Dream On

by Kerstin Gier

  Dr. Anderson came a step closer. “There are some very acceptable soporifics that prevent REM sleep,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “That’s why you haven’t seen Anabel here for so long. Maybe you’ll come to visit her sometime? She’ll be staying in my department for a long time yet, and she’s so lonely.” Then he struck his forehead. “Oh no, that won’t do—I put her on a no-visiting regime. All for her own good.”

  “You…” All the color had drained away from Arthur’s angelic face. “You’re lying! Anabel is far too clever to let … Oh God!”

  Dr. Anderson smiled triumphantly. “You’re still in love with her, aren’t you, my young angel? I’ll admit that she’s an extremely pretty girl—those incredible turquoise eyes!” He paused for a moment and winked at Arthur. “Yes, I can understand you. But believe me, she’s bad news for you.”

  “You monster,” said Arthur with difficulty.

  “If Anabel hasn’t sent you here, then why are you trying to get close to us?” asked Henry, frowning. “What do you expect us to do for you?”

  The self-satisfied smile gave way to an expression of annoyance. “I don’t expect you to do anything for me. But you’re the only ones roaming around these corridors, myself excluded. And I have to practice on someone!” His chin jutted, and I could see the deranged light in his eyes. “Anabel talked so much about you all in her therapy sessions, and I must say she has a good understanding of human nature. When I first set eyes on you, it was like meeting old friends.”

  Arthur’s jawbones were still working. He was probably imagining all the things about him that Anabel had told her psychiatrist.

  “You’re still better at this than I am, but that will soon change.” Dr. Anderson had raised his voice now. “And then, my dear children, you’d better be careful!”

  Henry was right. The man really did suffer from megalomania. I felt like throwing a bolt of lightning back at him.

  But nothing came of that idea. An electronic beep sounded, and as we were looking around for the source of it, Senator Tod disappeared without a trace.

  “His duty beeper in the hospital,” said Henry. “He’s awake again. All the same, we know a little more now. I thought he was delightfully free with his information.”

  Arthur was still looking baffled. “I just can’t believe any of this,” he murmured. Then he pointed to his door, right behind him. “Why don’t we go in here and discuss it further?” He tapped in a numerical code—making sure we couldn’t see it, of course—and the door opened. “I’d like to know how you two found out who he is. And think what we should do next.”

  I was about to follow him, but Henry grasped my wrist and held it firmly.

  “We aren’t about to do anything, Arthur,” he said. “We’re not a team any longer, remember? Even Dr. Anderson doesn’t change that.”

  “Henry…” Arthur’s expression might have melted a heart of stone, but Henry was already turning to walk away. And taking me with him, my wrist still in his steely grasp.

  I felt Arthur’s eyes on our backs, and then I heard his door latch shut.

  20

  “WHY EXACTLY WERE you going to see Arthur?” Henry asked in his usual light, conversational tone. But his body language was saying something else entirely. He was still holding my wrist tightly, and I had difficulty keeping up with him.

  I didn’t reply, if only because I didn’t know why I was going to see Arthur myself. It probably wouldn’t have been difficult to break free, but I let Henry lead me to his door. Meanwhile I was feverishly checking my appearance—you never knew in dreams. Hair—check. Clothes—check. Blotches gone—check. Glasses gone—check. You didn’t need those in a dream, anyway; in dreams my eyes worked perfectly without any help.

  I couldn’t manage to slow my pulse down; that was all. I was almost certain that Henry could hear my wildly beating heart.

  He let go of me and took out three keys to open his door. The sight of them reminded me that he’d given me a replica of one of them. Along with a string so that I could hang the key around my neck. At the time, that had felt romantic. Now it seemed to me pure mockery. What use was one key when you needed three to get into his dreams?

  “Coming?” He was through the doorway already. I followed him—and was blinking at bright sunlight. We were in some kind of park with flowering shrubs and tall trees. No, wait a moment, not a park …

  “A cemetery? How appropriate.” I slipped my hands into the pockets of my jeans. My heart was still doing its own thing, but I had the rest of myself under control. No tearful lump in my throat, preventing my voice from sounding the way it ought to sound. “On the other hand, it’s a pity, because I was looking forward to a dip in that whirlpool.”

  “That wasn’t my dream,” said Henry.

  “No, right—it was your girlfriend B’s dream.”

  “She isn’t my girlfriend.”

  “No? So she’s your lesbian cousin and unfortunately you can meet her only in dreams because in real life she was kidnapped by the Taliban and has been kept prisoner for years in a cave in Afghanistan, right?”

  A smile flitted over Henry’s face, but next moment he was serious again. “I’m sorry, Liv. I know what it must have looked like to you. But I had my reasons.…”

  “You know what it looked like to me? Well, it looked like my boyfriend was getting into a pool with a naked woman.” I brushed away the hand he had obviously put out to stroke my cheek.

  Henry frowned. “You do realize that it was only a dream, don’t you?”

  “For that mermaid slut, maybe, but not for you.”

  He said nothing for a second. Then he said, “If you visit someone in a dream, you have to adapt to it. That was all I did. And you shouldn’t have … What the hell did you think you were doing? Why did you follow me in secret?”

  For a moment I couldn’t breathe, I was so annoyed by the way he was suddenly turning things upside down. “The question is how far you’d have adapted to the dream.”

  “No, the question was why you followed me in secret.”

  “I just happened to be invisible in the shape of a—” I stopped short. No way was I going to justify myself at this point. I stared intently at my feet. Stupidly, I had a tearful lump in my throat again after all. It was only with difficulty, and in a very low voice, that I managed to ask the only question that really mattered. “What were you doing in that woman’s dream, Henry?”

  He didn’t reply at once, and I raised my head to look straight at him, although it cost me an effort. I was so afraid of seeing that guilty expression on his face again.

  But what I saw was more like helplessness. “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “Explain it, then.”

  “There are things you couldn’t understand even if you wanted to.”

  “Try, anyway.”

  Henry compressed his lips.

  “Is it because I’m inexperienced in some things?” The question burst out of me, and I was annoyed with myself, because it sounded so inhibited and Victorian that next thing I knew I’d probably have a little lace cap on my head. I couldn’t even talk about sex. But it was no good—I had to go through with this now. “Or is it to do with masculine needs that I don’t know anything about?” Oh God, this was getting worse and worse. I began to hate myself. I also thought I saw slight confusion in Henry’s eyes.

  “What…? No.” He came a step closer, and this time I did let him touch my cheek. Carefully, his hand moved up to my forehead. “None of this has anything at all to do with you.”

  “What is it to do with, then?” It was as much as I could do not to rub my head against his hand the way Spot always did when you stroked him. But nor could I manage to push his hand away, which would certainly have been the most sensible thing to do.

  He sighed. “I did tell you it was complicated. My life is complicated. There are things I have to do because no one else is going to do them.” His fingers wandered down again and very gently stroked my cheekbone,
going down to my chin. “You won’t be able to understand. In your family, you’re always there for one another, and everyone wants nothing but the best for everyone else. It’s not like that with us. My father has … Well, let’s say he’s kind of lost sight of what fathers are supposed to do. I wouldn’t mind that if it only affected the weekends when he visits to see Amy and Milo, although he regularly breaks their hearts. But I can’t let him risk their future. He calls it doing business, but in reality he’s just squandering an enormous amount of money. Money that doesn’t belong to him: it belongs to Milo, Amy, and me. My grandfather left it to him in trust until we come of age. I’d be okay without the money, but I don’t think anyone will be offering Milo scholarships later, and he’s going to need them.”

  I was listening intently, hardly daring to breathe, let alone interrupt him or say that I still didn’t entirely understand the connection.

  “My grandfather died four years ago. He knew what would happen if he simply left the money to my father.” He indicated a gravestone beside us, and I jumped. Bizarrely, it had Henry’s name carved on it. HENRY HARPER—BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER. Only when I saw the date of birth did I realize that Henry had been named after his grandfather. “That’s why he decided to set up a trust. The idea was to secure our future. And it was also because my mother … Well, she’s not in any shape to … to look after those things.” He was floundering more and more, and now he stopped talking entirely.

  “I know,” I whispered. That was a mistake. Henry stopped caressing me and frowned.

  “What do you know?”

  “That your mother has problems,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s one way to put it.” He took a step backward. “Read about it in Secrecy’s blog, did you?”

  “No, I just kind of picked it up, that’s all. And Grayson said…” Oh no! I was telling tales. “Grayson indicated…,” I finished lamely.

  “Did he indeed?” Henry folded his arms, leaning back against the gravestone of someone called Alfonse G. Oppenheimer.

  “He only wanted to help. To make me understand,” I said quickly.

  “So did it help? Are you feeling sorry for me?” Beneath the light tone of Henry’s voice, there was something else, something that I found difficult to interpret. Injured feelings? Rage?

  “Yes, I am,” I said, although I guessed that was exactly what he didn’t want to hear.

  Sure enough, he uttered a small, joyless laugh and vaulted over the gravestone of Alfonse G. Oppenheimer to come down one grave farther on, a large marble slab. “I ought to be grateful to Grayson. Pity is a wonderful basis for a relationship.”

  I hesitated for a moment, but then I followed him. I didn’t walk over the graves themselves, although there was no need to avoid them. After all, this was a dream, so it made no difference at all what happened to the pansies on Alfonse G. Oppenheimer’s grave.

  Henry didn’t look up when I reached him. Okay, so he was angry, obviously because I felt sorry for him. Although there probably wasn’t anyone in the world who wouldn’t have felt the same under the circumstances. How could he blame me for it?

  “You’ve never told me anything so personal before,” I said slowly. “Do you realize that? This is the first time.”

  No answer. Okay, so he didn’t want me feeling sorry for him. I changed tack. “I really didn’t mean to sound ungrateful—but you’ll have to explain the connection between your story and the woman in the whirlpool a little more closely.”

  Henry’s mouth twisted in a sarcastic smile. “Well, yes. I did say you wouldn’t understand.” He had folded his arms again, and this time so did I.

  “I keep thinking and thinking, but I just don’t see why family circumstances mean you have to … er … flirt with a naked woman. And of course I wonder what else you’d have done if I hadn’t splashed into the water between the two of you.”

  Henry’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Anything necessary,” he said quietly but very firmly. “I’m sorry if that hurts you. But I’m very good at telling the difference between dreams and reality, and you don’t seem to be.”

  I stared at him, baffled. “What? Henry, seriously, what would you do if you saw me carrying on with someone else in a dream?”

  Henry shrugged his shoulders. Whereas a little while ago his expression had reflected all kinds of emotions, it was absolutely impenetrable now. As if he’d put on a mask. “Well, first, I wouldn’t know about it, because I don’t go spying on you like a jealous dragon, and second, I think it’s perfectly okay to have a few secrets from each other in a relationship. Anything else is so … boring.”

  I bit my lip. “Yes, I see.” What I saw most of all was that he was being like this on purpose. I just didn’t see why. A few minutes ago I’d felt that he wanted very much to make up our quarrel. Now he seemed to be doing his level best to antagonize me. It wasn’t like Henry—there was something very wrong here. “Then I suppose we have different ideas of what a good relationship is like,” I said quietly.

  He nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of too.” For a while, we looked at each other in silence, and then he said, “I really am so very fond of you, Liv, but there are things in my life that are simply nothing to do with you.”

  “B in the whirlpool, for instance.”

  “For instance.”

  I was perfectly calm now. Pity, anxiety, rage—I didn’t feel any of that. It was as if someone had blown out all the candles inside me.

  “Well, it’s a good thing we talked about it,” I said. I almost quoted one of Mr. Wu’s sayings: “When there is no agreement on basic principles, it is pointless to make plans together.” That one would fit the situation perfectly. However, I didn’t say it out loud.

  “Is that it?” asked Henry.

  I nodded. “Yes, I suppose it is. If that’s what you want.”

  Even now, nothing in Henry’s face moved. He just looked at me, and I turned away to locate the door in the corridor. It was right there in front of us, next to an ornamental cherry tree in blossom. Nice of Henry to have created such a springlike atmosphere for dumping me. Or rather, getting me to the point where I dumped him. All we needed was the right musical accompaniment. As I made for the door, I almost expected my knees to give way under me halfway there, leaving me to collapse on the ground in floods of tears, but nothing of the kind happened. My tears had gone away as well. Everything inside me felt like a big black hole.

  In the doorway, I couldn’t resist the temptation of turning back once more. Henry hadn’t moved from the spot. He was sitting on the slab of marble, as motionless as if he were made of marble himself.

  21

  MIA HAD FORESEEN it in her dream: no one would notice if a clone replaced me, not even Mia herself. Although she was the only one who gave me a searching look now and then, as if she guessed that there was something wrong with me. So far, however, she hadn’t looked as if she was planning to smother me with a cushion again.

  It had been a strange week. The strangest part was that I’d survived it. And no one had noticed that it wasn’t the real Liv but a horrible clone getting up as usual every morning, drinking Lottie’s grapefruit juice, going to school on the bus, having lunch with Persephone, doing her homework in the evening. I had locked the real Liv and her broken heart up in a dark place where she could feel as miserable as she liked about Henry, and her lost love, and cry her eyes out to her heart’s content. I didn’t care.

  Clone-Liv did me good service that week. She even got an A on the French test. Clone-Liv’s great advantage was that she felt almost nothing. For instance, she couldn’t care less about Florence’s withering glances. And when the Boker called and Clone-Liv happened to answer the phone, whereupon the Boker simply rang off, she just smiled and dismissed it with a shrug of her shoulders. She even stood up well to the piercing detective look in Mia’s eyes.

  Every day, I expected Secrecy to announce in her blog that Henry and I weren’t together anymore, but the revelation never came. Maybe th
at was because the students in their last year at school (including Secrecy?) had been doing exams all week and didn’t have lunch in the cafeteria, where it might have been obvious that we weren’t still a couple. Or maybe it was because my clone hadn’t yet thought it necessary to tell anyone, so no one could pass the gossip on to Secrecy. Although mind you, no one had asked, not even Grayson, who had heard our quarrel. However, since I wasn’t crying all the time and staggering around like a blotchy-faced zombie (that part was reserved for the real Liv in her dark hole), he presumably thought that everything was all right again. Which meant that Henry hadn’t said anything either.

  He and I had seen each other only once, at school by our lockers in the middle of the week. At the very moment when I was confronted with him, Clone-Liv failed me and the real Liv took over. Apart from a hoarse “Hi!” I hadn’t uttered a word, because everything I’d successfully suppressed over the last few days came right back at the sight of him. My sense of overwhelming grief simply deprived me of speech.

  Henry didn’t seem to have any such problems. Probably because I wasn’t his first ex-girlfriend. He even smiled at me.

  “You look as if you’ve been sleeping better,” he said. “It suits you.”

  “Thanks,” I wanted to murmur, but I couldn’t get even that out. In fact, I had the general impression than I’d never be able to speak again. Clone-Liv was trying with all her might to push real Liv aside and keep her from bursting into tears, while Henry got his things out of his locker and went on talking cheerfully.

  “Biology exam coming up—cross your fingers for me,” he said, winking as if we were good friends.

  And then, at last, after a hefty nudge in the ribs, real Liv slunk away and Clone-Liv was back in charge. “Sure, I’ll do that, and good luck,” she said just in time, before Henry disappeared around the corner.