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I am drinking Zaya rum with a guy named Joe, in a place with dark green walls, and the kind of lights they have in pool halls: islands of bright in a sea of darkness. On a corner stage, only an inch or two off the floor, a frayed white girl sits on a stool, hefting a vintage Les Paul guitar onto her thigh. She plugs it in, then adjusts the vibrato. She starts plucking notes — all sharps and flats, and in-betweens; the sounds a spider makes testing her web, wondering what she’ll catch.
She sings:
This is my least favorite life
The one where you fly and I don’t A kiss holds a million deceits And a lifetime goes up in smoke.
“That’s it!” I almost shout, one hand fluttering toward the stage, the other pawing through a brown accordion folder. I pull out a single sheet of brilliantly white, watermarked onionskin paper, typed on an old Olivetti Underwood portable with a damaged lowercase “a” that prints a little low. “Look at the date,” I tell Joe, pointing to the bottom right corner.
The song goes on:
This is my least favorite you
Who floats far above earth and stone The nights that I twist on the rack
Is the time that I feel most at home
Joe leans forward, squinting. “Nineteen—”
“Thirty years ago,” I say. “I wrote this thirty years ago, but I didn’t hear the song until now. I didn’t even have a memory of it until now.”
Joe screws up his face.
I push the paper across the table. “Read it,” I say.
He turns his head to one side, focusing a single eye on the page. He leans back, placing a finger in the center of the sheet, then pushes it toward me. “You read it,” he says.
I stare at him, then, like a hypnotist, read the title: “Sleep.”
Parker Jones awoke in the middle of the night. A man floating above him said, "Life is an illusion. But, it doesn’t matter. Pain is real." When Parker told his wife this the next morning at breakfast, she looked at him for a moment then said, "Eat your eggs.”
The next night, the floating man again woke Parker, and said, "There is no such thing as death. But, it doesn’t matter. Fear exists." At work the next day, Parker told a friend over lunch about the floating man, and what he'd said. His friend laughed, and offered to share his sandwich.
On the third night, the floating man said, "Love is ever fleeting. But, it doesn’t matter. There is no alternative." Before the floating man could disappear, Parker asked him, "How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
"It doesn’t matter," the floating man said. "No one else is talking.”
Parker woke his wife and asked if she'd been talking to him. She mumbled she had not, and told him to go back to sleep. The next day at work, he asked people if they'd been playing tricks on him, talking to him in the middle of the night. They all laughed, some good-naturedly slapping him on the back, some just winking.
That night, when the floating man appeared, Parker spoke first: "I know what you tell me is the truth, but I don’t want to hear it.”
"Really?" the floating man said, a little surprised.
"Yes," Parker said. "Really. I'm not going to listen to you any more.”
The floating man disappeared, and Parker slept soundly. The next morning, he woke refreshed, and ate a hearty breakfast. At work he was cheerful, and productive. He returned home that night, satisfied. After dinner, he sat cuddled on the couch with his wife watching TV. He slept that night, and every night thereafter, in peace.
Joe arches his eyebrows, shrugging like a Frenchman.
“Don’t you get it?” I say. “The floating man? Floating above earth and stone?” Joe sits back in the booth, his arms crossed, hands stuffed into his armpits. “The song— Tonight. It’s what caused me to write the story thirty years ago.” The singer interrupts:
This is my least favorite life
The one where I am out of my mind The one where you are just out of reach The one where I stay and you fly
“Ah! That one,” I say. “I know exactly where it is.” I pull out a sheet of Eaton corrasable bond, typed with an IBM Selectric. There’s a coffee cup stain near the date.
Joe takes the paper, holding it with both hands like he’s driving a car. He tries to read the title: “Maw-nika.”
“No. No. No,” I say, taking the page from him. I stare at him as though he should know better.
Mo-nica! MO-NI-KA! Not MAW-nika. Not anything with a maw in it. Certainly not MAW-nika. She would never let herself be called that. She is MO-nika, the moon — my little moon; my Ishtar, Astarte, Inanna — Queen of the night. She is Monica; my Monica.
See how she stands there: poised, calm, reserved, one hand resting easily on her hip, the other drawn to her cheek. Thinking? Behind those pure blue eyes are thoughts only Monica knows. See her lips — perfectly done, bright red against pale moon skin. See her parted lips, hinting of the whitest teeth, her tongue poised behind them. Is she about to speak? Will she tell us what she's thinking?
I would love to hear Monica speak in a siren voice of whispers and echoes; half-mad promises in the dark; a lilting morning voice, brightly laughing; a voice that said — no matter what she said — "I love you.”
And it's true, of course. We are lovers. We meet here every night, and every night she fixes me with unblinking eyes. I am ensnared, caught up, captivated. I am enthralled. I dream my hands are entangled in her thick black hair. I imagine she collapses against me, sighing.
I know exactly what she wants. "Never change," her eyes tell me. "Always be yourself; what you are today." Her smile, her open lips — I want to reach for her hand. "Do it for me?" she asks in a way I can never resist.
And yet, I fear, it will never be. Those deliciously graceful fingers may never lie entwined in mine. Our lips may never touch. The distance between us, though small, is too great.
I step back and take a fresh look at her, standing there in the display window. "Good night, Monica." I look up at her. “Tomorrow?"
She needn't speak. Her eyes say it all: Yes.
“What are you saying,” Joe asks. “that you go back in time—”
“Not me,” I interrupt. “Not anything with mass. That would be impossible. But— Feelings, maybe; emotions. The ambience— What do I know? Quantum entanglement! The photons in the lights; electrons in the wires; membrane potentials, ions slipping back and forth. Who knows: Maybe it all mixes together, whirling into an ever tighter spiral, creating a wormhole in spacetime. Maybe ... Maybe sometimes, the future just leaks back into the past.”
Joe smiles.
I look at the bottle. His eyes follow mine. He raises his eyebrows. I nod. He refills our glasses. I swirl mine, watching tears of alcohol slide down the sides, melting into the reddish caramel- colored liquid. I hold up my glass: “Skol!”
Joe recoils. His eyes narrow. “Did you come to drink?” he asks, leaning forward. A grin overtakes his face. “Or, to talk?”
We clink glasses, then laugh.
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