“I’m going with you?”
“We can’t leave you here. Besides, I dragged you down a mountain. I think in cases such as this I’m supposed to guard you. There must be a law about that,” she said with that genial tone of hers. It had been a while since she had employed it. It felt stale and difficult to sound so carefree, it almost hurt her tongue, but she managed a smile, and he looked pleased.
She must practice, she thought. It was all practice. She’d learn to live without worry, without fears, without any darkness chasing after her.
“Mexico City, then,” he said. “It’s very large.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” she replied, stifling a yawn with her injured hand.
His eyes fixed on Noemí’s splinted fingers. “Does it hurt very badly?” he asked quietly.
“It hurts a little. No sonatas for me for a while. Maybe we can play a duet and you help me with the left hand.”
“Seriously, Noemí.”
“Seriously? Everything hurts. It’ll mend.”
Maybe it wouldn’t, and maybe she’d never be able to coax notes out of a piano the same way she used to, maybe she would never be able to vanquish this experience, but she didn’t want to say that. There was no point in saying that.
“I did hear your cousin telling you to sleep. It sounded like a good idea.”
“Bah. Sleep is boring,” she proclaimed and fidgeted with her pack of cigarettes.
“Do you have nightmares?”
She shrugged and did not reply, tapping her index finger against the box.
“I didn’t have nightmares about my mother. Maybe I will dream of her later,” Francis said. “But I did dream the house had stitched itself together and I was inside of it, and this time there was no way out. I was alone in the house, and all the doors were sealed.”
She crushed the box. “It’s all gone. I told you, it’s all gone.”
“It was grander than before. It was the house before it had fallen into disrepair; the colors were vivid and there were flowers growing in the greenhouse, but flowers also grew inside, and there were forests of mushrooms up the staircase and in the rooms,” he said, his voice infinitely calm. “And when I walked, mushrooms sprouted from my footsteps.”
“Please, be quiet,” she said, and she wished he had dreamed of murder, of blood and viscera. This dream was much more disquieting.
She dropped her box of cigarettes. They both looked down at the ground, where it had landed between her chair and his bed.
“What if it’s never gone? What if it’s in me?” he asked, and there was a hitch in his voice.
“I don’t know,” she said. They’d done everything they could. Burned all the mushrooms, destroyed the gloom, ingested Marta’s tincture. It ought to be gone. Yet,in the blood.
He shook his head with a heavy exhalation. “If it’s in me, then I should put an end to it, and you shouldn’t be so close to me, it’s not—”
“It was a dream.”
“Noemí—”
“You’re not listening.”
“No! It was a dream. Dreams can’t hurt you.”
“Then why won’t you go to sleep?”
“I don’t want to, and it has nothing to do with this. Nightmares mean nothing.”
He intended to protest, she pulled herself closer to him, settled on the bed and finally under the covers, bidding him to hush as she embraced him. She felt his hand ghosting against her hair, heard his heart stuttering and smoothing into a steady beat.
She looked up at him. Francis’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
