by Giselle Fox
The detail was vivid, but there was an ethereal sparkle to everything around the edges. The periphery washed out of focus as if I was looking through a narrow lens. For a moment, I realized it was a dream because the ride to the fifth floor had never taken so long, but I got swept into the realism of it again and forgot. Then the elevator stopped and the door opened.
A woman climbed on board. Her face was concealed behind large sunglasses. The realism of the dream became unsteady and I lost grip. The images became fleeting close-ups, stills, and sensations. She was looking at me and my heart began to race. I saw the length of her neck, the side of her jaw, and the place where it met the curve of her earlobe. A part of me worried that I was drunk and about to make an embarrassing pass at some poor woman from my building. But when I reached for her, she reached for me too.
Our clothes disappeared and I felt her skin on my body. Her hands curled around the back of my neck. Then she whispered in my ear and begged for me to touch her. She pulled my hand down and then the elevator began to plummet. I realized I didn’t have much time.
I was surrounded by her scent and warmth. I felt her on my face and hands. I heard her breath and soft moans all around me. I was so overwhelmed with the sensuality of everything that I lost myself in her. In our final moments together, I felt her lips and tasted her tongue. Then I watched her eyes fade into the blackness of my apartment as I woke up.
I didn’t know whether to take a cold shower or cry. I ached for this woman as if she was real and I’d actually lost her. I felt the ache so deep inside me that for a moment, it replaced all the other pain and hurt that had been there for the last six months.
Skip looked up at me from his little bed beside the window. His big-eared silhouette illuminated by the street lights down on Powell street. I heard a lone car outside, someone either coming home late or leaving early. I lifted myself from the bed and walked into the kitchen for some water and Skip followed. We sat on the couch together and I stared out the big window that overlooked the mountains. For the next hour, I tried to figure out who the woman in my dream really was.
She wasn’t Christa, that was for sure, and she wasn’t anyone that I knew before my break up. I mentally scanned the short list of friends I had left and then branched out to acquaintances: clients and peripherals, people that worked at the places I shopped at, women that I knew from the dog park, even the cutie at the flower shop on Arbutus Street. I knew it wasn’t her either. I considered that she might just be the fantasy of someone lost and broken-hearted. Someone like me.
I flicked on the light in the open living space of my condo and went to my workbench. Skip hopped off the couch and tucked himself into his bed under my desk. I flicked on the full-spectrum lights above me that were supposed to help my mood and grabbed a pencil and my sketch pad. I stared at the empty white expanse, at the texture of the paper, the rings of the binding, and the edge of the sheet where it met all the other edges. I focused, hoping that the woman in my dream would appear again.
I closed my eyes and tried to see her in the black. Her face was in front of me, her lips were just below my vision, but I could feel them as if she were right there. At the periphery of her face were colors. A print on her clothing? A colored scarf maybe? Or was it jewelry? I opened my eyes and traced the outline of her face on the page. But the more I tried to pull her from my mind, the further she sank back.
“Where are you?” I groaned.
Skip huffed dramatically. When I peered under the edge of the table, he didn’t bother lifting his head from his paw. His sleepy eyes rolled up to meet mine.
“Soon buddy. We’ll get back to bed soon.”
There were a lot of things I’d learned about myself from living alone for the last six months. One was that drinking really didn’t help my mental clarity. The other was that 1970’s disco sometimes did. I grabbed a pencil and an Exacto blade and pushed my chair back. I pulled a length of cardboard from the rack behind my table and sat on the shag rug in front of my stereo.
My big headphones waited inside the cabinet. “Don’t leave me this way” was already on the turntable so I flicked on the power and pumped up the volume. Skip laid down a few safe feet in front of me with his back pressed against the couch and watched. His eyebrows twitched back and forth in time with the song as I blocked out the letters in one of my poster fonts. By the time the song was done, I’d cut the letters of my latest burning question out of the length of cardboard.
Where are you? I can’t find you.
I held it up. Skip looked back at me through the cutout letters. He’d watched me do what I was doing enough times that he knew what came next. He pulled his body to his feet and we both headed for the door.
I owned an over-sized black wool coat that I’d found in a thrift store about twenty years before. It was made of brushed lambswool and tailored by the Crombie company in the UK. It also had pockets deep enough to hide a can of spray paint and was long enough to tuck a forty-inch piece of stencil-cut cardboard underneath.
I wasn’t into vandalism. I always gave a lot of consideration to the sites I chose. The site of the moment was an old warehouse that had been boarded up for years. An industrial building stuck in the awkward margin between the business district and an up-and-coming neighborhood. Like many beautiful old things before it, it had been scheduled for demolition to make room for more overpriced and undersized condos. It had been for sale for as long as I’d owned my place. Character didn’t seem to count for much during a real estate boom. The notice went up along with a sterile illustration of the development plan and that was that. The old bricks would be smashed to powder. It cleared my conscience enough to make it a temporary canvas for what I’d dubbed my Burning Question Series. Nothing, not art, not bricks, and most certainly not love, was permanent.
Skip knew the place well. He knew to stay close but not too close since he didn’t like the smell of paint. He innately understood the need for stealth and silence as if he was working a herd of sheep and not aiding and abetting his master. The building was two blocks from mine. I’d never worried about walking there alone at night. Maybe it was because of Skip. Maybe it was the tin of spray paint in my pocket. Maybe it was because I was the one breaking the law.
There was a stack of old wood piled next to a concrete riser below an empty section of dirty brown brick. Empty because it was exposed to the street and thus more risky. I took another look around before climbing up. I pulled the paint and cardboard from my coat, and in no time, I had transferred the letters onto the bricks. When I pulled back the stencil, I could see a few areas that needed filling and gave it a few more hits of gold paint. Then, quick and quiet, I climbed down and joined Skip on the ground.
Thirty seconds later, we were headed back, along the sidewalk, to our building. With my latest burning question left up to the ebb and flow of the wall, I felt like I might actually be able to fall asleep.
When I got off the elevator and back onto my floor, I almost screamed. Rhiannon, my neighbor from across the hall, was hanging outside her door.
“What are you doing up?” I asked in a stage whisper.
“I sensed a disturbance in the force and figured it was you,” she said with a grin.
Rhiannon had told me when we first met that she was mildly psychic. I had no idea how to deal with that information other than to file it away and keep my thoughts clean whenever I was around her. She and her wife of forty years had lived in the building since it was built. Her wife, Brenda had been back in Saskatoon taking care of her aging mother for the last three months and needless to say, Rhi was a little lonely.
“What have you been up to?” she asked quietly. She could smell the paint on me as well as I could, so I shrugged. “Wanna talk it out? I got some more of that tea you drank all of.”
“Don’t you want to get back to bed?” I asked.
“I’m retired. I can sleep in front of the TV this afternoon like all the other old ladies in the city.”
�
�Please,” I said. “You could run circles around a woman half your age.”
“Leave the cardboard and paint in your place, it stinks.” She left the big door open and walked back inside.
Skip followed behind her and probably headed straight for the treats on the bottom shelf of her kitchen cabinet.
“Only one,” she called after him. “Okay fine, you can have two, go on.”
I dumped my stuff inside the door of my apartment and threw my big coat on the chair by the door.
When I walked back into Rhi’s place, she was talking to Skip about what we’d been up to. He was curled up on the couch beside her.
“Yours is the only sofa he’ll jump on that isn’t his.”
“Just like his mama,” she smiled. “The kettle is on. Tea is in the cupboard.”
“I know the drill.” I pulled two cups from above the sink and grabbed a spoon. “Do you want your weed tea?”
Rhi nodded. “Yes, please. Keeps me in tune.”
I pulled a fresh box of Sleepy Time from the cupboard and grabbed the old red tin that Rhi kept her special tea stash in. I opened the lid and took a deep whiff of the fragrant notes of chamomile and mint mixed with skunky herb.
“So, you’ve been at your wall again?” Rhi called.
I sighed and shook my head. “I seriously have no idea how you know the things you know.”
“You told me your big secret the last time you were drunk on my couch, remember?”
“I’m trying to forget that night,” I said. “Tea and soda for me from now on.”
“Oh please! I’ve known a lot of alcoholics and you’re not one of them,” she said. “You’re just bored and depressed, you have shitty friends and you got dumped by a bitch from hell. What else are you going to do but drink with that kind of shitty luck?”
“You’re a terrible influence, you know that?” I said.
“I’m not recommending you hit the bottle again, believe me. It crosses the frequencies and opens up your energetic field to unsavory inhabitants.”
“That sounds… serious,” I said.
“Don’t worry. None of them have stuck to you yet. This dog of yours makes sure of that. Don’t you, handsome?” Rhiannon gave Skip a chin scratch that made his eyes free float in his head. “He’s the best guardian angel you could have right now.”
I looked at Skip. “Hear that? You’re going to get a pig’s ear tomorrow.”
Skip huffed and yawned.
I carried our tea into the living room and sat down on the couch across from them.
“So what was it this time?” Rhi asked.
“Another question.”
“What sort of question?”
“Where are you? I can’t find you.”
Rhi nodded. “Deep. You had one of your dreams again.”
I shook my head. “Did the disturbance in the force tell you that too?”
“Maybe. Sit closer, I want to try something.”
“Uhhh,” I said and looked at her suspiciously.
“Don’t be silly. Pull that stool over here.” I obeyed since it was her house.
“Close your eyes,” Rhi ordered; so I did. After a few seconds of nothing, I opened one eye. Rhi was waving her hands around me in some incantatory pattern.
“Am I supposed to be feeling something?” I asked.
“Hush. I’m combing your energy field. It’s standard before a heavy duty procedure like this.”
“What procedure? Are you giving me a root canal?”
“No, I’m just putting you in tune since you’re a very creative person. You “see” things.”
“You were never supposed to repeat that,” I said quickly.
“I’m just saying that you may actually be calling this dream woman into your world.”
I opened my eyes fully and stared at her. “You realize you sound like a whack job.”
“Said the woman who sees things that aren’t there,” she said flatly.
I glared at her. She glared right back. “Geez,” I groaned and held my face in my hands. “It’s 4 am, Rhi. What are we doing? I have to work tomorrow.”
“You’ll be fine. I’ll give you a little hit of the power energy. Now hold still and close your eyes.”
I grumbled but did as I was told.
“Good,” Rhi said in her Witchiepoo voice. “Deep breath in… and out.”
I exhaled and tried to clear my head.
“Good,” Rhi said. “Now think of your woman.”
I tried to compose the image in my mind but it was no use. I could only summon the feeling of her.
“That’s okay, the feeling will work too,” Rhi said in a monotone.
Okay, I said to myself, my neighbor is inside my head right now. Don’t think of the sex part, don’t think… oh, crap…
Rhi chuckled.
“Shit,” I said and tried to squeeze the images from my mind. “Okay, enough! Get out of there.”
“Hang on. Almost done,” she said. I inhaled and exhaled a few more times while Rhi hummed to herself. “Okay, you’re done,” she announced.
“What happens now?”
“You finish your tea and go back to bed.”
“You know what I mean. What happens… after the procedure?” I asked.
“Keep your mind open. You want to be receptive to the signs.”
“The signs? What signs?”
“Well hopefully it’ll be something obvious like a woman drops out of the sky and onto your lap,” she said sarcastically. “Otherwise, you’ll know them when you see them. Just keep your eyes and your heart open.”
“I can’t believe I’m actually considering this is a possibility,” I muttered. Skip groaned.
“Alright, enough of that,” she said and grabbed her mug of tea. “How’s boot camp?”
“Tiring. I’m thinking of quitting. How’s Zumba for Lesbians?”
Rhiannon flexed her modest muscles. “I love it! It’s a total hoot!”
“Maybe I should try it,” I said only half-serious.
“You’d get hit on. Some of the women are hungry for fresh meat.”
“Hmmm,” I said and shook my head.
Rhi sat back and looked off into the far distance. “God, I miss pussy.”
“Shit, Rhi. Why don’t you go visit your wife?”
“It’s too depressing there. Besides, there’s no room. She’s been sleeping on the couch.” Rhi thought a moment. “I guess if I drove out there we could do it in the truck. Wouldn’t be the first time,” she grinned.
I shook my head again and laughed. “I want to grow up to be you two one day.”
“What? Sixty-eight, horny and a thousand miles away from your wife?”
“Okay, maybe not the last part,” I said.
“Go to bed,” she ordered.
I looked down into my almost full mug. “I haven’t finished my tea.”
“Bring me the cup tomorrow. I have work to do.”
Skip got up right on queue and headed for the door.
“You keep watch on her tonight, handsome,” Rhi called after him.
“Thanks, Rhi… I think,” I said.
“Don’t thank me now,” she said wisely. “Just tell me all the juicy bits later.”
“Goodnight,” I said.
“Goodnight Rocky.”
CHAPTER THREE
It was after 8 am when I woke up. The sun poured in my bedroom window because I’d forgotten to close the blinds. Whether Rhi had given me a dose of power energy or not, I had to admit I felt better than I should have after a few hours sleep. I showered and dressed in my usual black t-shirt and jeans, and I pulled on my boots. I grabbed my camera on the way out the door so I could get a few shots of the old brick wall in the morning light.
Monday mornings at the dog park were always a mixed bag. Truthfully, my dog couldn’t care less about other dogs. He just wanted a clear stretch of grass to chase his ball until he was well worn out. When he was done, he sat down heavily and panted at my feet until
I poured him his water. Then he consumed it on shaky legs until it was empty and dropped back onto the cool grass. But even Skip had a little extra gas in the tank that morning and I wondered if Rhi’s mojo had worked on him too.
I loaded him into the sidecar of my ‘78 BMW R100 motorcycle and clipped on his harness. With his goggles on and his happy pink tongue hanging out, I had to take a picture.
“Love the bike and the dog,” a guy called from the other side of the lot. We got that a lot, Skip and I.
“Mind if I grab a picture too? I love border collies.”
“Go ahead,” I said and took a step back to let Skip take the glory.
“I see you two around the neighborhood all the time. Does he always ride in the sidecar?”
“Until he’s old enough to get his license,” I said.
“So cool. There was a picture of you two in the Straight a few months ago,” he said as he snapped a few shots on his phone.
“Yeah, I saw that,” I said. “For Pride week, right?”
“Oh,” he said and looked at me again. “Right.”
“So are you all done?” I asked him.
“Yes, sorry. Thanks. See you around, I guess.”
“See ya,” I said and pulled on my helmet.
We swung by the old brick building on the way to the shop. I parked and pulled my camera bag from the sidecar. The sun illuminated the gold-flecked paint perfectly making it more visible against the dark brick than I’d expected. But underneath my burning question was an even fresher line of text.
Closer than you think.
It made me smile. Whoever this anonymous writer was, it was the perfect answer applied in complimentary silver paint. I grabbed my camera from my bag and snapped some pictures of the wall in the beautiful morning light.
The front door to the shop was propped open. My business partner, Shep was standing at the front counter sipping a mug of coffee.
“You look...” Shep began after I’d pulled off my sunglasses.
“Don’t say it,” I warned.
“I was going to say rested.”
