Morpheus

by Charnofsky, Stan;

  I closed the door behind me and looked over at Abby; she had already peeled off her blouse and skirt and was working on her bra. When that was accomplished, she reached for me and began to unbutton my shirt. In a moment we were on the bed, she pushing me down in our usual configuration, her on top, doing most of the work. Feverishly she moved over me, jamming into me hard, then harder, a squeal of mixed torment and ecstasy filling the small room. In a matter of a few short minutes she rose up, hands on my chest, head thrust high toward the ceiling, and screamed with a giant exhale of breath and clamor.

  Slowly, the way one comes down in a parachute, floating, settling, her body descended on mine, ebony hair wild in the crook of my neck, lips buried in my shoulder. She lay still for so long I began to worry she had expired, and said softly, “Abby, are you okay?”

  Her hair moved, only an inch or so, and she said, “I’m famished.”

  Her passion during sex confused me. That last one may have been an exception because of all she had just gone through, but usually we would make love, I would feel close to her, and she would then withdraw, turn down an invitation to a family gathering, and tell me she was too busy to see me for a while. We continued our routine, the Writers’ Guild lectures the focal point of our professional ambitions—and that activity kept us connected.

  Possibly a coincidence, perhaps serendipitous, at the next meeting the lecturer was trumpeted as an expert on dreams and their place in literature.

  With appealing candor, he invaded the revered and yet maligned world of Freudian dream analysis, lingered there for a time, and moved on to more modern, if not more scientific, theories. The Russians, Dostoevsky in particular, were, he said, heavily influenced by Freudian psychology. He avoided the Nobel Prize winner, Francis Crick’s, studies on REM sleep and short-term versus long-term memory. His focus was on the demonology of dreams and their impact on our waking lives.

  Just before intermission he noted that in Greek mythology, Morpheus was the god of dreams, and that he could mimic the human form with all its frailties better than any other god. His function was to instruct one in right living, or at least as a guide along the path to harmony. The crafty lecturer seduced his audience by saying he would elaborate on the historical ancestry of dreams after we all had turned drowsy from gorging on sugary treats. That way, we’d not be likely to doubt what he promised would be audacious claims.

  Abby and I, forewarned but not forbidden, approached the cookie table, cups of decaffeinated coffee in hand, to partake of what Shakespeare might have labeled a sweet repast.

  From our corner vantage, we could see Jeri, gabbing away with two younger people, animated in her unmistakable way, eyes flashing, hands slicing the air like an actor’s, posture fluid, her words—whatever words she was saying—taking graphic shape in her bodily gyrations.

  As we watched, we could see, to our dismay, Ken Prism sidle up to her little conversational klatch. For a moment there were exchanges, introductions probably, then the two friends drifted away, leaving Ken and Jeri conversing in what appeared to be a serious dialogue.

  I heard Abby mutter, “Shit,” as I stared with curiosity, not yet wanting to be a rescuer.

  Their interchange seemed to escalate in intensity and animation, and there was a sudden step backwards, by Jeri. To my sheer joy—so much that I shouted to Abby, “Yes!”—she turned away from our disaffected ex-pal, and shoved her middle finger in his face.

  Even from a distance, I could see his facial tic explode, two, three, four times, as his right hand went to the top of his head, as if to hold down a toupee. I worried he would strike out at Jeri, but she had moved away, looked about, spied us, and headed in our direction.

  It was the second time she reported on the geek’s crude approach, this one an invitation, she said, to split with him, drive to his place, and authenticate the lecturer’s dream thesis. They could, he told her, do such wild stuff as dreams are made of.

  Abby was grinning, and asked, “What did you tell him?”

  “I said that dreams arise from both pleasant and unpleasant memories.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “He said that dreams explore our longings, like the one he had for me, to ride off with him into the sunset.”

  “Yes?” Abby queried.

  “I already knew his pitch. I simply said, ‘Ride this,’ flipped him the bird, and got the hell away from him.”

  “All right!” Abby said. “My kind of woman.”

  I was delighted with Jeri’s self-care, another sign of her growing maturity. But I wondered what new fuel this latest rebuke would add to Prism’s already smoldering pile of bitter ashes.

  Nagging at me was a sense that I owed Alejandro something. Whatever stayed with him from the encounter with Abby was a mystery, but, in case he was suffering, I felt an obligation to try to give him some sort of closure. It wasn’t that I had sympathy for a man who could rape his teenage cousin, but I did have pangs of remorse about setting him up. He was, after all—and after all those years—a human being carrying around a monstrous burden.

  I intercepted him a couple of days after the pub meeting and steered him into Starbucks. He did not resist, since I said I would buy him a roll and coffee.

  “You hurt your cousin, Abby, when she was a girl. She never got over it. I wanted her to tell you.”

  “I don’t know who she is,” he said, nursing a cappuccino, though it appeared to be a poor substitute for his usual morning beers.

  “Yes, you do, Alejandro. She is your cousin. She is a smart woman but she carries around the scars of your rotten behavior.”

  “I don’t know her,” he repeated, not looking at me, absorbed in consuming his continental breakfast.

  “Well, take my word for it, she suffers.” I paused and tried a different tack. “Did you know that her parents’ house burned down? Some bad dude caused it, we’re sure, and Abby is now wounded even more.”

  “Lots of bad dudes,” he replied, still not looking up.

  “There are, and it adds to the pain every time one of them does something awful like that.”

  “I was in jail for two years. You need to put the bad dude in jail.”

  Not aware of that little tidbit, I was off balance for a moment. I said at last, “I’m sorry you were in jail. I hope you came out a better person.”

  “It’s a sick place. They do ugly things. I came out worse.”

  The background music turned to heavy metal, and hearing our conversation became a challenge. All I could think of to say in that resonant environment, with a tone rising above the din, was, “Well, I wanted you to know that it was important for Abby to see you face-to-face.”

  He shook his head and looked at me, his own voice raised, and said, “I don’t know her.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I’m not sure what I accomplished with our little tête-à-tête that morning. When Alejandro limped away, my lasting impression was that he was superannuated. The man was thirty-something, but lived as if he were an addled sixty-something. Perhaps he was senile. Maybe brain-damaged. Could be he had learned to game the world.

  Well, I felt as if I had done a good deed anyway, since I did have compassion for the wounded. In that same vein, I was getting antsy about Abby’s wounds; the old one may have been blunted somewhat with our tavern adventure, but the latest one, with Prism, was still percolating and I had no idea what she would do.

  The next Writers’ Guild meeting was an open mike event, where up to eight participants could read a few minutes of their literary creations and listen to the audience response. What concerned me was that either Abby or Ken would read, and the other would explode.

  Each hopeful reader had to submit an excerpt two weeks in advance, and the coordinators would choose eight to present. A couple of days before the gathering, Abby called and said, “My piece was selected. I’m excited. For once, it’s something I actually like.”

  “Too modest,” I answered. “I like all your work. You’ll be roya
lly received.”

  I could almost feel her smile over the phone. It wasn’t hyperbole, either. I did like her writing. She had depth in her images, a sense of tragedy that emerges from living a hard life.

  Jeri, Abby, and I sat in the crowd, and the moderator announced the eight presenters. Sure enough, there was Abby’s name. And, damn it all, there was Ken Prism’s. At that revelation, I steeled myself for some kind of nasty exchange. Jeri looked at me and said, “That’s the character that hit on me. I can’t imagine him being much of a writer.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “He’s been at it for a while. Maybe he’s learned something.”

  “Yes,” Abby said, with that stormy, red look beginning to rise in her face. “He’s learned to step all over people and get away with it.”

  Jeri looked at me curiously.

  “Later,” I said. “It’s a complicated story.”

  Each reader took a total of fourteen or fifteen minutes, including the discussion afterwards. Abby was third.

  “Mine is a piece that we pick up in the middle. A man loves more than one woman, and justifies it that both loves are pure.”

  ‘Look, Kit,’ he says, his early Catholic school training assaulting him with recrimination, ‘you know about Billie, but she doesn’t know about you. In a lot of ways that isn’t fair, but I have no idea what to do about it.’

  ‘You haven’t lied to me. When we came together, you were clear about having a serious relationship in your life. I’ve been okay with what I get so far, but there is the hope she’ll disappear, that you’ll close her out.’

  He seemed perplexed, and at last replied, ‘She’s so different from you. You’re older, more mature. I love you, you know that, but for three years now, since we were both eighteen, I’ve loved Billie. I don’t know how I can throw her over.’

  The two sat side by side, a heavy silence filling his car, a product of the unscalable wall between them.

  ‘Not sure how long I can go on like this,’ she whispered.

  ‘And I know I can’t ask you to.’

  In the depths of her thoughts she toyed with the ugly notion of doing away with Billie the Kid. No. Too horrifying to contemplate. She was not a killer. And yet, how vital was her love for good old Catholic-trained Andy, a young dude who seemed rather adept at burning his candle on both ends?

  The impasse frazzled both of them. The silence deepened. Kit began to weep, softy, dismally. Her anguish made her all the more desirable. Andy seethed internally. Something would have to change. But what?

  She stopped and looked up. The audience applauded respectfully. The moderator stepped forward and said, “Okay. We have a triangle. First, is it well conceived, and does it hook you in? And, if you were writing it, how would you resolve it?”

  Reaction from the audience was gratifyingly positive. Abby had a devil of a time with compliments, thinking them phony, nothing but flattery, and from me, rarely believed. But here, coming from members of the Guild, writers like herself, hard to discredit.

  One woman said with flair, “I am not the least shocked by the man’s double life. Wish I would be the one he’d choose!” A second woman added, “Pretty tight prose. Compelling for me.” A man said, with a spear of envy, “My primary relationship is solid, mundane but solid. Never had the balls to do what Andy did. Your scenario gives me ideas.”

  Laughter.

  The moderator stepped in. “Any suggestions? A way to raise the tension? Thoughts about resolution?”

  Then it came, Prism’s high voice, laden with acid: “The man’s a buffoon. Crudely drawn. No one talks that way to a lover. I was put off by the whole picture. How should it be resolved? If I were the new girlfriend, older, clever, I’d figure out how to poison the first one.”

  A buzz in the crowd. I was intrigued by no tics during the entire tirade.

  Of all people to respond, Jeri said loudly, “Only a sick mind would think to kill off a love to win a love. The girlfriend doesn’t seem that deranged to me.”

  The implication was clear: if the character was not that unbalanced, then the one suggesting the murder was.

  Prism, silent for a moment, stunned, I was sure, by the bluntness of Jeri’s retort, finally blurted back, “I’m not deranged, little lady. I’m also not prissy. The story’s people are pathetically conceived. The only thing that could save this crap is unrestrained horror. Murder works.”

  Abby’s fuse had been lit, her humility compromised, a slow burn spiraling into rage, controlled but undisguisable.

  “Thank you all for your critiques. I think my young woman friend got it right. A person proposing a violent act has violence in his heart.”

  Before another transaction could occur, the moderator, skillful at a microphone, leapt in with: “We need to move on. I suggest it wise to keep our reactions amicable, the best way to be helpful to the writer.” He paused, and read from his list, “Harriet Hershey is next.”

  The finale of the evening, the eighth and last presenter, was Ken Prism. He stepped to the dais and read, for no more than two minutes, a diatribe, in fictional form, against law enforcement people.

  “You have the right to remain silent….”

  “Go to hell,” the man said with a guttural rumble.

  “See,” the officer said, “you get street trash and they think their shit don’t stink.”

  The second officer clamped down hard on the captive’s wrists and the handcuffs were secured.

  “Did you see him try to run? Think we’ll have to break his kneecap,” the first officer said.

  “Yeah, I saw it. Definitely tried to run. That’s why we cuffed him.”

  The first officer took out his Billy-club.

  “You’re assholes,” the prisoner growled.

  “You’re dead meat,” the cop replied, and swung his club hard at the left knee.

  A scream of pain.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” the second cop said. “Did you hear anything?

  “A helicopter was going over. Didn’t hear a thing.”

  Prism stopped, a curious twist, half grin, half grimace, on his self-satisfied face, as if one of his tics had gotten stuck.

  “Well,” the moderator said, “any comments? Is it realistic? Are you interested?”

  “I’m interested,” one man replied, “but it might be over-the-top. I mean do cops really do that?”

  “The scene was repulsive,” a woman said. “I hate images like that, though the whole thing seemed well-written.”

  “Violent scenes come from violent people,” Abby flung out defiantly.

  The stuck tic got unstuck. Prism shouldered the moderator away from the mike and roared, “Hey, bitch, you know what? You’re dead meat!”

  There it was, a public pronouncement. Hard to lasso and haul back a threat made before eighty people, no denying it, beyond apology.

  The assemblage was astir: creative folks, some wildly imagining how this scenario could play out in their own literary endeavors, others on the verge of saying, “Pshaw, a melodrama, staged, unreal.”

  The moderator made no such assumptions; this was conflict, pure hostility, calling for instant and adroit intervention. “All right, folks, we seem to have a personality clash here. Let us keep our focus. The agenda is writing.” As the room began to settle, he stopped, looked about, and with a burst of awareness, said, “I think we’ve finished. Those of you with issues, please work them out before our next meeting. We are a talented bunch. Remember,” he said with authority, “we must keep our focus.”

  I held onto both women’s arms as we exited.

  At my car, coldly, with not a trace of conciliation, Abby said, “I’m going to have to get him before he gets me.”

  Jeri stared at her with wonder.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Carl Jung once wrote, “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”

  Dr. Sophie, my skillful therapist, seemed to sense that I was ready to look inside, deeply, trenchantly, to expose to the lig
ht of my day whatever terrible secrets I had been harboring in my night.

  “Close your eyes,” she said. “Try to imagine––if you were able to call your shots and bring up on demand any dream you wanted, what would that dream be?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to close my eyes; I liked looking at the foxy doctor sitting across from me. But I did; her rare “do this,” or “do that” expressions deserved my cooperation.

  “Let’s see … I’d be bumming around Europe with the most appealing babe in the world. We’d stay in bed-and-breakfasts and hostels in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Venice, and end up in Barcelona. Part of the time we’d be floating in a balloon with magical vistas of the French and Italian countryside.”

  “Tell me,” Dr. Sophie said, “about the most appealing babe in the world.”

  That brought me up short. I opened my eyes wide, wider than before. “Well, it’s rather strange. I’ve talked about my girlfriend, Abby, but … I mean, it’s not her.” I stopped, tried hard to hear my inner voice, the voice I listened to when I made choices. “You see, this appealing woman—she’s pristine. Not perfect, but also not sullied; I guess ‘healthy’ would be the way to describe her. How sick is that? I’m certainly not ‘healthy’ in that sense.”

  “Abby doesn’t fit that description.”

  I thought for a moment. This was difficult. I didn’t come prepared for this kind of subterranean scrutiny.

  “Abby is … volatile. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to expect.” Again I stopped then added, “She has horrendous dreams too.”

  “Complex, isn’t it. Here you have a life-connection with Abby, and when you dream of an ideal companion bumming around Europe, it isn’t she.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Can you see a face? Do you know who it is?”

  “I don’t. I only have a feel for her. She’s easy to be around. No tainting scars. No buried violations bursting to break out.”

  “You describe Abby in somewhat the same way you describe yourself.”

  “I guess I do. She has terrible wounds, and so do I. But, you know, hers are more apparent, the ugly things that happened to her. Mine are camouflaged or obscured, or whatever you want to call them.”