Eleventh Hour

I dreamt of us last night. You invited me to come over, so I went to your house. As it happens in dreams, it wasn’t the same house you actually live in. You didn’t greet me at the door and I wandered in, searching for you.

I wasn’t intruding. I had been invited.

I found the bathroom door standing halfway open. I thought you were probably in there getting ready. Respecting this boundary, I didn’t enter. “Are you in here?”

“Obviously,” you said.

“Oh, I didn’t hear the shower before.” I could hear the water clearly now.

I gave you space to finish showering and checked myself in the mirror on the wall in your room. When you came out we kissed like we always do, and our embrace progressed like it always does, taking us to your bed.

Someone interrupted us. I don’t remember the face of that person now, because the interrupting people kept coming. One after the other, sometimes in pairs or groups. Men and women, all ages, all races, all sizes, shapes, and colors kept coming to persuade you to leave with them for some reason or another.

We continued hold one another, to kiss, to search for pleasure in one another, to do what we have created a habit of doing with our bodies, but the interruptions became frustrating, and I thought, “Neither of us are being satisfied by this.”

Inevitability, the final interruption came, and you left to go somewhere with someone. Again, I don’t know who. The faces have melded now. There were just so many.

I waited there on your bed, but after a while I realized I should check the time so I wouldn’t be late for work.

The clock on my phone had disappeared. I tucked the phone into my purse, and as it happens in dreams, suddenly there was a twin sized bed in your room that I hadn’t noticed before. An old lady bent next to it, packing her belongings into a small bag. Apparently, she was your roommate and now moving out. I asked her the time. She wore a smart hat with a short veil which she lifted before speaking with me.

“11:00,” she said.

Panic gripped me. My business opens at 10:00! There would be clients waiting for me to unlock the door. Some had probably already given up on me and left. I was not even dressed for work yet! I ran outside to find you, to tell you I was leaving.

Hundreds of people, all strangers to me filled your yard, but I couldn’t see you anywhere. I left without saying goodbye. I had no choice.

As soon as I stepped from your property, a different country surrounded me. A dreary foreign land with hard concrete structures, no color, and with a turnstile that I had to pass through to get home.

The toll was $1.60, and the people working the turnstiles didn’t speak English. I had plenty of money in my purse - a $2 bill and several $100s. I tried to give the young girl collecting the tolls in my line the $2 bill.

She laughed at me and said with a heavy accent, “No! Not real money!”

I argued, but she refused. I searched my wallet and found one of those special collector edition Easter Bunny dollars that has the rabbit taped over Washington’s face. But she laughed again and said no. The $100s were too big for her to make change.

I found my phone and tried to text you to tell you I had left, but when I touched your name on the screen the text box wouldn’t appear. I still couldn’t tell you goodbye.

I stood at the turnstile completely stranded. I couldn’t go home. And you were somewhere out of reach.

Then I woke up.

Obviously, the dream haunts me long after my eyes have opened. Obviously, I know what it means.

Obviously, we could keep doing what we do, neither of us satisfied. I could keep waiting for you when you get drawn away. Again and again and again until I can’t find you at all.

Obviously, the old lady and the twin bed didn’t instantaneously appear in your room even though that sort of thing often happens in dreams. Obviously, she was the reflection in the mirror that had been there all along. I just didn’t recognize my image because too much time had gotten away from me. I waited for you longer than I realized.

Until the eleventh hour.

Obviously.