Perfect Strangers

19

After the shower,James towels us both off and leads me back to bed. He rolls me to my side and pulls me tight against his warm body, drawing his legs up behind mine and curving protectively around my spine. His chest is broad and solid against my back. His lips softly brush the nape of my neck.

He whispers, “Go back to sleep.”

Exhausted, I promptly do.

I dream of war.

I’m running through a bombed-out city at night, past the silent, hulking ruins of buildings, their shattered windows staring at me like thousands of dead eyes. The sky billows with thick black smoke that burns and chokes my lungs. Erratic bursts of automatic gunfire echo far off in the distance. The road I’m on is an endless stretch of cracked black asphalt littered with rubble and bodies. I stumble over them as I run, sobbing, the soles of my bare feet bloodied and raw.

I pass a band of soldiers headed in the opposite direction. Their uniforms are torn. Their faces are smudged with dirt and caked with blood. All are injured in various degrees, limping or bleeding from horrible wounds, faces twisted in pain or blank with exhaustion. They ignore me, all but one, who speaks to me as he stumbles past.

“Turn back,” he rasps, glancing over his shoulder at the direction I’m headed. “You’ll die if you keep going that way.”

He staggers on.

I ignore his warning because I’m headed toward the light.

It’s safety, the softly glowing white light just beyond a rise in the road ahead. It’s a sanctuary. I can feel it.

So I keep running, lungs burning, the wails of crying children and church bells ringing in my ears.

At the top of the rise, I jerk to a stop. Weak and panting, I stare at the man standing in the middle of the road. He’s surrounded by a glowing orb of white light. It seems to be emanating from him, suffusing his skin and shining out from the depths of his beautiful blue eyes.

“Hello, sweetheart,” says James, smiling. “I’m so glad you found me. You’re safe now. You’re home.”

I sob in relief and fall to my knees…which is when I notice the gun in his hand.

Lifting his arm, he points the gun directly at me.

He’s still smiling when he pulls the trigger.

* * *

I jolt upright in bed,blind with terror, my heart thundering. Judging by the light, it’s midday.

I’m alone.

Shaking, I press a hand over my pounding heart. The dream felt so real. I can still smell the smoke and see the dead bodies. Though it’s been years since I believed in God, I make the sign of the cross over my chest.

Then I flop onto my back and lie there until I can breathe again. Until the deafening crack of a gunshot fades to silence in my ears.

The windows are open. A breeze whispers through the curtains, filling their folds in gentle waves. The lazy breeze ruffles the edges of the piece of yellow lined paper held down by a fountain pen on the nightstand next to the bed.

I reach over, pick the paper up, and read.

Write down what you feel. Everything you feel—about Paris, about life, about me—from now until September. Then leave it when you go, so I’m not alone with my memories. Leave me your memories, too, so I’ll know it all really happened once you’re gone. So I’ll know you weren’t just a beautiful dream.

The paper trembles in my hands, but the tremor isn’t caused by my nightmare or the breeze from the windows.

I press James’s letter against my chest and close my eyes, then simply sit for a moment in silence, allowing the emotions to pass through me like a sudden quall at sea, a frothy rage you fear might capsize you but that eventually calms to sunny skies and tranquil waters.

One of the few therapists I had who helped me in any real way once told me that people make the mistake of thinking that experiencing an emotion means you have to do something about it. In fact, you don’t have to do anything with your emotions at all. You can simply acknowledge them as they arrive—oh, look, that old bitch Envy is back again—then go about your business.

It’s the clinging to emotion that causes suffering, she said. A wiser choice is to let it go and breathe.

“Just feel me. Just feel me and breathe.”

Remembering James’s words to me when I fled in a panic into the bathroom at the restaurant, I feel better. His note has made me feel better, too, though constricted through the chest.

At least the hangover has had the good manners to vanish.

I rise, dress, and head into the library, the urge to write as strong as any addiction. I pick up the pen, take up where I left off on the yellow pad, and write until that pad is filled. Then I start on a new one.

I don’t stop until I hear birds chirping. When I look around, I realize with astonishment that I’ve written straight through the death of one day and into the golden, sweet-scented birth of another.

* * *