Dreamscape
By Victoria Wiswell-Mabe
In my dream
you were jubilant. Vibrating like a plucked string of a guitar. You said you’d had enough of the race and were walking away to go to film school. Maybe at NYU. Maybe at So Cal. You weren’t sure, but that part, you assured me, didn’t matter.
“What matters, Sarah, is I’m going,” you said. “I’m done with chasing money. I’m done giving my life away to a corporation. I’ll make films, be the next Kubrick.”
I smiled at you over our pizza and nodded, my mind buzzing.
“It all makes sense—everything I’ve been missing. Film is my destiny. How I didn’t see it sooner, I’ll never know.”
I couldn’t argue. You were right. In the murky water of my dream, it seemed so obvious. All along, in your bones, you’d been a filmmaker. How I hadn’t seen it sooner, I’d never know.
“Let’s celebrate!” I said, embracing your epiphany.
***
We left the restaurant and wandered down Fifth Avenue, crawling from one bar party to another.
At our third stop, three or four drinks deep, the world slanting slightly to the left, you leaned down and nudged my ear with your beer-sweet breath.
“We’re not just here for the drinks, you know.”
“Oh?” I said, sounding like a slurry stranger.
“We’re here for ideas. People. Stories. For my first project.”
The project you began unironically referring to during our stop at bar number one as, “My Clock Work Orange.”
“Of course. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”
“Why are we drinking beer?” you said, waving at the bartender. “This night calls for champagne.”
***
The moss-green color of the champagne bottle and the beads of moisture clinging to it reminded me of the grass in early spring at the dog park where we used to bring Charlie. I thought back to the park, to us, but couldn’t remember the last time we’d been there.
The bottle sat between us, sweating a small, oval puddle. You stared at it, waiting. Maybe you wanted the bartender to do the honors, or maybe you were thinking about Charlie and the park. I thought to ask, wanted to, but couldn’t work the nerve. It didn’t matter anyway; right then, you grabbed its neck and popped the cork.
The soft explosion made me jump. The jump made you laugh. I tensed, expert in the layers of your laughter, and searched your face, hoping. I exhaled. Your moody grey eyes were clear of clouds.
***
“To new beginnings!” you said, raising your glass triumphantly.
Every patron in the elbow to elbow, Friday night crowd bled into our celebration. They lifted their drinks and cheered for what they believed we were: a happy couple. Seeing this, knowing it meant our bodies still registered a story of togetherness, somehow made your attempts to forget matter less.
“To new beginnings!” I said, enthusiastically clinking my glass against yours.
Our exuberant toast sent a foamy, champagne sea splashing onto our knuckles. I expected you to be embarrassed, if not annoyed, but in the sweat-stained air of the bar, surrounded by everyone and no one, you were liberated. Laughing, you winked at me and licked the sticky ocean off your fingers.
***
Next to you, in my ballerina flats, I felt small.
Have you always been this tall? I wondered, staring.
Your head seemed to float miles above me. I wanted to reach for you, to tether your perfect face to my hand like a hot air balloon to the ground, but even at midnight, with my mind eighty percent alcohol and you as close as you’d been in forever, I didn’t dare.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” you asked, like you couldn’t place my expression, like you no longer recognized my desire.
“No reason,” I lied. “Just glad you’re happy.”
“Me, too!” As you spoke, you draped your arm over my shoulder so casually it felt like something you still did. “This will be good for us,” you said. “For our family.”
***
The warmth of you called to me. I leaned into you and pressed my face against your chest. My nose brushed your nipple. The ivory scent of you washed over me.
Breathing you in, your proximity compressing time, I was bold and brave, bereft and more than a little drunk. All I wanted was you, us, back to the way we were. I touched your face, smooth skin and rough stubble, a clear-cut forest growing from fertile ground.
My insides trembled.
You leaned down and pressed your raw lips against mine. The taste of your salty-sweet tongue wiped every day of the last six months clean.
Slowly, painfully, you pulled away. Under the bar’s dim lights, you looked different. New. Old, but back again. I was happy. Better, I was certain. I forgave every night I’d wasted chasing the shadow of a lost man circling the moon.
“I love you,” you said. “You know that.”
Of course you did. In the murky water of my dream, it seemed so obvious.
***
This morning, I woke up what felt like days later to the buzz of your phone. I stayed still, salty and ravaged from our night of crawling, and waited. I listened to the catch of your breath, crept my fingers as close to the warmth of your body as I dared.
You rolled away suddenly and grabbed your phone.
“This is Rick.”
A frantic, long-winded Chicken Little reply leaked from the speaker—another corporate crisis.
I shut my eyes, searched the dark for a way back to the bar, your salty-sweet mouth, and everything between us that had changed.
Floating miles above me, I saw your face. You bent down, pulled me close, and whispered,
“It was only a dream.”
THE END
Author Bio: VA lives outside of Seattle, WA, with her human and animal family. Her work has appeared in Writing In A Woman’s Voice, The Lake, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, 34th Parallel Magazine, Sad Girls Literary Magazine, Ignatian Literary Magazine, and OJA & L Magazine. She has poems and short stories forthcoming in Front Porch Review and Crab Creek Review. You can find her on Instagram at @vawiswell and www.vawiswell.com.