Perfect Strangers

He rolls his eyes. “Your grandmother was right. Didn’t you notice? I haven’t used that phone in weeks.”

“Side with my nana again and this child will be the last you’ll ever be able to produce, my friend.”

He drops the calendar on the table in front of me, kisses me on top of the head, then ambles toward the raised beds of vegetables growing rampant along the wall on one side of the patio. I watch his ass—the eighth wonder of the world—as he goes.

When I turn my attention back to the calendar, I notice its theme is fall foliage on the East Coast. “Pretty pictures,” I call out to James. “Have you ever seen the leaves change in Central Park in September? It’s magical.”

He says something I can’t quite catch over the chirping of the birds, which has grown louder. They’re fighting over the last of the wild plums in the hedgerows, no doubt. There’s a faraway buzzing sound in my ears, too, a mechanical noise, something distant and slightly irritating. Idly wondering if a farmer is plowing one of the spelt fields nearby, I flip open the calendar to September’s page.

The photo for the month is of an apple orchard outside a quaint village in New England. The trees are brilliant shades of scarlet, yellow, and gold. Beneath the photo is a description of the trees and location it was taken, along with the name of the group who sponsored the calendar.

Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, New York.

My breath is knocked from my lungs. The skin all over my body prickles with gooseflesh. The strange mechanical noise intensifies until it’s all I can hear.

I whisper in horror, “No.”

When I look up in panic, my eyes desperately seeking James, he’s no longer bending over the vegetable beds, picking tomatoes for dinner.

He’s gone.

When I look back at the wooden table, it’s gone, too. So is the chair I was sitting in, and the house, and the patio, and the garden, and the rolling fields of harvested lavender bushes, and all the beauty and tranquility of Provence. Everything has vanished.

The only thing left is the calendar in my hand—the calendar with a big red circle around Monday the 23rd.

The first day of fall.

The day I was supposed to return to New York from my summer vacation in Paris.

White light surrounds me, growing brighter and brighter until I’m blinded. I can no longer see, but I can still feel my blood pounding hot through my veins, and I can still hear the strange, irritating mechanical noise, though it’s quickly drowned out by something much louder.

The high, wavering sound of my scream.