“Then it’s the wine.”
There was wine last night. A lot of wine. And wine dreams don’t count — everyone knows wine dreams don’t count. Inadmissible.
Except the dream isn’t the problem. Dream whatever you want, that’s free. The problem is the dream showing up in your apartment and taking the door off its hinges to get there.
Wine doesn’t do previews.
Wine also has no issue with regret.
“I read too much.” Okay. Yes. Here’s a real one. I read too much, my brain is fully furnished with impossible men, and it needed somewhere to put a face. That’s all a dream is — the brain doing its laundry. Everything in the machine went in the machine at some point.
Except I know my machine. I build them. Every man I’ve ever dreamed, I built him out of a book and I could tell you which book. And I didnotbuild that man. He came pre-assembled with his eyes already—
“Blue eyes are common,” I whisper, and I’m pointing at the sink now, prosecuting a faucet. “Millions of people have blue eyes. Statistically it would be weirder if none of them broke my door.”
Good. Great point. Case closed.
Except they’re not blue.
They’re pale. Almost silver, where the dark should be. Nobody has—
The mug leaves my hand.
I don’t drop it. That would imply a decision was involved. It’s just in my hand and then it’s everywhere, all over the tile, a hundred pieces of a mug that survived three apartments and two boyfriends and could not survive this sentence.
“Shit.”
Full volume. The one word tonight gets through at full volume.
I get the broom. Sweeping is good. Sweeping is a task I can do because you can tell when sweeping is done, which puts it ahead of everything else in my life right now.
And somewhere in the middle of the little pile of pieces, bent over a dustpan in my own kitchen, I stop pretending.
“I dreamed him,” I whisper.
The broom doesn’t argue. Gerald would’ve at least had the decency to be a plant about it, but Gerald’s in the living room with them, being brave, and I’m in here whispering confessions to cleaning supplies.
“I dreamed him, and now he’s standing in my living room.”
And in the dream he called me—
Nope.
Not finishing that one.
That one goes in the box. I have a literal box for things I’m not dealing with. Metaphorically. Also literally, which is not a thought I have time for either.
Mugs. Count the mugs.
Six this morning. One in the sink from deadline week, and I am not washing dishes in front of strangers, that’s how they get you. One deceased, may she rest. That’s four. The blue one has a chip — I check the chip. Clean. Fine. It’s not damaged, it’s got character.
Four mugs. Five people.
The measuring cup looks at me from the drying rack.
“Don’t make it weird,” I tell it. “You have a handle. You’re basically a mug with a math degree.”
Drafted. Welcome to the roster.
