Dream a Little Dream of Me by Rebecca Her
This is the reason he goes to work every morning. When he is riding his bike to the work, he doesn’t think about anything. He just listens to his own heartbeat. It’s a way to remind himself he’s still alive, not just a plum in the sun, slowly shrinking in on himself and growing gummier and chewier.
At work, he doesn’t talk very much. He doesn’t get out much, so he hasn’t seen that latest action movie, or been to the new Thai place on Johnson street
At night, he dreams that people visit him. They step into his room as unafraid and naturally as can be. His mother just stands by the window, blowing out cigarette smoke from her nostrils like a bull, the lines on her face made harsher by the fluorescent lights. His best friend from high school sits by his bed, playing with a length of frayed and knotted rope. A baby boy rattles a pair of large, colorful plastic keys, and watches him to see if he notices. People he has left behind, almost forgotten, but not quite. But sometimes, he has no visitors from his past. It is on these nights that he sleeps most peacefully.
On these nights, when he is alone and sleeping peacefully, he rolls over and falls out of bed. Though he doesn’t know it, he gets up and opens the little window so the breeze can come in. She is a bit bashful, so he must sit and wait in the chair by his desk. An inch at a time, she creeps into the room, gliding across the faded rug and warped floorboards. His apartment is tiny; it’s all he can afford right now. The dresser is pushed up against the end of his bed and his desk takes up near a quarter of the room. There is hardly enough kitchen or bathroom to speak of, and a rectangular hole in one wall pretends to be his closet. Still, the breeze pours herself into it, the room stretching to accommodate her. His skin feels tight and itchy when it does this, but he cannot bear to have anything touch her. He knows what is coming next.
She picks herself up off the floor and smiles at him. She has brought with her the song of the night, which she hums softly to him as she dances, her sheer, white dress flickering behind her. Her body is transparent, only the whisper of a real human. But still she is beautiful. She sways, jumps, reaches, spins, and stretches. He watches, riveted. His taut muscles relax. The emptiness in his eyes diminishes. He dreams, hopes, wishes, imagines, and desires. The song thrums in his bones, pulses in his lungs, and trembles in his ears.
She turns to him, offering her hand. He has always refused. He is bamboozled by music and dance. He has never been able to keep a beat or carry a tune. Though it has always sung to him, he has never been able to capture it. He knows it is the same way with the breeze. The moment he touches her pale hand, she will break, crumbling into a pile of sparkling white sand. Still she never fails to offer it. After a long and increasingly sadder pause, he shakes his head and her hand falls to her side. The music fades. She becomes still, and sinks back into a puddle on his apartment floor. Slowly, as slowly as she entered, she leaves by way of the window, pulling herself back up into the sky.
He rolls back into bed, his heartbeat racing. The covers curl themselves around him. He awakens in the morning and wonders why his window is open again.
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During the day, she sits behind a desk and stamps things. And signs things. And scribbles things. Dates, names, phone numbers, letters, packages, titles, times. She makes note of everything, and remembers nothing, while her cream-colored blouse becomes a little more and more threadbare and her black pumps become more and more scuffed.
Sometimes, her boss wanders out of his office, smelling like smoke and moth balls. He shouts something unintelligible to her, to which she dutifully nods her head, and he totters back into his perpetually dark office. All day long she listens to people’s voices. Over the phone, in the echoing hall, through the paper thin walls. They don’t talk to her. They don’t seem to notice her, even though she’s sitting right there. Visitors often walk right by her in their hurry to get to wherever they’re going. Her co-workers gossip idly by the water cooler; she has a thousand dirty secrets on all her superiors. Everyone seems to forget that she’s there and just say what’s on their mind. But she is content to let them speak. Most of them don’t really have much to say.
At the end of every day, she gets on the silent bus home, sets her brown leather bag by the door after letting herself in, then microwaves something and listens to more voices on the TV until the sun goes down and everyone is sleeping. She gets up, goes to her tiny closet, and pulls out her nightgown. After she sheds her cream blouse and tweed skirt, she slips the thinning cotton dress on, and then somehow manages to scoot the sofa, which doubles as her bed, up against the wall. She pads silently over to her dresser, where a boombox sits waiting, and presses play. There is a moment of stillness when she steps to the center of her studio-style apartment that the stars outside her window seem to glow a little brighter and draw closer to the glass. They know what is going to happen.
As the first notes of her favorite song spring into life, she steps into action. Forward, then back. Twirl, pose. A leap, a spin, a graceful bend. She closes her eyes and sees the stars open her bedroom window, and float into the room. They swirl around her, throwing their beams across the room onto the walls, lighting it up like an infinite 4th of July. The song continues as she dances, now highlighted by a stardust spotlight. Her jumps become higher, her body more lithe, and her smile brighter. Each note of the song brings her more to life. Here in her bedroom, late at night when no one is awake, she is the star.
She can feel the eyes on her. The stars are watching her dance. She knows they are waiting for her, waiting for her to turn, to reach for them. She also knows that they will shy away from her touch. They are afraid. They are terrified of her power over them, her ability to so enchant them. Deep down, she is afraid too. She has never felt more alive than when she dances, but neither has she felt more out-of-control. There is a power that flows out of her, gathered by her twirls and whirls, through her fingertips. She knows she has the ability to destroy, and petrified that she will. But she is even more afraid she’ll dance this dance forever, and no one will be brave enough to join her. So she reaches out her hand, her heart clenching in her chest, and when the stars turn ice cold and freeze around her, it hurts as much as it did the first time.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she lets her hand drop, and she feels herself growing cold. The music stops, and so does she. The stars fade and suck themselves back out into the cold, cold night. That’s fine. She didn’t want to dance anymore anyway. She yanks the window closed behind the retreating stars and drags the couch back. She wakes up the next morning, and turns off her boombox.
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He enters the reception area of the law office. She looks at him from behind her desk and gives him a weary smile. He smiles back nervously and opens his mouth to ask a question, but stops himself when he sees she is on the phone. She holds up one finger and tries to tie up the conversation with the very irate client on the other end.
“Yes, of course, sir. I will. Yes. I’ll be sure to tell him. Um-hm. Thank you.”
She lets out a quiet breath when the client finally hangs up and takes a moment to compose herself before addressing the man in front of her desk.
“Hello.” She is already pulling out her boss’ calendar and a stack of files. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Um, yes,” he says. He barely manages to stifle his stammer, and feels a little stupid, although he’s not entirely sure why. “I’m here to fix the computer system?” His inflection gives her pause. It’s as though he’s not entirely certain why he came here.
“Oh,” she says, and stops organizing things. “I wasn’t aware we had scheduled any computer maintenance. At least, not today.”
“Huh?” He glances down at the address scribbled on the scrap of paper in his hand. He’s sure this is the right place, or at least, he was. But then again, that zero might be a six, and that last letter might be an R or an N. The secretary at his office can type up tornados, but has handwriting like hieroglyphs.
Meanwhile, she is searching through the papers on her desk and finally sees the corner of a calendar peeking out from underneath a stack of files.
“Here we go!” She flips through the pages quickly. “Yeah, you’re not scheduled to come in until tomorrow.”
“Oh,” he says, staring at her eyebrows. “Okay then… um…” He turns to go, but she gets up suddenly.
“Wait! As long as you’re here, you might as well do what you came to do, right?” She glides around the end of her desk to his side. “Is that okay? Not against company policy or anything?”
“N-no.” He is mortified by the slip of his tongue and bites down on it. She smiles at him reassuringly.
“Right this way.” She leads him to the system headquarters, which is a small room full of monitors and wires. He feels more at ease, surrounded by the familiar.
“Do you need any help with anything?” she asked as he stepped into the room.
“No. I’ll be fine.” He takes off his glasses and tucks them into his front shirt pocket, and the lights from the equipment reflect in his eyes, making them twinkle softly. She gives him an odd look, but he doesn’t notice. There is a question on the tip of her tongue, but she bites down on it.
“Alright then. I’ll be just down the hall if you need anything.”
Head already filled with data and equations, he turns to thank her, but she is already stepping lightly to her desk, her white skirt swishing around her legs. Something is telling him to talk to her, to say something, but he can’t identify what exactly is telling him to do so, so he ignores it.
After about half an hour, he emerges from the room, his work done. She is on the phone with another client, but smiles at him as he approaches her desk. He smiles back instinctively and gives her a thumbs up. She nods and tries turning on the computer on her desk, which has been sitting idle for the past few days. It flashes on and she does a little dance that makes him chuckle.
“Okay Mr. Dvorak, yes. Our computer system is up now, so I’ll have your information in just a moment. Uh-huh.”
He checks his watch and is disappointed. He should be getting back to the office soon. She is still the phone with the client, but is looking at him with a question in her eyes. He motions that he’ll be leaving now and she nods and smiles.
“Alright, sir. Mm-hmm. Alright. Thank you.” She puts the phone back on its receiver and watches the computer specialist walk across the lobby.
Above them, Muzak trickles down through a beige speaker and a muted trumpet begins playing. Stars, shining bright above you… Night breezes seem to whisper “I love you.”
When he reaches the door, he turns around to wave. Their eyes meet; she sees the stars in his and he feels a cool breeze drift lightly across the hand on the doorknob. For a moment, everything is still.
Birds singing in the sycamore tree…
He opens the door and walks out of the room into a balmy spring day as her phone rings again and she picks it up. The door closes.
Dream a little dream of me.
