A full-body shiver ran through me again, but this time I didn’t think it was the cold. Maybe I felt threatened after all.
“We’re closed,” he said, and even in those two clipped words I could hear the lilt of an accent. I might be living in my subconscious right now, but I’d still learned my lesson about commenting onthat.
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t really know what else to say. This was all so surreal. I couldn’t believe that my own mind would betray me by dreaming up places that weren’t open for business. I’d read once, when I was a kid, about someone who’d said they couldn’t visualize a cup of milk without making it tip over and spill. Over and over, they’d tried to picture it, and every time the cup would tilt and milk would cover the table. I’d become a little obsessed with that idea at the time, of your mind getting stuck on something like that. I’d tried to visualize my own cup of milk, but when it tipped over and spilled I never knew if I was experiencing the same glitch or just manufacturing it to happen.
The man was staring at me, and I realized it must seem quite odd, this woman just standing in front of his closed shop with no sign of moving. If it seemed any way at all to him. I’d never really thought about the consciousness ofotherpeople in my dreams before.
He sighed, and when his voice came again it was gruff. “Electricity’s out,” he said. “I can have a look at your car but might not be able to do much.”
“I don’t have a car,” I said automatically.
A flash of a look crossed his face, an unmistakablethen what the fuck are you doing here?before he gestured behind him. “Bus to Dublin city center runs every fifteen minutes or so. About a kilometer down the road, little more, keep straight and you can’t miss it.”
Dublin?I hadn’t realized I’d said it aloud until he gave me a slow nod, like he thought there might be something wrong with me. Which. Therewassomething wrong with me. I just didn’t quite know what.
“American, yeah?” he said. “Anywhere you want to go, it’ll likely be through Dublin. Take a right at the road, stay straight, it’s about ten minutes, fifteen if you walk slow. Can’t miss it.”
An inappropriate urge to laugh bubbled up inside me. His confidence in what I couldn’t miss seemed suddenly wildly funny, since I felt like I was missingeverything. Was I somehow in Ireland? How was I inIreland?
Whatever existential or logistical crisis I was in the middle of, the man wanted no part of it. He gave me one last look, a perfunctory nod that was clearly his closest approximation tohave a good day, and then he disappeared around the side of the building.
It felt like I was in the middle of a video game, and I’d never been much good at those. Like I had two options—follow the man and try to talk to him, get more information. Or follow the road like he’d told me to and see where it took me.
Maybe there was a third option. Lie back down in the middle of the grass where I’d woken up in the first place, close my eyes, and see what happened. I tried it standing right where I was, closing my eyes and repeating the words in my head.Wake up wake up wake up. I didn’t want to be in this weird liminal space anymore. I didn’t want the glass of milk to keep spilling over.
When I opened my eyes again, everything was the same. That blue, blue sky, the stretch of green grass, the garage, the cars parked around the field. I suddenly missed my car with a fierceness I never thought I’d feel about a nine-year-old compact sedan. I wanted nothing more than to be able to climb inside of it, see if myCheck Oillight was on again even though I’d just gotten an oil change, and put the horrible date and confusing aftermath behind me as I drove all the familiar streets home.
But for now, I was here, and I didn’t know what to do except I knew I had to dosomething. I headed for the road.
Four
The mechanic was right, asit turned out. I couldn’t miss it.
There had been something so removed about that garage on the hill, or maybe it was just me, my imagination that could only fill out so much of the scenery at one time. I was still buffering. But the minute I got to the road, I realized this was a wholetown, with shops and buildings, cars driving by, a bicyclist who almost ran over me when I wasn’t paying attention and shouted something I couldn’t catch but assumed wasn’t flattering.
The cars were on the wrong side of the road. More confirmation that I was in Ireland, or at least a dreamscape that simulated it as closely as my mind could muster. Some of the shops I passed were unfamiliar—there was a bookmaker, a master butcher—but some felt more like home. There were several corner markets. I even saw one of the same chaindepartment stores I’d gone to for back-to-school clothes as a kid, although the name was slightly different so maybe it wasn’t the same store at all.
If this weren’t such a weird and stressful situation, it would’ve been a lovely walk. Even the cold weather was kind of nice, now that I was moving. The air was crisp and pure. People were out and about on the sidewalks, an old man with a cane looking down more at the ground than in front, so I was careful when I went around him. A stylish young woman in a bright pink sweater, earbuds in and striding with the kind of straight-ahead purpose that said she had somewhere to be. The first time I saw someone I could smile at, I did it just to get the smile back. It all felt so real.
The journey probably took me on the longer side of the mechanic’s estimate—I wasn’t normally a slow walker, but I was taking everything in—before I came upon the yellow pole with a sign that advertised the bus stop.
An older woman was already there, sitting on a motorized scooter with bags of groceries in the basket on the front. She gave me a once-over as I came up next to her, looking irritated for some reason I couldn’t understand. Because I was American? Could she tell that, just by looking at me? The mechanic had clocked it immediately, but he’d also had my accent to go on. I’d always heard that it was our giant, ugly white sneakers that gave us away, but I was still wearing the plain black flats I’d worn on my date.
“You’ll catch your death, dressed like that,” the woman scolded, giving my bare calves another disapproving glare.
I glanced down at myself, even though I knew what I’d see. “I came from Florida,” I said.
Her eyebrows went up. “All the more reason to cover yourself,” she said. “You’re not used to this.”
She didn’t know the half of it. If I had to guess, it was in the low fifties—not freezing by any means, but a good twenty degrees colder than where I’d been only a few hours ago. Or at least, I thought it was a few hours. I realized I didn’t actually know. When I’d fallen in that parking lot, it had been dark, and then by the time I woke up, it was light and I was halfway across the world.
“What day is it?” I asked. “If you don’t mind.”
“Saturday,” she said, giving me a strange look. “The Ides of March.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said, more to assure myself than her. Yesterday had been my birthday. Yesterday, I’d had that awful date, and then I’d gone to the parking lot and talked to Marisol. I’d been planning to pick up some cake on the way home, and then…and then everything had gone black. Was it possible this was real, that I wasn’t in a dream at all but had been kidnapped somehow, left for dead in the middle of a foreign country?
I didn’t know if the idea made me feel better or worse. Better because at least it would be an explanation, worse because…well, nobody liked human trafficking.
