Aftermath of Dreaming

by DeLaune Michel

  At first when he keeps his sweater on, I figure he is still warming up, but after a while I wonder if it is his body’s temperature or years he is trying to adjust. As much as I want to feel his bare chest against me, the cashmere screen of his sweater becomes another layer of his skin.

  Our motions are one, and a kind of multiple time thing happens where past and future and present are here with us, moving with us, coming with us into one endless space where they can always be.

  An air pocket of time has filled my apartment, floating us out of the usual dimension, letting us exist in our own realm. Lying with him afterward, rubbing his back as he lies on my stomach, I realize that I had always believed that at a certain predetermined age some other, different older body would descend on top of mine, taking over who I am and rendering me completely gone. That my life and self and sex as I knew it would end and suddenly “old” would begin. That isn’t true with Andrew at all. Everything is so much the way it had been, just a deeper, more layered continuum of his body with me and my body with him. I feel I am able to peek ahead at how growing older will be—experiencing through him a physical reality that I had always thought would erase me even before I was gone.

  “How’re Momma and Suzanne?”

  “Momma’s dead almost three years now.” I had wanted to call him when she died, but never could.

  “Good God, how? She was young.”

  “Yeah, fifty-one.”

  “Jesus.” I know he is thinking that he’s seven years older than that.

  “Car accident. Drunk driver drove straight into her four blocks from her house. Two o’clock in the afternoon. We couldn’t get her to go anywhere once Daddy left, then a drive to the grocery store ended her life.”

  “I am so sorry. How’re you doing with it?”

  “Fine now. The grief was horrendous, but—”

  “Did your daddy ever show back up?”

  “No.” We are quiet. The immersion of his time on me is a salve. “Suzanne’s married a few months now.”

  He pulls his head up and looks at me with his chin resting on his hands and his elbows resting on the bed, straddling me. “Why aren’t you married?”

  He has said it genuinely, but I have no idea how to respond. It reminds me of the times I’m driving my truck on Beverly Boulevard and I stop to offer a ride to one of the older, Jewish women waiting for the bus. They’re never going very far, Cedars Hospital usually, so they get in and we ride along, making small talk, but the only thing they ever ask me is, “So, are you married?” Then when I say, “No,” the only thing they want to talk about is that I’m not, as if every other part of my life has been erased, never to be seen again.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are going to make a great mother and wife.”

  That surprises me so much that my hands jump on his back, but I try to incorporate it into his massage so he can’t tell.

  “When I first met you in New York…” I watch him look at the memory of me from back then. There is a kind, soft smile on his face that looks exactly the way it used to feel to speak to him in those days. “You were such a scared little bunny. Big eyes caught in the headlights. That’s one reason I didn’t have sex with you that whole time. I couldn’t, you were so innocent; that was rare. I knew you weren’t like all the others.”

  His kisses my stomach, as my hands on his back rub deeply into him.

  “Did you think about me, Andrew, during all these years?”

  “What do you think?” He looks at me again, his eyes such a startling shade, peering into a depth of me that I don’t like going into alone.

  “I don’t know. Did you? Miss me?”

  “Of course I did.”

  And all those years without him are gone, like some horrible dream I woke up wrongly believing.

  “I had a dream last night that I was making love to you.”

  When I answered the phone, jumped on it really in hopes it was Andrew, I had been dreamily stumbling around my living room, picking up my discarded clothing and reliving last night. I have forsaken my daily oatmeal—enough with those goddamn grains—but not my coffee and am still in the slip I pulled on after Andrew left around twelve-thirty A.M. I was too keyed up to sleep, too much wanted to feel the aftereffect of him in my bed and on my body before the physical imprints disappeared and while they were ingraining themselves in my memory.

  But it is Reggie’s voice saying words I never thought I’d hear from him and certainly never wanted to. I wish they were from Andrew and really, really not from Reggie.

  “Oh.” This comes out like the audio version of sneaking down a hall, trying to get from one room to the next while staying out of view. “Well.” I have no idea what to say. A wild fantasy of hanging up pops into my head, then when Reggie calls back, I could explain that I didn’t recognize his voice and thought it was some romantic crank caller, but for that to work, I would have had to do it immediately and still it wouldn’t have because Reggie knows I know his voice from anyone else’s. Fuck. My nonresponse and his obvious waiting for one are going on for too long. I have to say something, but what?

  “I had sex with Andrew last night.”

  It is all I can do to keep from adding, “So I guess he did remember my name after all.” And okay, there probably were gentler ways I could have broken the news, but it just jumped out, and even if it hadn’t, why can’t I tell Reggie like that? Because he goes ballistic and acts personally wounded whenever I have sex with any man, and in particular, stories about Andrew really send him through the roof. But Reggie’s my best friend, for God’s sake, so he shouldn’t tell me he wants to have sex with me and I should be able to tell him anything.

  “I can’t believe you did that.” He sounds hurt, angry, and shocked—everything I don’t want him to be. “He’s married for Christ’s sake, Yvette, with children. How could you be such a common—”

  “Don’t you dare use that word.” It’s a toss-up as to which one he was going to fling at me, but I don’t want to hear any of them spoken in his voice. I know that it is only a matter of time before my own head starts calling me every name in the book. This morning around five A.M., I finally let myself start wondering where Andrew’s wife was while he was with me, thinking of her by name feels too personal and depressing after being with him. I worried about her for a while, feeling guilty and dreadful, then finally fell into a fitful sleep for two hours.

  “He’s never leaving his wife, he told me that—”

  “Oh, well, that’s good. So it’s okay, then.”

  “Reggie.”

  “What?”

  “Okay, yes, I made a mistake. I sinned technically—”

  “Technically?”

  “Jesus, yes, technically and in every other way it was a sin, okay? I admit it. I broke one of the big Ten and I feel horrible about it, but frankly, it wasn’t over between Andrew and me, it never really—”

  “Here we go again.”

  “Think what you want, Reggie, but that’s the truth. It never really ended with us—it was just put on hold, so maybe both of them should have made sure that what he had with everyone else was definitely over before they settled down.” I stop my pacing and sink onto the couch. “Christ, I mean, yes, it was wrong, but it’s not like I think he’s going to come back to me and we’ll live together happily ever after.” Though secretly, a part of me does want to think that, and I know Reggie knows that about me and I wish he didn’t. “Andrew never left my life and, obviously, I didn’t his.”

  I can hear the protest in Reggie’s intake of breath before he can even voice it.

  “Look, it happened, and, okay, it shouldn’t have, but…but…” Suddenly huge tears are falling down my face. “But he was like a father to me. For years, Reggie. God knows what I would have done without him; he was always there for me. Why can’t I have what other girls got? Why couldn’t I have that?”

  “Because he wasn’t your father, honey. He had sex with you.”

 
; “Fuck you.” I want to swipe at the air to tear his words out of it so they won’t hang in my apartment where they can be real. “Things aren’t always so black and white. People don’t always have only one set of feelings for someone they love. Sometimes boundaries blur.” As the words leave my mouth, I suddenly have a new clarity about Reggie’s feelings for me.

  An emptiness captures the line. It doesn’t feel like our breathing will ever be in sync again. I look out the window at the tree in the courtyard, wishing its brown limbs and silvery leaves against the blue sky could transport me.

  “I think we need to not have conversations about this anymore. I can’t hear you talk about him. I care about you, Yvette, and all I see is trouble ahead.” Reggie’s words are like a boat leaving me at the shore.

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  The line is empty. I watch the second hand on my clock sweep through time.

  “I’m gonna go; this is uncomfortable.”

  I start to ask if we’ll have breakfast mañana, but it feels inappropriate. “Okay, well, bye.”

  Reggie hangs up the phone.

  “I’ve been thinking about how beautiful you are.”

  I was nervous picking up the phone, afraid it was Reggie calling me right back to end our friendship.

  “Oh, hey.” I immediately am thrilled that it’s Andrew, yet something about it feels like I’m running on wet tile around a pool.

  “So beautiful. I can’t get your face out of my mind—you’re all I’ve been thinking about.” I can feel myself getting warm as his words bathe me.

  “I have to leave for the airport to meet my family in New York. But I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye, sweet-y-vette.” His voice is sweet and growly just like it used to be.

  29

  So Andrew is back. In my life again as if he had never gone. Although for the past three weeks, he has been gone in New York City with his family for the holidays, but I feel we’re connected. Though I know we shouldn’t be. That I shouldn’t see him again for all the obvious reasons, but then I tell myself that I don’t know where this is going, maybe it will be like when we first met—sex once, then platonic. A friend, he can be. A mentor, someone to guide me. What’s wrong with that? So I’ll just let things unfold and not worry about where it will go. Though I think about him constantly.

  Especially during the holidays, it was impossible to distract myself with anything else. Except I did notice that Reggie didn’t call on New Year’s Eve, our anniversary, which is the first time that’s happened. I know I could’ve called him, but the tradition was that he did and I wanted to see if he would. I kept checking my messages from the parties I went to, but there was nothing from him. Or from Andrew. Which felt shitty and I tried not to care—he was with his family in New York City—but at that point, it had been two weeks since I’d seen or spoken to him.

  Now it’s been three and I’m starting to jones pretty badly to hear his voice again. His presence has been hovering over my life all this time like those high and beautiful clouds that never actually rain. The kind I see in the winter particularly when I’m stuck on the 10 freeway like I have been twice a week for over a month to go to boxing. I found a place in Santa Monica right off the 10 before it hits the PCH. An old rock star’s gym that he keeps running so he can use it whenever he’s in town. It doesn’t charge much to train, you just have to know someone to get in, and Bill, my old music-producer boss, hooked me up.

  Looking at my jewelry in the display case at Greeley’s is how I had always hoped it would feel to be in an art gallery show. My work is displayed perfectly. Each piece is showcased under beautiful light, set against a complementary background with ample space around it, but close enough to the others that while you get a sense of each one’s uniqueness, you still see the greater unity. No gallery owner to show it incorrectly.

  It is all I can do not to yell out to the shoppers bustling around, “That’s my jewelry!” The pearls are dazzling; the lemon citrine, green peridot, and blue tourmaline are winking; and the braided gold is gleaming. None of it existed a few months ago and now here it all is. I have an almost physical urge, like reaching for my morning coffee, to call Reggie to share this with him. I wonder if things will ever stop being weird between us. I miss him.

  “What are you doing?”

  I had been hoping it’d be Andrew every time the phone rang, but I figured it might be Reggie finally calling me back after I left a message for him two days ago.

  “Are you back?” My heart has multiplied and is beating on every part of my body.

  “Got in last night.” Andrew’s voice is like a bed I want to crawl into.

  “That’s good.” Though what I meant was, “Thank God.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Every single day.”

  “So, so, tell me…” Then a pause we could lie down in and have sex during. “Who are you fucking?”

  Besides you? I think, but don’t say. “Uh, no one really.” I sit down on my couch, wishing he were next to me. “I was involved with this guy, Michael, for a while—”

  “Michael who?”

  “Newman, you don’t know him, he runs a public radio station, and there’ve been other guys, but—”

  “You are going to make a great wife and mother someday.”

  After we hang up the phone—Andrew gave me his cell number if I really need to reach him, but it’s better if he calls me—his words float in my head. I wonder why he thinks that and am surprised at how much what he said means to me, because it sounds so embarrassingly June Cleaver—a role I don’t picture for myself. Except with him, and that was a dream I buried a long time ago. Though part of me still wishes it could live. Fuck. I wish Andrew hadn’t unearthed in me this whole wife/mother idea. Suzanne getting married was bad enough, though I thought I did a good job of keeping that longing away from myself, but maybe it has been there waiting to come screaming out. I don’t want to want that again with him. But I can’t imagine wanting that with someone else. Though at some point, I guess I’ll have to.

  “Your line has blown out of the store, there’s nothing left.” Linda Beckman’s voice on the phone is like a fairy godmother in my best fantasy. “I want the exact same order in our new Honolulu store, and this time we’ll pay up front, but P and A is still on you, of course.”

  When I hang up with Linda, I immediately call Dipen to tell him that I want the same order, super-rushed. I’ll need more pearls and semiprecious stones, but with this windfall, I can stock up and not worry. Life is dreamy.

  30

  The first thing Andrew does the second time he comes over is search my apartment. He didn’t do that the first time he was here, on my birthday. Then he only saw my living room, bedroom, and bathroom, but as I watch him move through my apartment, half peeking in, half peeking out of the doorways, I wonder if this is some famous-person version of seeing someone’s home. Either that, or he’s checking for intruders. But how dangerous does he think our city is? Okay, we’ve got our bad neighborhoods, but my bedroom isn’t one of them. Anyway.

  Being with him again after two months apart was like when we first met, plus our whole relationship all at once. The sex contained every minute of it. The kissing was drinking in every moment we’d been apart, and our moving and touching were like water thrown into the ocean, we were unable to un-merge again.

  “Tell me,” Andrew says, “I want to hear everything.”

  We are lying on my bed, his chest is on my stomach, my hands on his back, and I weave for him the story of my line selling out of Beverly Hills and getting into the Hawaii store while I knead the muscles of his back.

  “So your art’s become jewelry or jewelry is your art, I should say.” He pulls his head up and looks at me with his illustrious eyes. “I want to see.”

  I am glad that my body is held securely beneath his, because otherwise I would have fallen off the bed hearing him finally mention my art.
“Now?”

  “As opposed to?”

  I get up and walk out of the bedroom. In the studio, I crouch in front of the safe and spin the dial. The floor feels refrigerated under my bare feet, the steely-cold February night pressing into the room through the windows, but I am warm and even sweating a little at the thought of what I am doing. Showing Andrew my jewelry reveals my physical nakedness to be the easy exposure that it is. I feel the same prickliness under my skin, the same clenching of my stomach, as when he looked at my slides at the Ritz-Carlton. I put the samples from my new line—earrings and bracelets, rings, necklaces and pins—into a felt-lined tray and arrange them perfectly.

  As I walk down the hallway to my bedroom, I look down at the jewelry and their colors begin soothing me, the weight of them in the tray, the work I put into them that can’t be taken away. I enter the room and see that Andrew is sitting up in my bed, leaning against the headboard, gazing at me as only he can, way down inside.

  He swings his legs around and sits on the side of the bed, and I sit next to him, putting the tray in his lap. As he picks up each piece, he is silent the way he was the only other time he has ever looked at my work.

  There are no taxis driving through a park outside my window for me to count, nothing distracting enough in my bedroom to take my attention, so I sit and watch him examining my world. His brow is furrowed as he holds each piece, looking at it from all angles.

  “Beauty hanging in the air,” he says, and holds a pearl and tourmaline necklace out toward me as if putting it in context. “Like you. You’re doing great—I can tell.”

  I blush. He is the only person who has ever created that response in me, as if certain emotions were staked out and claimed by him.

  Andrew puts his hand over mine and looks me in the eyes. “If you and I were where we are now, but just back then—I would never have let you go.” And he pauses for a moment, dividing everything before and since. “You’re a heavyweight.”