Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift

by Fiction River

  What I did figure out was this: If other people had the kind of dream life that I did, they didn’t admit it. And they weren’t the type to study such things. Because, if they were the type to study things—like my physicist sister—then by the time they had enough training to investigate this part of the psyche, their scientific background made them deny the possibilities that existed for them each and every night.

  If they weren’t the type (like me) they had no idea how to prove what they thought to be true.

  In other words, my research gave me no answers either.

  Which meant I had to rely on myself.

  And that proved to be my second mistake.

  ***

  Sometimes I dream about my Real Cousin Ruby’s world without seeing my Real Cousin Ruby at all. I spend my dream time in our favorite coffee shop, or I find myself shopping on our favorite street, both of which have counterparts in my awake world.

  Sometimes I’m in an apartment, which is more of a penthouse suite—the kind you see in upscale movies about New York. This apartment isn’t all cold modern furniture done in black and white; it’s art deco—black and white with touches of bright red and a vibrant turquoise. I find the place stunning.

  It’s also comfortable—the kind of place I would design if I lived in the city without any children at all. Because the place is never messy. It looks lived in—the magazines and books on the glass-topped coffee table are different every time I’m there (and often they’re the same as the magazines and books on my coffee table at home)—just not the scattershot level of slop that even the cleanest home has when a busy family resides inside.

  I’m scared to go into the bedroom of that apartment. I’m afraid of what (who) I might find.

  So I relax in the living room, read a book or watch a movie on the incredibly huge flat screen television that hangs like modern art on the far wall.

  Sometimes my Real Cousin Ruby is there. Once I arrived in the middle of a dinner party, filled with people I only partially recognized (a few of whom were famous), and I forced myself to wake up, heart pounding.

  For some reason, I didn’t want to be part of that event. Even now, memory of it makes me uneasy, as if I had become the hostess of a party I hadn’t even known was going on.

  Then, one night I dreamed I was in the coffee shop.

  It’s a funky place in both the dream world and our world. I prefer the dream world version. The layout is better—tables across the front, and beneath the flight of brick stairs that lead to an actual coffee bar where you sit on high stools and watch the baristas make your lovely cuppa. You can also see yourself in an ancient wavy mirror, trimmed in silver.

  The coffee bar in my wide awake world has the same stairs and the same general floor plan. Only the tables are up a flight and the workstation is against the west wall. There is no bar or ancient mirror, no comfortable place to sit and watch the baristas work when you’re alone.

  The coffee recipes are all the same, even the house blends, and as far as I can tell, they taste the same in both worlds.

  In the dream, I was in the coffee bar alone, but I wasn’t at my usual place at the end of the counter. The counter was full of people, mostly men, all of whom are watching the new barista toss silver mixing cups as if she’s in a real bar, not a coffee place.

  A coffee mocha with extra foam sat in front of me, and judging by the pile of empty artificial sugar packets beside it, that mocha was my second of the day. I tapped the stirring stick and forced myself to think.

  I knew I was in a dream. I recognized the dream world.

  If I recognized it, then, maybe, I could control it.

  The books called that dedicated dreaming.

  I decided to give it a try.

  I wanted to see if other people existed in this world as well. Besides me and my siblings and our Real Cousin Ruby.

  First, I checked to see if my Real Cousin Ruby was anywhere near the place. She wasn’t at the ordering station, and it didn’t appear that anyone else had been sitting across from me.

  So I grabbed my mocha, and went to one of the free internet computers.

  It was already logged onto the coffee shop’s website. I went to one of those people search pages, like the white pages in the phone book, only the ones that access places all over the United States, and I typed in the name of my supposed cousin Ruby’s boyfriend/husband/partner in the real world.

  Delmar Musslewhite.

  I’d already checked out Delmar in the real world. There was only one other Delmar Musslewhite in all of the United States, and that was Delmar Musslewhite Senior, the father of the Delmar Musslewhite I knew.

  So I figured in the dream world there couldn’t be more Delmar Musslewhites, unless there was a Delmar Musslewhite the Third.

  In the dream world, I only got one Delmar Musslewhite, and I couldn’t tell if he was a junior or a senior. He lived two towns over, in an area I hadn’t been to in either world.

  I wrote the information on the back of my coffee napkin—both the address and the phone number. Then I reached into my purse, grabbed my cell phone to call Delmar—

  And stopped.

  What would I say to him?

  Hi, I’m Ruby Frayno’s cousin, and I’m from what my physicist sister thinks might be a parallel universe, although my playwright sister thinks it could be a world filled with magical creatures. Anyway, I don’t really belong here, and I want to see if you do.

  Nope. Wouldn’t play in either world.

  If I tried some fakey phone scam or a wrong number, that wouldn’t work either, because I didn’t know what Delmar Musslewhite Senior sounded like. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I really knew what Delmar Musslewhite Junior sounded like, and I’d spent every single family reunion with him for the past ten years.

  So I would have to drive out to see him.

  I grabbed the keys from my purse, and realized that the car key was different than the one in my real life. This one had an electronic chain with buttons that looked unfamiliar. And the key itself was smaller, more compact.

  I cursed silently, and hoped to hell I’d be able to figure out which car was mine.

  That was when I woke up. I was clutching the sheet and blanket in my right hand, my head propped against the pillow as if I’d fallen asleep reading, the taste of mocha lingering on my tongue.

  My husband snored softly from his side of the bed.

  I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep, so I got up, took a shower, and got dressed. Then I went to the kitchen, toasted two cinnamon Pop Tarts, slathered them in butter, and nuked myself some coffee from last night’s dregs. I carried the entire mess to my office upstairs, figuring I had at least an hour before the rest of the household woke up.

  If my family existed in both worlds, and Delmar Musslewhite existed in both worlds, then it was safe to assume that the horrible fiancé Lon existed in both worlds as well.

  I had to struggle to remember his last name. My Real Cousin Ruby had only told it to me once.

  But then I remembered: Lon Goudy. Pronounced Goo-dee. I had said to her in shock, You aren’t planning to take his name, are you? You wouldn’t want to be known as Ruby Goudy.

  I’ve already thought of that, she answered. It doesn’t bother me.

  That lovely memory conjured Lon’s last name for me, and I was able to type it into the search engine I had at home.

  In return, I got several L. Goudys, one London Goudy, one Lonna Goudy, and a Lon Goudy, complete with address, e-mail address, phone number and website.

  Of course, I clicked on the website link.

  It took me to a loud, gaudy home page for a man whose business was, so far as I could tell, being the best Lon Goudy he could be. His site was psychedelic. The flashing colors and lights crashed my computer twice before I figured out how to bypass the lovely light show that made up the first page.

  Then I was inside a tie-dye extravaganza of Lon. Lon’s baby pictures (presented in a swirl of blue and yellow), Lon’
s high school drama pictures (complete with a soundtrack [scratchy and out of tune] of Lon singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business), some grownup pictures of Lon laughing with a bunch of friends, ending with a life-sized portrait of the man himself, complete with jaunty smile and handlebar mustache.

  It was the Lon of my dreams. Well, not of my dreams. Of my Real Cousin Ruby’s dreams.

  I sighed, went back to my first search page, and printed up the current information on Lon Goudy.

  Then I went to see him.

  ***

  His house was nicer than I imagined. It was a two-story Victorian with a well kempt yard and a new car in the driveway. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the new car was courtesy of Goudy Wholesale Autos—We Have the Right Kind of Junk in the Trunk, a slogan worthy of my Real Cousin Ruby’s Lon—although the big Shop at Goudy’s sign in the front window was a big clue.

  I wasn’t sure what to do once I pulled up outside the house. I couldn’t very well introduce myself to this man either, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him.

  So I sat in my late-model minivan (clean on the outside and filled with kid-trash on the inside) and watched until Lon came out of the house.

  It didn’t take long. He was carrying a briefcase and a travel mug. His hair was shorter than it was in the dream world, and the handlebar mustache from the website had morphed into one of those bushy 1970s behemoths that threatened to eat the man’s entire face.

  This Lon had eyes just as beady, although he didn’t hunch as he walked like the dream Lon did. This Lon also wore nicer clothes. He got in his car and drove off, leaving me sitting there, trying to figure out what to do.

  I didn’t want to follow him. I wasn’t sure what I would gain from it, any more than what I would gain from talking to him.

  Then the side door opened, and a too-thin woman ushered two children outside. She had her hands on their shoulders, propelling them forward as they struggled with heavy backpacks.

  The small family crawled into the other car, the one I hadn’t seen until now since Lon’s car had blocked it. The car’s reverse lights came on, illuminating the My Daughter is an Honor Student at King Elementary and the My Son is in the Top of His Class at Lincoln Middle bumper stickers. This car also had a Shop at Goudy’s sign in the right backseat window.

  My breath caught. Could this Lon Goudy be married? Married to someone who looked vaguely like my Real Cousin Ruby?

  Now I wanted to know the thin woman’s name. But I wasn’t going to get it by following her on her carpooling expedition.

  Instead, I went home, logged on again, and searched for Lon Goudy’s biographical information. Not just the stuff from his gaudy website, but the profiles a local businessman should attract.

  What I found were the puff pieces that any business put out, as well as a few articles in the neighborhood paper. It took several searches before I found the family information.

  Lon Goudy had married his high school sweetheart, an intense dark-eyed girl named Constance Gutterman, planning to support her brilliance by working at car dealerships while she finished college. He did that. But as she was finishing up her economics degree (and just before she received a fully funded offer to study at the University of Chicago’s famous school of economics), the wholesale car business he worked for went up for sale. He bought it, she went to work in the bookkeeping department. They became rich (“Not rich,” he lied in one article. “We’re comfortable. And if we can do it, so can anyone else. We’ll help with that first step—establishing credit. So come on down to Goudy’s, and we’ll get you into the car of your dreams at a dream price.”) and then they became parents.

  The real world Lon Goudy was an upstanding citizen, the kind of person I’d like my so-called cousin Ruby to know. I wouldn’t even mind if my Real Cousin Ruby wanted to marry him, not that she could because he was in this world and she was in the dream world.

  He seemed about as different from my Real Cousin Ruby’s Lon as…well…my supposed cousin Ruby seemed from my Real Cousin Ruby.

  Which made me nervous.

  How different were the rest of us in our dream lives?

  ***

  Some questions are best left unanswered. I think I knew that even then. I didn’t want to think about that lovely penthouse apartment with the high-end toys that existed in my dreams. Nor did I want to think about that dinner party with the celebrities or the fact that it always seemed I lived within walking distance of the coffee shop.

  The coffee shop, which existed in both worlds, in the most upscale neighborhood in the city—a gentrified area of downtown where Hollywood celebrities, the very rich, and New York theater people bought second (or third [or fifteenth]) condos. My husband and I had priced the area (for our retirement, he said; as a daydream, I always said) and realized that even if we saved every dime of our salaries, invested wisely, sold our home, and didn’t pay for the kids’ college educations, we’d still need a miracle to afford a place there.

  I couldn’t imagine that the prices were that much different in Dreamland.

  But, as I said, I didn’t investigate this. Instead, the next time I fell asleep, I directed my dreaming self to Delmar Musslewhite’s house.

  Because I wanted to spy on him in the dream world, just like I had spied on the Lon Goudy who lived in the real world.

  In my dream, I didn’t drive to Delmar’s house. I was already there, sitting in a brand-new Mercedes SUV, clearly oblivious to the rising gas prices. A takeout coffee sat in a cupholder beside the driver’s seat, along with a Prada purse that matched my shoes and an older carryall bag from Saint Laurent’s signature store in Paris.

  In my right hand, I held opera glasses with an impressive zoom function. Laying next to my left was the most complicated phone/Blackberry/electronic thingie I had ever seen.

  It took me a few minutes of getting my bearings in that upscale car before I remembered to look out the window.

  All of the houses on this block looked the same. They were 1970s split levels with a view of the river. The houses were well maintained, but the kind of maintained that had clearly been done by the owner, not a service.

  A few of the houses had bicycles lying on the front lawn. A few of the houses had lawn decorations, the kind an older couple might have put out a generation ago, thinking them attractive.

  Delmar Musslewhite’s house had kids’ toys and lawn decorations. It also needed a new front door (this one had a foot-sized dent near the bottom) and a paint job to get rid of the 1970s browns with forest green trim.

  The light told me the time of day. Morning again—and relatively early, judging by the cars still in driveways all over the block.

  Shadows moved inside the house. Clearly people were in there. Twice the front door opened, and twice it closed almost immediately, as if whoever was trying to leave couldn’t quite accomplish it.

  Finally the door banged open and a parade of children trooped out. The first three were clearly stair-stepped eight, nine or ten year-olds, all white blonds and somewhat pudgy. Only their clothes revealed their gender, and then only because I had a daughter the same age and I recognized some of the styles.

  Two more children followed. These two were younger, dark-haired, and clutching each other’s hands as if they had been ordered to do so. All five children carried the ubiquitous backpacks. The two younger children looked like they might topple over backwards as they picked their way down the stairs.

  The first three waited in the yard. The other two caught up, and then the group headed toward the end of the block, where a school bus sign stood.

  A teenage girl came out of the open door. She bounced down the stairs, her red curly hair tied back with a jaunty bow. She yelled at someone inside, her voice muffled by my extra-thick sound-proofed window.

  A boy who was probably just a little older followed. He had her features, only his skin was darker and his hair coal black. He whacked her shoulder playfully when he reached her side, and she g
rinned at him, then ran down the block to join the other children.

  Finally, a young woman came to the door. She wore a short skirt, midriff top revealing her bellybutton ring, and had her blond hair pulled up into the kind of ponytail that Madonna had worn back in her Material Girl days. The woman also wore leg warmers and platform shoes, completing the 1980s look.

  She held a gargantuan purse at her side. She started to pull the door closed, when a doughy hand caught it.

  The Material Girl rolled her eyes and shook her head, then clunked down the stairs. Her movements revealed her age—she still had to be in high school, and as she left, she had to be talking to a parent.

  She sauntered to the bus stop and stayed a good five feet away from the troop of kids. She pulled a compact out of her huge purse, and held it open so that she could see in the mirror.

  Movement caught my eye. Another woman stood in the doorway. Only this one was clearly middle aged. Fat and sloppy in a robe that had seen too many washings, she held a cup of coffee in one hand and the edge of the door in the other.

  She was looking over her shoulder, talking to someone. Her hair, which hadn’t been combed yet, was an ugly mix of yellow dye and black roots.

  Then a man grabbed her and pulled her against him. He kissed her as she held her cup of coffee to the side so she wouldn’t spill it on him. His right hand cupped her fleshy buttock, and she slapped it away, laughing as she did so.

  She went inside. He left the house, wearing a mechanic’s uniform, and carrying a lunch pail.

  My breath caught as I watched him.

  Delmar Musslewhite.

  Laughing as he walked to a battered truck parked at the side of the road.

  Delmar. With a fat, bottle-blond, and too many children.

  A fat, bottle blond whose only resemblance to my supposed cousin Ruby was her sloppiness, her fatness, her children, and her bad dye job.

  I set the opera glasses on the seat beside me, my hand shaking.

  I leaned my head against the leather seat, watching the children laughing with each other at the bus stop. They seemed happy. The whole family seemed happy.