In Your Dreams Bobby Anderson

by Maidwell, Sandra Jane

  “Um, thanks,” he tried to smile, but the site of the eggs and fruit salad made his stomach turn. Why was she being so nice? She thinks you’re crazy, his brain shouted to him.

  “Mr. Patrick, he call, but I tell him you resting today. He say he call back later.”

  This was highly unusual behavior for Rosa, and it made Bobby feel uneasy. Rosa wasn’t his secretary, and she wasn’t his mother. When had she decided to take on the roles? Maybe he was terminally ill and he was the only one who didn’t know it. Maybe he was…what was the word? Schizophrenic? Maybe he was schizophrenic! The haircut was the beginning of the end, after all, and the only reason Susan liked it was because she was his own creation. The dreams weren’t hers—they were his!

  Bobby watched Rosa leave the room, closing the door softly behind her instead of the usual bang. He wanted to puke, but he hated puking and squeezed his eyes shut to fight against the urge.

  “I’m so mad at you!”

  Bobby opened his eyes to see a cross Susan standing over him. He lay facedown on the beach. Raising his head, he felt bits of sand fall from his cheek. He assumed he looked pathetic.

  Susan had her hands on her hips. “You don’t take care of yourself at all! They say terrible things about you, and maybe they are right!” Susan kicked sand at him and stomped off.

  If this was a dream, why wasn’t she nicer? His head still hurt, but he stumbled after her. She looks sexy from the back. Her scraggly shorts rode provocatively up her thighs, and her tanned legs stretched out long and slender beneath her.

  “Wait, Susan. I can explain.”

  But she was off to the forest, and he didn’t know what he had to explain anyway. What if I don’t follow her? He thought. Would he just stay there until nightfall or would she return for him?

  Bobby sat down on the sand and decided to take some time to really look around. The ocean was quite beautiful, but not really like the ocean he had seen when he visited the island of St. Barths last year. The water there had been a mixture of turquoises and darker blues. And near the shore it was so clear you could spot every shell and stone lying on the sandy floor. Here, the water was dark up to the shore, making it impossible to spot a single shell.

  Far off in the distance, clouds moved lazily across the open sky, exposing a background of mixed purple hues. It looked almost like a sunset, except it was the middle of the day. There shouldn’t be a sunset now. This place was obviously a dream; but if it was his dream, why wasn’t the ocean and the sky like they were in St. Barths, or the Mediterranean for that matter? Those were beautiful beaches, much nicer than this one. If it were his dream, that’s how he’d make his beach: white sand, turquoise ocean, golden sunset.

  A pelican flew overhead and dropped into the sea with a mighty flop. Bobby liked pelicans and he relaxed as he watched it, almost forgetting about Susan and her disappearance—until he heard the sobbing.

  Oh boy. “I’m coming!” he called out, pulling himself up from the sand and dragging his battered body in the direction Susan had just gone.

  He found her sitting on the fallen coconut tree from the dream before. She had her face buried in her hands and sobbed like only a girl knows how. It frightened Bobby, and he wondered for a split second if this was really the girl for him—the one above the rest—or if she was just another girl. Surely the strange circumstances of their meeting automatically put her above the rest, and he let the doubts leave his head as quickly as they had come

  His shoe cracked a twig and Susan looked up. Her eyes were swollen and tears streaked her cheeks. Bobby wasn’t quite sure what he had done so wrong to cause such sadness, but he did know that he couldn’t bare to see her like this. He felt determined to make it up to her. “Baby, what is it?” he asked tenderly. Probably the most tender he had been on and off the screen for some time.

  Susan tried to control her sobbing and managed to squeak, “It’s so unfair.”

  “What’s so unfair?” Bobby crouched down next to her and put a hand on her back. She felt warm this time, and solid, not like a dream at all. He liked touching her. He liked touching her a lot.

  “Why did you get so drunk?”

  “What?”

  “They said you were drunk, and that it’s because you miss Lola! Why do you miss Lola? She was awful. You’re here with me but you don’t help, and now you miss Lola. I just don’t understand.” At that Susan started sobbing all over again, even louder than before.

  Needless to say, Bobby was perplexed. What had happened last night? What had he done? First things first: “Susan, I do not miss Lola.”

  Sobbing. “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m glad she’s gone.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. And I like you. I like you a lot.”

  “Y—you do?”

  “Yes.”

  Susan straightened up. She felt self-conscious about her appearance. She knew she looked terrible when she cried. She tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ears, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and pulled her T-shirt down to cover the top of her shorts.

  Bobby took in her awkwardness. He wasn’t used to girls like her; girls who were…well, he didn’t have the word. It simply wasn’t part of his vocabulary yet. He just knew she was different, and he liked it. “So, what now?” he said.

  “I don’t know.” She gave a mild laugh. “But I think I could use a hug. I’m so cold.”

  Bobby immediately squeezed her tightly to him. She did, in fact, feel cold now. He put his other arm over her chest and attempted a bear hug.

  “That feels better,” she said.

  “Why are you cold? Are you sick?” Bobby remembered what Patrick had said about her being in the hospital, but he didn’t want to believe it.

  “No. I don’t feel sick.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  They both fell silent and sat that way for some time, their shoulders barely touching, their thighs just millimeters apart.

  Bobby felt a need to say something, anything, when Susan turned her face towards his. Her eyes were so green, her lashes a natural lush dark brown, and her lips… Oh God, those lips! They were moist and so… close.

  On impulse, Bobby brushed his fingers against her cheek and felt a stir somewhere deep in his body. In response, she tilted her head towards the pressure of his hand. Not missing a beat, Bobby leaned in and gave her a light kiss on her mouth, barely touching his lips to hers. He wanted to take his time and savor each second they had together.

  Susan sighed, urging him on. He wanted to kiss her again, deeper and harder this time, but using all his will power, he restrained himself. Instead he let his lips only tease hers.

  “Kiss me, Bobby,” she whispered.

  Bobby caressed her cheek with his hand again and looked into her eyes. He didn’t usually make this much eye contact with the women he went out with, but this was different. He didn’t know when or even if he would ever see her again.

  “Bobby.” She almost pleaded. Her body ached for him.

  Cupping her face in both of his hands, he brought his lips to hers. This time he kissed her with a passion he’d reserved his whole life for her alone. It might have looked like any other kiss he’d ever acted out in any one of his movies, including Devil Take You with Samantha, but there was no comparing how it felt. Somewhere inside of him, somewhere deep in the pit of his being, a fire was lit. It burned him inside and out. His skinned crawled with his desire for her. He wanted her, to possess her, to consume her. His body shook with the need.

  How could a kiss—a single kiss!—feel so good? Bobby didn’t want to think about the word “love” but this was definitely what love should feel like, he reasoned. He’d always imagined that love was a fancy wedding, a man risking his life, expensive jewelry. Never before had he contemplated that love might just be a kiss. This had to be love.

  Bobby let his hands drift down her bare arms, her chest, and to her small tender breasts underneath her T-shirt. Her
skin was like silk. Like some kind of dreamy soft silken material designed especially for him. And the best part was that she didn’t seem to want to stop any of it. Without a single hint of play-acting, manipulation, or faking, she responded to him. She touched him back. Her fingers were all over his chest, his arms; she squeezed his hips and pulled them to her. She was as much in the moment as he was. They were dancers who had practiced together for years.

  “Oh, Bobby.”

  “Susan.”

  “Bobby.”

  Wow! Bobby couldn’t imagine waking up now. He would stay here forever.

  Their passion became such that they both slipped off the coconut trunk and found themselves on the sand, bodies intertwined, clothes peeling off as precious moments slipped by.

  They made love on the sand, on the island. Bobby felt giddy. He had never lost himself in a kiss, a caress; never been carried away to a place he now realized existed. A place of crazy mad love. It wasn’t made up after all. It was real. He couldn’t describe where it was exactly, but it wasn’t in him. It was between them both, or around them.

  At last it was over, and they lay there in the warm sand, two sweaty bodies contently collapsed together. Bobby rubbed his cheek against Susan’s naked arm and smelled a pleasant mixture of warm body and vanilla soap.

  CHAPTER 18

  There had been many sexual experiences that made up Bobby’s total experience of women since he lost his virginity to Helen Green at the age of thirteen.

  She had been his girlfriend at the time―his first girlfriend—so it had seemed all right. She had wanted to have sex as well. She even encouraged it. They did it in her room while her mother was out buying milk to make a cake for them. Helen’s mom had always liked Bobby, with his good looks and hard working nursing mother. She hadn’t minded leaving the two alone. They were only thirteen, after all.

  Bobby hadn’t been sure what he was supposed to do with Helen Green once he got her naked. He hoped that natural instinct would take over and he’d figure it out. And it had. His body seemed to know where to go all on its own.

  The act was over quickly, and so was his relationship with Helen, who decided she didn’t want to have a boyfriend anymore and wanted to play Barbie dolls with her friends instead. What had started so promising ended so abruptly, and for months after Bobby wondered what he had done wrong.

  He almost turned away from girls completely, but at fifteen he was older and wiser. Books, commercials, magazines, stories at school, they all prepared him for the next step up, which came in the form of Amy Longfinger.

  Amy was fifteen, like him, but she seemed much older and wiser. She wasn’t beautiful, but she sure was sexy with her bouncy dark curls and curvy hips, and most importantly, she wanted Bobby. In their poor neighborhood where nothing much happened, sex with a cute boy was something happening.

  Amy made Bobby her boyfriend by kissing him after school behind the old dumpster. It had smelled of fish that day, but Bobby didn’t care. The rejection of Helen still burnt his ego, and he had high hopes that Amy would rub that away. Fish smells were a small price to pay for hope.

  Amy’s lips were quivery, not what he had expected from an expert, but it made him more confident, and in no time he became an experienced kisser. As a reward, Amy let him go to second base on their second date, and all the way to show time on their fourth. They had sex a total of eight times before Amy’s older sister, Georgette, who was six months pregnant and barely seventeen at the time, caught them red handed on Amy’s bed in the middle of the afternoon.

  Boy, did Amy get it from her father. Bobby never dared talk to her again after he saw the bruises on her face the next day. He was scared. Scared of fathers, and scared of Georgette’s enormous belly as it jumped and bumped up and down while Georgette ranted and raved and pulled Amy off the bed by her hair.

  That belly stayed with Bobby longer than Amy’s smooth lips and curvy hips did. It became engrained in his memory. “This could happen to you,” it seemed to say. He would never forget how lucky he had been. And just like that, it was the end of girlfriend number two.

  Bobby thought that having his first two relationships end so abruptly might not be a good start, but at least it was a start. A lot of boys his age hadn’t even had a kiss yet. Encouraged by his new found experience, both in women and condom application, Bobby went on to enamor Raquel in ninth grade, Brenda, also in ninth, Julia for a short while in tenth, Raquel again, Pauline and Madeline, also in tenth, Josephine in eleventh, and Brenda again that same year.

  Emma Cooper, however, was his first love. She had entered his school in twelfth grade, and every single boy fell for her. She had green eyes, a head full of tight blonde curls, and a silky olive skin that could be credited to her West Indian father. Emma was ready to take on anyone who thought they had something to say about it, but she needn’t have worried—no one would have dared. Her father looked liked a defense football player, and he probably was. Bald head and bulging biceps, Emma’s dad was a force no one in their sensible minds wanted to recon with.

  Emma’s mother, on the other hand, was a dainty and fussy white Southern Bell who only wore pastel summer dresses with equally bright high heels. And unlike the other moms, Emma’s mother only ever wore a hint of green eye shadow and pink lip-gloss. She never covered herself in foundation or blush, and was fond of wearing hats to protect her skin from the sun. If Bobby hadn’t fallen in love with Emma first, he would have probably fallen in love with Emma’s mother.

  Bobby longed to touch Emma’s silky skin. He felt himself quite an expert by now and almost entitled to touch her. But she made him work for it. For months she teased him, let him carry her books, open doors, pick up her soda tab at the corner cafe. He was crazy. Crazy in love. He didn’t even have to have sex; he just needed her to let him touch her.

  And she did, one miraculous night. They agreed to meet at the movies. Bobby had splurged on the popcorn and drinks and was feeling quite hopeful for the evening. They settled down to watch Scream, chosen especially by Bobby with the sole purpose of getting Emma to make contact with him.

  His plan worked. Emma had groped for his hand the second the first scene started, and had held tightly throughout the entire movie. During some of the more intense scenes she had even buried her face against his chest, allowing him clear wafts of the vanilla soap she had used hours earlier.

  Even though Bobby was an experienced lover by now and had had several girlfriends, he would remember Emma most. Not for what he never got—after all, girls like Emma don’t just give it away—but because of what he managed to squeeze out. Holding her hand during the movie, the feel of her skin on his finger tips, the tickling of her curls against his bare arm. Magic.

  Emma moved around a lot and was gone by the following semester. He had never asked her why, never known what her parents did, or why she didn’t love him more.

  CHAPTER 19

  When Bobby awoke, the sun had shifted. He felt it must after three o’clock. He smacked his lips and felt their dryness. Yes, he had been with Susan for hours. It had been a life changing experience. Even her smell seemed to still be with him. Was that possible?

  Although he couldn’t say with complete certainty whether he was sane or a raging lunatic, his house and bed felt as real to him now as his time with Susan had. In fact, Bobby decided that reality was a state much overrated. Reality meant no Susan, and no Susan meant this empty undesirable state of being that was not being with Susan. Susan. Susan.

  He willed himself to go back. But it didn’t work. It never worked like that. He decided to get up and see if Rosa had a newspaper for him.

  Who he found first was Lester.

  “Do you have the paper, Lester?”

  “Today’s paper, sir?”

  Was that really necessary? Was Lester testing him to see if he knew what day it was? His mother was in France and everyone had turned into his parent.

  “Lester.”

  “I’ll just fetch it for you, Mr. A
nderson.”

  Bobby waited in the hall until Lester came back with an assortment of newspapers and magazines that were delivered to the house on a daily basis. Bobby didn’t often read the newspaper, and usually only glimpsed at the magazines, and only if they were about him, but today he felt like reading something about the world. In fact, he didn’t even look at the magazines, which he knew were about his drinking episode last night. Susan had told him enough already.

  Settling down on his favorite lounge chair, Bobby opened the paper. Although he hadn’t read a newspaper in a while, he was sincerely shocked to discover that nothing had changed in the world at all. Of course, some things must be different, but actually… no, they weren’t. Some terrorist group was still posing a threat to national security. Some uppity uppity guy in government was being a scoundrel. A law had passed and another hadn’t. People were angry. People were hopeful. People wanted answers. A new play had opened up in Manhattan with Tom Hanks taking the lead role. A well known theatre company had sadly closed. A factory was closing too. People were out of work. Jobs were being created.

  Bobby sighed. The players had changed, but the stories were still the same. Disappointed, he let the paper fall and reluctantly grabbed the stack of glamour magazines. There were the terrible shots of him being escorted from the club. No wonder Rosa was being so nice. He looked like a train crash.

  But Bobby wasn’t upset. This, after all, had been his plan, and it had worked. It had worked better than he even imagined it would. He had actually had sex with Susan.

  Remembering the moment now made him smile and catch his breath. This girl was the one. The only one. Now he knew what all those people were talking about when they said, “You know when you know”. He knew he was in love with Susan because he didn’t have to ask anyone. He would go to New York City and find her. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want to see him or if she didn’t look the same as in the dream. If she was some sort of a scam, he would deal with it when the time came. And if she’s a figment of your imagination? Well, he would deal with that too.