Spring Fling: the Empty Vessel

3rd installment of the 2nd novel-in-progress.


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE

The Empty Vessel
Credits rolled at the end of my dream last night. It was a dream called “Silverbeard’s Flight,” and in the dream I could fly anywhere I wanted. After soaring past the freezing peaks of mountains and swooping close to the ocean’s surface where telepathic dolphins urged me onwards to self-discovery, I found myself floating introspectively above my old childhood neighborhood. All my old buddies were playing kickball in the Kowalski’s backyard on Hancock Street. I watched from a vantage point of about forty feet but soon discovered I had telephoto zoom-in power which got me close enough to see the golden beads of sweat on Robbie’s ten-year-old forehead. Roland was chortling over at first base, the old English D of his baseball cap sizzling with golden sunlight. Summertime in Michigan, happy daze. There was fat Walter who scared me because he was two years older than the rest of us which seemed like a whole generation to me then. Now he giggled and waved to me like a kissable cherub. The door slammed open and out ran Steve and Scott and Mark Dilley, my first best friend. I circled and circled, the air was sweet with the sweat of good times, and Robbie’s mom came out with lemonade and those magical tube-top-boobies I used to dream about.
The dream flapped on like laundry on the line, and Mark called out, “C’mon Jimmy! Play with us.” And then it hit me: I was ten years old again. My dream-body was that of a little boy, and I did cartwheels and rolling somersaults in the air for the joy of it. Ecstatic bolts of life energy pumped and poured through me. I breathed through lungs that had never tasted cigarettes. My brain smoked with rapid thought as if it had never been dulled by drink. I was back, I was ten again, given a second chance at eternity. I tried to recall how I stumbled upon the secret of time travel. Somehow I’d done it, maybe for the love of Laura whom I’d have to find before she moves to California again with her family. I’d done it--I knew that I knew I was not just dreaming in a ten-year-old’s body, but my sleeping self had found a way to return to the scene of the crime when the soul went bitter.
Mark waved and I descended. Then Robbie’s mom let the dogs out, and they snarled at me, leaped at me with devil’s teeth and foaming mouths stinking of rot. All went black and I thought--No!--and credits rolled, starting with the title, “Silverbeard’s Flight, and ending with “two German shepherds, played by ‘You-too’ and ‘Second-best’, of the Kowalski family, 1977.” I woke panting and clutching my knees beneath the sheets in my Portland apartment. Alone and approaching forty. Here and now.
Holly used to dream terrible things and would wake me from my own subconscious dribbling to share. Some of them had apocalyptic themes, such as when the old church bells were beaten by gangsters with sledgehammers all around town and her scar bled puddles which rippled from the din. She shook me awake that morning, looked into my eyes imploringly: “You would protect me from evil, wouldn’t you Jimmy? wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, yes, yes my darling, sh sh, need coffee . . .”
Or the time she dreamed the sun scooped her up with black talons and transported her to a secret room in a hidden galaxy where I was fornicating with a bevy of whores who turned out to be her own girlfriends and a gruff voiceover sounded out, “Sick! Ning!”
And she woke me, beat on chest, begging to know if I’d been faithful.
And I hadn’t been. And I told her so. I could never lie to Holly directly. Through omission, of course, but facing her with those blue eyes huge enough to see my own reflection in--never. She took the news well, considering that not only I had betrayed her, but her friend Sandy too.
“So Jimmy, you gotta cripple fetish?” Sandy had an artificial leg.
“It was just once, during one of our temporary breakups,” I said. “You’re not crippled, Holly.”
She nodded. “I suppose I should be glad you didn’t fuck a real woman. Wouldn’t you say so Jimmy--I should be relived, right?”
“Stop it. I said I’m sorry.”
“You accept my scar if not my sex.” She got out of bed and ran her fingers through her hair. “You should’ve known I’d figure it out Jimmy. The self when it dreams is an empty vessel. Now and then the dream-people spill some truth into the vessel. That is how I learn things.” She smiled proudly and clasped her bra. “That is what you call my witchery.”
“You forgive me?” I said.
“Don’t lie to me again!”
“I won’t, I won’t,” I said. “And you forgive Sandy? She made me promise not to tell you. She considers you a--”
“Former friend,” Holly snapped. “Friends don’t fuck around with other friends’ boyfriends.”
“But-but, you’ve forgiven me.”
“And what I do with Sandy is now out of your hands,” she said while posing before the mirror. “Now pour me some more coffee. Black this time.”
Holly and I tended to move on from such moments as if they never happened. It was still early in our courtship and each present moment contained its own beginning, middle and end then melted into the next present moment, always seemingly self-contained, untainted by the blessings or despairs of the previous eternities. Only now do I have time and energy of mind (though I yearn for emptiness like the thirsty for water) to reflect on the dramatic beauty and brilliance of our shifting times. It was never the same with Holly. There was no complacency, no doldrums, and as such our love couldn’t die from them. She went to work after that black coffee and a few tokes from her pipe, and I went off to Powell’s to browse among the hidden wonders in the bookshelves. When I got home there was a message from her on my voice mail. She used her high, sleepy voice, the voice she used to connote sweetness and conciliation.
Holly’s internal monologue number one. Jimmy, let there be no more division amongst us. I had a toothache today at the store, one of my molars was screaming expletives in my head, and the hordes of riffraff showed no mercy, plopping their shitty malt liquor on the counter and barking out orders for cigarettes, and leering at my cleavage, but I so prefer your tender appreciations to theirs. Anyway my darling, we’re in this tale of magic and pain together, and I’m glad and I just want you to know that I love you and I’m so sorry I’m so neurotic. Please call me. Bye.
Holly’s phone messages quelled an any thought of desiring independence from her. I saved them all and listened to them during times of doubt, resaving them always after a hundred days at the voicemail’s prompt. I coveted every saved syllable of her voice. I wanted a record for posterity. Part of me worried it could end any moment.