called you from the safehouse, you put a question to me that made me finally make the changes I needed to. ‘What’s the bottom-line outcome you want?’ That’s what you asked me. It did me a lot of good, learning to ask that one question. So…what’s your outcome? Do you want Maisie back?”
He seemed to weigh this before answering. Finally, “I don’t even know if that’s possible. But I’d like to know that she’s safe. I’d like to know that she’s happy.”
Good enough.
If she could give her brother that much, it would almost be like earning her keep.
««—»»
Last night’s dream, or the main attraction anyway, the one that’s really lingering…
Sometimes the only way I know how to get at something is to explain it in the terms of something else.
A few years ago I was roped into watching a movie I ordinarily wouldn’t have watched. (File under: the things you do for love.) The obvious label to give it was a Western, except it was filmed in the Australian Outback. The Outback wasn’t a stand-in for the U.S. in the 1800s. No, it actually was set in frontier-era Australia. So technically this wasn’t a “Western” at all, since…for obvious reasons.
Here’s the thing about that, though. It looked like a Western. It had the usual trappings of a Western: horses, six-shooters, knives, ropes, whips, spears, guys in hats and long coats who’d lost their razors and toothbrushes. And dust, oh god, the dust.
But, even apart from the Aussie accents, the feeling was different. Starting with the landscapes. Even when a scene was set in a stark desert, the feeling wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same desert. IT WASN’T THE SAME DUST. And the presence of Australian aboriginals instead of American Indians…that was totally off-the-rails different.
So if a person didn’t know anything about Australia, she might think of this movie as a Western in an alternate reality. (Never mind asking how someone ignorant of Australia would know about alternate realities.)
Which brings us to last night.
It’s like I was dreaming of some lost city somewhere. Nothing like it has ever been found. The culture that would have built it has never been found, not a trace. So I don’t know where this was coming from. There were enormous terraces built up like hills, or maybe they were built into existing hills, that reminded me of rice paddies in Asia. And there were step pyramids, or maybe they were ziggurats, like in the nearer East…Egypt or Persia…or maybe Central America. I could see ramps. Big, wide ramps.
To me, it looked like everything was built entirely out of stone, but there were no blocks to see. Most of it had that same surface look to it as the towers a few nights ago, like mesh, ridges of it running one way, and other ridges at 90 degrees to that. But it was all one piece.
I’ve never seen stone like that. The closest thing is a bed of rock in Central Park that was scored by a glacier grinding over it during the last Ice Age, but those marks go only one direction, and it’s very crude in comparison, because, you know, glaciers aren’t known for their delicate touch.
So it’s like all the parts are familiar, they just come together in different ways. This is frustrating. I have so little point of reference to describe it.
They were unusual colors, too, for buildings. Blue and green, and blue-green and greenish-blue. Like they belonged near the water. Miami Beach, without all the old men in black knee socks. Others were pale, cream-colored or tan, with darker brown or red stripes slashing or zigzagging across them with just enough regularity to think there was a pattern there.
I would say I’d like to go there too, like the other place by the shallow sea, except these were obviously built by someone, and I don’t know who’s inside.
««—»»
The next morning, the first thing she tried was calling the office of Maisie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Baumgarten, and it played out exactly as she feared: I’m sorry, we can’t disclose any information about anyone who may or may not be a patient. When she explained that she’d come into possession of the dream journal, the receptionist put her on hold, then after a couple of minutes she was back, and nothing had changed. I’m sorry, we can’t disclose any information…
“HIPAA regulations, right?” Wendy said. “How about this: You don’t have to admit to anything, just take down my name and number. Then, if you happen to be in a position to relay the message to someone who may or may not be Maisie Danziger, that’s up to you.”
Then she went online, and it was easy enough to find Maisie there, or at least the trail the woman had left behind. Wendy first did a White Pages search and came up with a phone number, but the listing was old, the number reassigned to a man who’d never heard of her, and who terminated the call before she could ask how long he’d had it.
She also found a Facebook account, but nothing to see, so it must have been kept private, visible to friends only, although that didn’t preclude her from sending a private message. Next up, a LinkedIn profile, which confirmed that Barrett was recalling the right woman. According to the profile, she’d started with Condé Nast six years ago, with no end date to the position. But when Wendy called their offices and as
ked to be connected with her, the receptionist replied that she no longer worked there. How long ago had it been? The receptionist had to put her on hold, and she spent ten minutes in limbo before the connection went dead.
The Google search also turned up a smattering of smaller references, many of them connected to the editorial position Maisie no longer held, and none of them more recent than twenty-five months. Under the Images section of the search were a number of photos in which she was tagged, and again, Barrett’s memory served him well. She was an intimidatingly attractive woman, which certainly fit Blake as far back as high school. In some of them she looked fun; in several she looked distracted, as if her body were present but not her focus. In one of them, whose background suggested a wine bar, she looked ready to cry.
There was no explanation for it, no context. Just a weary look of abject misery.
She had friends and colleagues, of course, other faces tagged in the photos, and Wendy began a list of them as the next logical step in extending the search.
And it was all getting silly, wasn’t it? These were the actions of someone with too much time on her hands. This was what you did when you needed a project and couldn’t find something better. Trouble enough getting yourself sorted out? Look for someone else’s troubles to get caught up in.
But that was how it worked sometimes, wasn’t it? Save another, and save yourself in the process.
««—»»
I’m pretty sure I know what that drive-by asteroid represents now. It’s missed opportunity. I’m supposed to smash my life and start over, new growth from the ashes and all that. Only I haven’t.
I know. I know. I’m still interpreting instead of just recording. Well, piss off, Dr. B, you can’t put me up to this and expect me to not think about what’s going on in my head.
For all I know, the purity of this experiment is already lost. I’ve contaminated myself. I can’t promise that by now I’m not actively willing myself to dream about this soggy world I keep returning to. I have a longing for it now. It’s welcoming. It’s warm and clean and loads more appealing than slogging through black slush up to my ankles in an East Coast winter.
What I can promise you is that dreaming of this place is a lot more interesting than the rest of my dreams, the same stupid dreams everybody has. Hey, look at me, everybody! I’m tits-and-ass naked in an editorial meeting! Wait, how could I have forgotten to go to that class all semester and, oh, now you’re telling me there’s a test? Why bother even putting these down? Apparently they’re reruns that are going to keep playing forever. If I wasn’t asleep already, they would put me there.
But last night’s featurette? That was nice.
Lately it’s like I go back into this same seaside landscape, and get a little farther along each time. I made it as far as the buildings. I was looking at them from a distance, and wanted to be there, then I was. Thank you, instant gratification fairies.
I don’t know if they’re the exact same buildings as before, but they’re the same style…terraces and step pyramids, those mesh-looking towers. The same colors, too, green and blue and cream, some of them with the colorful stripy patterns on them. There are no steps, not for walking. It’s just the ramps here, nothing but ramps.
The reason I know it’s having an effect on me is that once I would’ve made a crack about how nice it is that the place is so wheelchair-accessible, but that makes me feel bad now, like it would be…oh god, I guess I’ll have to use the only word that comes to mind: sacrilegious.
It’s all so smooth here. There are no rough edges, no sharp corners.
Who built these? Where did they come from?
I don’t know, but more and more, it feels like I belong.
I want to reach out and touch it, but I can’t find my hand. That’s OK, though. I can still lick it. I still have a tongue.
««—»»
Ten days in, life began to feel settled, comfortably routine. Mornings were best for discovery, adding little by little to the mental map she was compiling of the area. She enjoyed picking a direction and hoofing it, wrapped inside her warmest coat, and a big engulfing muffler when the canyons turned to snowswept wind tunnels. Mornings were colder, but the air seemed cleaner, too, and there was something about it that felt cleansing on the inside, as well.
She could leave her door keys with Barrett—one less thing to keep track of as she explored—and he would have them for her when she got back. Most days, when her return route cooperated, she brought him coffee. But it didn’t seem enough, and one day she made a point of letting him see that she was packing in baking supplies.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she said.
Two hours later, she brought down a plate that took him into her world. “The other day, you said you’d been hoping for a sample. Here you go.”
Barrett peeled back the foil to unveil six brownies topped with a serpentine drizzle of caramel sauce and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt. He took a bite and mimed going weak in the knees. His being rendered briefly speechless seemed genuine.
“It’s my own recipe. Seventy-two percent dark chocolate, with some of the sugar replaced with a caramel-butter sauce,” she said. “I couldn’t make these fast enough for people back at our shop.”
“I can’t imagine why.” He relished another bite. “Are you sure a hyperglycemic doorman is what you really want? It’s going to be a security risk eventually.”
“Enjoy it while you can,” she said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”
“The other day you called yourself a former chocolatier. Like you stopped being one when you left Chicago. What would keep you from opening up a new place here? Maybe not right here in the city, but I’d bet there’s a shopfront in Brooklyn that would be perfect to start over.”
“I don’t know. That’s a big leap to do alone.”
“Might be. But one thing I’d bet on is that a man who works in international finance would know some way to help secure a business loan for a sister with a proven track record.” He tapped the plate. “Be sure to take these to the meeting.”
And had he betrayed a flicker of sadness at the idea of her moving along? She thought he had. She enjoyed talking with him, and that it appeared mutual seemed more than mere professional demeanor.
In her morning wanderings, she’d had occasion to watch Barrett’s kind in the wild. Other doormen at other buildings, and the tenants they served. Even when she was too far away to hear the exchanges, body language told the truth of it. You could spot them from across the street: the condescending tenants, the angry tenants, the tenants who treated their doorman as invisible, or an obstacle, until they needed something.
She didn’t get it. Right now, Barrett seemed like her only friend within 500 miles.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you,” she said. “Hoping for a sample…how blind could I have been? That wasn’t about your sweet tooth at all, was it?”
“Well…” he demurred. “I thought a little occupational therapy might not hurt.”
Wendy squeezed his arm. And remembered what it was like to be fearless.
“You’re going to think the brownies were bribery, but they weren’t,” she said. “A week ago, remember, I was wondering why the buildings along this street looked so dead at night. You told me how so many of the properties aren’t even lived in.”
He nodded. “You’re the only one who’s ever asked.”
“How many sit empty all the time? In this building?”
He tapped one index finger on his desk, as if tallying. “A loose guess, between thirty and forty.”
It was out before she could overthink it, before she could take it back: “Could I see them? I’d like to see them.”
For all the reaction he showed, she might as well have told him it was Tuesday. He really was that good at concealing his reactions to whatever wasn’t a routine part of his day. She supposed by now it was second nature. She found it admirable, and maybe a little sad, too.
Check tha
t. He was good at concealing surprise and, probably, annoyance. Anger? Less so. Last week, when he’d been telling her the particulars behind so many homes going unoccupied, he’d let anger rise behind his voice. Maybe he’d thought he hadn’t, but she knew better. She’d spent years attuned to the frequencies of anger.
“Trespassing, I think is the term for that,” Barrett said. “No. I’m afraid that would be impossible.”
“Impossible?” she tried. “Or just discouraged?”
“Why would you think it wouldn’t be both?”
“Because it’s a big building, and things are going to break down. You’re going to have emergencies,” she said. “The plumbing. Electricity. Ventilation. Emergencies don’t care about happening where you only have easy access. So I would find it hard to believe that, if you really needed to get in and deal with one, you’d be okay with waiting for an absentee owner in Rome to send you the key. Not you you, but there has to be a maintenance staff.”
Barrett almost grinned, and seemed to be trying not to. “You may have a point.”
“And yesterday, a few streets over, I passed a woman talking to her doorman while he was hailing a cab for somebody else. She was telling him she’d left her keys at the gym. It wasn’t any big deal…they’d just get the spare and let her in. He was very reassuring. It made me think, yeah, that’s something else you’d do for people.”
“When dealing with a lockout, people don’t want to wait for a locksmith.”
“So getting into one of these places, it’s not actually impossible, then.”
“Speaking literally, no. But most people accept that impossible is one of those words that comes with a certain amount of hyperbole.”
“Then I guess that just leaves discouraged.”
“You forgot illegal.”
“Probably not as illegal as whatever you have to do to qualify as a Russian gangster. But that seems okay here.”