Journeys
The Dream within the Dream
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One morning Jim Vance woke up in a dream. His shoulders shrugged up and he opened his eyes and frowned. The dusky morning shadows swept from the ceiling down the walls and over the dresser and nightstand, as they always did. Even the oversized old-fashioned alarm clock that he kept on the dresser because it was the only thing that could wake him up appeared as usual. Still, though the room looked the same and felt the same as every other morning, he was sure it wasn’t. He knew it was a dream.
He breathed in and pulled his awareness into the blackness at the back of his head, hoping he’d wake up or at least go out of REM sleep into ‘neutral’ sleep and wake up from there. But there was nothing but darkness at the back of his head, darkness and continuing awareness that, though his room, the world, looked utterly normal, he remained inside a dream. The alarm clanged. He looked at it. It clanged harder and seemed to be bouncing up and down, cartoonishly. That made him blink and feel he’d found something to verify that this was a dream. But then it always seemed to jerk and bounce around. For a moment, he let it ring, hoping the ringing would wake him up. But it kept ringing and scuffling around on the dresser. So, sighing, he jumped up and banged it off. Standing in the middle of the room, chilly, out of his cocoon, he walked around the room and still couldn’t be sure, but was sure, and wanted to crawl back into bed. But dream or not, he had to use the bathroom and after he’d done that, and figuring he could wake up at any time, so it didn’t matter if he was lying down or not, and on the off-chance he actually was awake, he started on his day. He’d read somewhere that you couldn’t eat in dreams, but he was not only able to put a good breakfast away, but enjoyed every bite of the eggs and bacon. When he’d finished showering, he pulled a pale green checked shirt out of the closet. Then he smiled and, figuring since this was a dreamworld, he might as well wear something less reserved and grabbed his favorite blue shirt and lavender tie and topped it with a light gray sport jacket. Checking himself out in the bathroom mirror, he didn’t see much different than when he was in normal reality: medium height, slim, black wavy hair still black and intact at forty-two. And smiling, he thought that the unexpected ensemble set off his dream persona quite effectively. The ride to downtown San Francisco on the 38 bus was much the same as usual. It was rush hour, so the bus was packed and, since everybody was on the way to work and didn’t have friends or relatives to chat with, the ride was eerily quiet. There were no lights on so there were shadows hanging in the ceiling. The people were dressed in work clothing, mainly grays and browns and, standing and sitting still, they seemed like substantial shadows themselves. Standing there, clinging to a handhold, attired in slightly brighter and lighter clothing, Jim watched the silent forms oozing back and forth with the movement of the bus and found the scene surreal, dreamlike. He felt a jerk and realized that that was true, but that it was that way every day. Still, there was something about those shadows. They reminded him of that darkness at the back of his head. |
1
He sat down at his desk. The phone rang. “Hi Jim.”
“Ruth! How are you?” he fairly shouted. There was a pause. “Boy, you’re sure energized for 8:30 AM.” He shuffled around on the chair. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “It’s just good to hear from you.” “Well, thanks,” she said, and he could practically see her mouth turn up on one side only, as it often did. “I—I had this dream last night,” he told her. “Or maybe I did and I still—” He heard a rustling sound and looked up, and there was Madge, the Head Librarian and his boss, towering over the desk. “I’ll tell you about it tonight,” he said to Ruth, “that is, if we’re still on for six.” “Sure. That’s why I called. See you then.” He replaced the phone and looked at Madge. She was almost six-feet tall and rail thin, but somehow, rather than wraithlike, she seemed overpowering. With a start, he realized she resembled a caricature out of a dream. She took a step back and semi-smiled. “Was that Ruth?” “Yeah,” he said laying his palms on the desktop. “We’re getting together later.” “Say hello to her from me.” She stepped closer. “I have something I need you to do,” she said, and turned and started walking away. Jim wasn’t sure what to do, but pushed his chair back, got up and followed her out of his carpeted alcove into the hall. The floors in the hall were made of rough dark wood and the walls were dark too. On the left side was a brightly lit 20-foot long display case. That juxtaposition of light and dark was enhanced now because this month there was a children’s display and the case was not only almost glaringly-light but filled with brightly-colored books and stuffed animals. “Rosemary”—the Children’s Librarian—“is sick today,” Madge said. “And Henry”—the custodian—“is taking the day off. So, I hate to ask you, Jim, but there’s nobody else to take care of this.” She pointed at the case. Jim squinted at it but couldn’t see what she was talking about. She glanced at him and jabbed her finger at it. “I guess it happened last night,” she said. “See. There.” She pointed again. He looked again and this time saw two ragged orange lines traveling its length. “You need to wash that off,” she said. “We have no idea what that substance is, and it could be hazardous, so it can’t wait till tomorrow.” She crossed the dark hall, unlocked the door of Henry’s supply room and switched on the light. “You’ll find everything you need in here. Lock the door when you’re through.” She turned and walked away. Jim watched her go. He couldn’t believe she’d asked him to do this and, despite what she’d said, he was convinced it surely could wait till tomorrow. He also couldn’t believe he’d let her get away with it. |
2
Ruth was waiting at their usual table. He sat down across from her and patted her hand. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “It was a hard day, but what really delayed me was that, this morning, Madge had me pulling janitor duty.”
“What?” Ruth’s head had been tilted to the side. She straightened up and gave him what, behind her glasses and in the flickering candlelight, appeared to be a smile. He smiled himself. “It was weird,” he said and told her about removing the orange gunk while trying not to ruin his clothes or be toxified. As he talked, laughed and gesticulated, though he was feeling pretty good, he felt strangely drawn to the duskiness at the far side of the room. He also noticed that Ruth was wearing a charcoal gray dress and, in the weak light, her straight bobbed hair, though medium brown, appeared almost an identical charcoal color. He frowned, thinking it was as though the room and Ruth were turning cloudy-gray. Somewhere in the midst of his story, they’d ordered and now their food arrived. She struggled with her pasta and he nibbled on his chicken. They chatted, laughed and he felt almost comfortable again in that little oasis of light. Then, with a string of pasta dangling from her mouth, Ruth said, “So, what about that dream?” “What?” He jumped and his hand tightened around his fork. She smiled in that crooked way she had. “You told me you had a strange dream. What’s the scoop? Was it X-rated or something?” He let his breath out and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. But it was really weird.” He hesitated. “It’s just—when I woke up this morning, I felt like I was still sleeping and that I was waking into a dream, rather than out of one.” “Really,” she said. “So, when did you actually ‘wake’ up?” He put his fork down. “That’s just it. I never did. I feel like I’m still sleeping now.” He shook his head. “And that strange episode with the vandalism on the display case fit right in. It was surreal.” Ruth looked at him, smiling faintly. “So, does that mean I’m a dream character?” He looked around, eyes hopscotching here and there in the darkness. “I don’t know.” He smiled, trying to shrug it off. “But if so, that must mean I’m a dream figment too. But in that case, where is the real me who’s dreaming? And when will I wake up?” Ruth gave him a look, somewhere between blank stare and question. Then she dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and pushed back from the table. “I’m just a lowly social worker, not a psychologist,” she said, “but what I’d venture is that you having the sensation of being in a dream that never ends relates to you having a job that you also wish you could wake up from.” She looked harder at him. “So we’ve made it full-circle back to where we’ve been so many times—when are you going to look for another job? That incident you just told me about only emphasizes that you really need to get out of there.” |
3
He bristled. “I don’t think it’s that, Ruth. The sensation I had is that everything is a dream, or maybe unreal.” He paused. “I know I need to figure out if I want to change jobs or if it’s worth trying to make this one work better.” He paused again. “But this is something else entirely.”
“That is, the question remains whether to change jobs or go back to school,” she persisted. He shook his head. “I think it’s a little late to return to school.” He opened his hands out. “And what would I major in? Architecture again? Library Science?” After college, he’d enrolled in architecture school at UCB, then dropped out and worked at various administrative assistant jobs until he happened on the Library Assistant job three years ago. “I don’t want to be a librarian,” he said, suddenly realizing it, saying it. She blinked, seemed to relent a little and patted his hand. “Well, see, that’s progress right there.” “Maybe so.” He squeezed her hand, if tepidly. They left the restaurant and had walked a block when she said, “I should have mentioned earlier that I can’t come over tonight. I’ve got to be in Oakland at 7:30 tomorrow morning and have to get out of town by 6:30.” He dropped her hand. “I see.” She clasped his hand again. “But Friday is fine. You work Saturday, but not till ten, right?” She smiled and moved closer. “So, would that work for you?” “Sure,” he said. “Sure.” “But I can still give you a ride home now.” “There’s no reason you should drive all the way out to the Richmond District and then back across town. I’ll take the bus.” “You sure?” “Yup.” She put her arms around him. He kissed her lips, cheek, neck. Then they clasped hands goodbye. On the bus, he mulled over the status of their relationship. Two months ago he’d suggested they move in together. She said she was flattered but wasn’t ready yet considering her divorce had only become final a year ago. Sitting there, possibly still in the middle of a dream, he wondered if that was the only reason. |
4
That night he ‘dreamed’ he was standing on a small oblong patch of light-colored dust or sand. All around and above there was darkness, the blackness of night, the deepness of space. There was no discernible light-source, but somehow he could see that in the small ten-by-twenty-foot area around him, there was nothing but pale, dry dust, no buildings, plants or people.
The next morning, the clanging of the clock shook him back into his room. The room looked grainier than it should and again he had the sensation that he was dreaming. But this time, he spent no time hashing it over, but got right up. That day or ‘day’ moved along more smoothly than the previous one. Rosemary did rush in at 10:30 and breathlessly thank him for his ‘great work’ on the display case. Madge hadn’t thanked him the day before and didn’t now. That night he was again standing on that shelf of sand. At first it seemed the same, then he noticed some pebbles scattered around. There were also a couple of plants, so lackluster as to be almost indistinguishable from the soil around them. As he watched, the permeating darkness moved from dark to charcoal gray. He woke to the brightness of the room. Thursday night there were more plants and they were more lifelike. The swath of land was bigger too and there were little ‘eddies’ of land trailing off into the darkness, one of which was a rudimentary road. He took a step down that road, and was back in his room. On Friday, Ruth did stay over, and he had no dreams. But after she dropped him off at the library the next morning, he sat down at his desk and had a flash of ‘missing’ that open space where nothing was but him and sand and darkness. As he walked in the door of his apartment that afternoon, the phone rang. “Jimbo, what the hell have you been up to? I haven’t heard a peep from you for too damned long.” “Tom!” Jim exclaimed and sank down onto the couch, dropping his bag on the coffee table. “What a surprise. It has been awhile.” “Three months,” Tom declared. Jim laughed. “What’s with you, Tom? Do you keep records or something?” “No.” Tom didn’t seem to see the humor. “But it wasn’t long after Christmas. I do remember that.” Jim shook his head. “So how are you doing? How is Mary?”—Tom’s wife—“and your job?” Unlike Jim, Tom had graduated from architecture school and worked now for the city of LA. “Good. All good. How about you?” Tired, hungry and not really in the door yet, Jim was in no mood to discuss his life. “Okay, I guess. Still at the library. Still going with Ruth.” Then he added, hoping Tom would take the hint, “I just got off work. Kind of a busy week and I’m pretty tired.” Tom didn’t appear to take any hint. “Just got a promotion. Working on this big office building downtown. Really keeps me hopping! But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” |
5
Jim hardly knew what to say to that. “Great.”
There was a pause. “Hey, I thought I’d give you a call to catch up.” He seemed hesitant suddenly, unusual for him. “But also, uh, this is the bloom season in the desert and I thought I’d drive out to Death Valley next weekend and wondered if you’d want to go along. Mary’ll be in New York visiting her parents, so it’d just be the two of us.” He laughed. “We could see the flowers and do a little drinking. Catch up.” Jim squinted at the floor, listening hard and yet, somehow not hearing well at all. “You want me to . . . come down?” he said limply. “Well, yeah,” Tom said. “It really has been too long, a couple of years since you were here. I’ve been thinking about the good old days, the parties, the drinking, the laughs.” Jim remembered those times in school, before he ditched out. They were fun and exciting. But that was almost twenty years ago. The last time he’d visited Tom and Mary in LA had been strikingly different than those old days. He had sat with them in their elegant living room sipping wine from Tom’s wine cellar, after having been taken on two lengthy tours of it. Then they’d eaten lobster bisque or some such and had more wine on the terrace. “I miss those days,” Tom was saying now. Jim stifled a hiccup-laugh. Considering what Jim saw as Tom’s somewhat blasé life now, he certainly could see why he might. He frowned. Or maybe it was just that he was jealous that Tom had the ‘good life’ as a happily married, well-positioned professional with a beautiful home while he had a semi-professional library assistant job, lived in a rental and had a sometime-girlfriend. “We don’t have to go to the desert.” Tom was still pitching it. “But I remember how much you liked Joshua Tree.” Jim remembered it, the strange spiky, gnarly trees, the jagged cactuses. The sun. “The desert,” he mumbled aloud. “Desert.” He was suddenly acutely aware of the dusky room around him, especially the shadowy area beside the coffee table, and in his mind, he was standing on a stretch of sand with a sketch of road folding away into darkness. Around him were those pale, drooping plants. Desert plants, he saw now. “So whadaya say?” Tom was rattling on. “You can come down on Friday night and we can drive out on Saturday—or to the ocean, or a pizza joint.” He laughed. “I don’t really care where.” Jim popped out of his mind back into the room. “Oh—I—thanks for the invite, Tom. I appreciate it and it sounds good. Only thing is, I work Saturdays and one Sunday a month too and that happens to be next weekend.” He paused. “And I couldn’t get time off with only a week’s notice.” “That’s too bad,” Tom said. “You sure?” “Yeah. Sorry. Maybe another time.” |
6
Tom paused, then came bouncing back. “Well, hey, I’m disappointed. I really am. But, yeah, we’ll have to make it another time.”
Jim experienced a slight pulse of energy in the room and in his head and with it a bounce of awareness. Tom seemed genuinely disappointed. But for Tom, a possible visit from Jim doubtless represented only one item on a list. So, when Tom got off the phone now, he’d probably be moving down to the next person on that list in a continuing mission to arrange a boys’ week out. They talked a little longer, Tom doing most of the talking, joking and laughing and Jim moving with him, trailing along. Then they exchanged the usual pleasantries and hung up. For some time, Jim sat on the couch as the darkness settled in around him. He was hungry. He was tired. But after that conversation and especially after Tom’s words had triggered that image of his recurring dream and revealed to him what should have been obvious all along, that that dream-image was of a desert, he felt the need to let that realization seep in. The darkness in the room was grainy and almost resembled the darkness of the sky in the desert-dream. It moved and had contemplativeness or awareness in it. Suddenly, he thought of how, though he’d regretted parting with Ruth at the library that morning, he’d also felt relieved. He’d had no idea why and felt unsettled, even guilty. Now he realized that that was probably because of lingering resentment about her response to his recounting his feeling of waking in a dream. He realized that most people would have been perplexed or skeptical. But even when he emphasized how much it bugged him, at first, she’d seemed amused and then had changed the subject to make it about his shortcomings. That night the sandscape was different. It was roughly circular and stretched from horizon to horizon although, with heavy clouds of darkness surrounding and encroaching on the sand, that area wasn’t very large. The rough path was broader and better defined too, more like an actual road. Jim started walking down it. The cloudy-darkness squeezed around him. The next morning, he woke in darkness. He knew it was morning because light was seeping in behind the curtains across the room. He leapt out of bed and threw on the overhead light. The room was bright-light now but there remained a cascade of grainy darkness in it. He tried to pull himself together: showered, dressed and ate breakfast. Through it all, the darkness never went entirely away. Sitting at the kitchen table over coffee, he picked up a book from the small stack there and opened it at random. It was one of the Castaneda series and the passage he came to was, ironically, about perception. He read the paragraph and leafed through a few more pages and had no trouble reading. So, whatever the problem he was having with seeing, it wasn’t with his eyes. It was a beautiful day and, craving light, he set the empty cup in the sink and went outside. There was a farmer’s market at the corner and people were milling about. On the next block, there was music, two guys with harmonicas, one with a banjo. Kids were drawing rabbits on the sidewalk. Everywhere he went, there was abundant light, but always woven through with strands of darkness. |
7
Back home, he sank down onto the couch, wondering if he should call someone, a doctor or a friend but had no idea what he’d say. So, he shut his eyes to blank the world out and slipped away and was back in that sand-space. But now darkness hung all around the clearing and the road was gone.
He sat up, blinking, and knew what he had to do. In ten minutes, he’d thrown some things into a duffel and was heading out the door. All the way to the garage on the next block where he kept his car, he kept trying to convince himself this was a bad idea. Under ordinary circumstances, that would have worked too. But now, even though he still wasn’t sure if he were sleeping or awake, and if asleep, having one dream or two, there was little chance that mere logic and reason could prevail. By the time he reached Salinas, he had started having second thoughts. Traveling hundreds of miles on a whim because of an image or a dream seemed crazy. So, he stopped for a sandwich and thought about it. But even in that busy roadside diner where the world seemed nothing but every day and pragmatic, he still saw that dream image of the sand-patch in his mind and he couldn’t retreat. After San Luis Obispo, there was no more thought of turning back. He streaked along the highway thinking only of where he was going, no longer where he was coming from. Around 5 o’clock, he reached the spot where he had to decide whether to keep going south into LA or head inland. He felt a flash of regret that Tom had set him on this journey and wanted to be in on it, and here he was ditching out on him. But he had to do this alone. He swerved east. That night, he stayed at a motel and had no dreams. The next morning, he drove into Death Valley. The first few miles were unremarkable. Then the road dipped down into an enormous wide and empty valley stretching away as far as the eye could see. The sand was a sickly, yellow-beige color, and strewn across its vast expanse were stones and rocks as well as a bramble of dead and dying sage and other plants. It was not a place that spoke of life. Jim skirted around that great empty land and bumped along the side of a low mountain. Topping a rise and dipping down again, he saw another vast open space off to the left, this one very different. The sand was smooth and ivory-colored. It glistened in the morning sun. Across the face of this endless expanse, there was a plethora of desert plants, some spiky and craggy, others abloom with brilliant spring flowers. Seeing that amazing sight, he jumped and swerved off onto the shoulder. He pulled back onto the road, swung into the next turnoff and sat clutching the wheel, so overwhelmed by that desert extravaganza, he literally couldn’t bear to look at it. As he sat there, his life flashed before his eyes, that is, the pattern of it did: floating through college and architecture school and out again, drifting from one low level administrative job to another, from one girlfriend to another; then this job and Ruth. Floating, still floating. He dropped his head down onto the wheel, shook tears away and dragged himself out of the car. |
8
And there it was again, the phantasmagoric desert. The sand was almost white, the plants beige, pink and turquoise. He drank their paleness in. Suddenly he realized that, in all that expanse of pale plants and paler sand, he didn’t see one shadow. He crossed the road, slid down the short incline and pushed forward through the plant-forest. Looking around, searching everywhere, he still couldn’t see any shadows or even murkiness.
At last he stopped and stood contemplating the desert, which seemed to go on forever in light and endless beauty. His breath choked in. Since those shadows and that darkness were gone now, so was that awful conviction that he was living in a dream. He saw now that the desert, the world, were real—no dream—and he was real too. The sun was dropping low in the sky when he started back to the car. He’d walked for some time, when he saw a shadow. It lay, almost hidden, behind a cholla plant. It was purple and fell to almost black closest to the base of the plant. He jumped in shock, then reminded himself that shadows were natural and everywhere, so this meant nothing. Then shadows began ‘popping’ up all across the desert floor. He saw his own shadow, fell, staggered up and bolted for the car. After that experience, he wanted nothing more than to get out of there and go home. He was too exhausted to drive that night, but the next morning, after leaving Madge a message that he’d be in late that afternoon, he was on the road by six. When he reached the turnoff leading to LA, he thought of Tom again. Suddenly, a shadow streaked downwards in the car and in his mind, and he saw Tom and their conversation very differently. With shadows crowding the car now, he saw that, though it was true that he himself was drifting through life, at least he hadn’t completely given up or settled in, and maybe Tom had or at least thought he had. That call, essentially out of the blue, had had a distinctly desperate cast to it. Despite Tom’s ‘good’ life, which he seemed compelled to wave around like a flag to demonstrate just how good it was, he seemed to be looking to Jim, who wasn’t even in his life in a meaningful way anymore, for a fresh look on things, even for help. With shadows enveloping him, the car and the world again, Jim determined that, when he got back, he’d give Tom a call, have a real conversation and find out what was really going on. At home, he took a quick shower and, by four, was sagging down into his chair at work. His alcove was situated just outside a row of stacks and so was always dusky. It seemed even more so now and, clicking on the bright computer screen, he felt enveloped in darkness and realized with a shiver that, despite everything he’d done in the last few days and, though the shadows had temporarily gone away, now they were back. So apparently nothing had really changed. He sat back in the chair and tried to force himself not to think about it. Suddenly, the murkiness around the desk bubbled up and light from the computer display ‘sprinkled’ down into it, and the darkness was laced with light. He jerked upright, slapped the desk, jumped up and did a pirouette down the row of stacks. “Yes,” he hissed. “Of course. Why didn’t I see that before?” |
9
He skidded back into his chair and grinned at the white-bright screen. Those shadows that he’d been seeing or imagining weren’t negative or harmful at all, he realized, and didn’t indicate some mental aberration on his part either. They were, ironically, strangely, a different kind of light, and provided a different way of seeing. When he’d woken that first morning and thought he was in a dream, he’d started to notice them. Then they’d appeared oppressively in the other dream in the desert and when he woke in and felt he was living in darkness, those shadows and that darkness drove him to the desert. There, their absence and then their returning presence, had forced him to see the world and his role in it differently. In the car on the way back, the shadows had literally slashed through his old image of Tom and himself.
He peered down into the now not-so-terrifying darkness. Those ever-encroaching shadows were not mystical or otherworldly either. They were always there. They had always been there. You just had to be on a slant or at an angle to see them. They were a thing of perception, and whether they were real or not didn’t matter. The change in perception was the only thing that did. In the desert, he’d realized he was a part of the universe, which like the desert, went on forever. He saw now too that, though this world we all reside in is a given, that microcosm of a ‘desert’ in his mind was his and his alone. It was his world and his life. He didn’t just live in it either, but was responsible for creating and changing it. He held his hand up in front of the computer screen and spread his fingers out. Between the fingers was bright light; the hand was dark. In that light and dark, there was a power. He tapped on the door. “Come in.” He opened the door and leaned in. “Madge, do you have a few minutes? There’s something I need to talk to you about.” She’d been writing on a notepad. “Well, I am kind of busy.” She put the pen down and looked at him. “But this is as a good a time as any,” she said. “I got your message that you’d be late. I hope everything is okay.” He sat down on the guest chair. “Yes, I’m fine. I’ll stay late tomorrow to make up the time.” She waved him off. “No problem. Just wanted to be sure.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. I’ll make it quick.” He cleared his throat again. “I hope you know that I really appreciate that you offered me this job when I was a temp three years ago.” He paused. “And I know my job has limitations. We’ve discussed that before, but I wanted to ask again if anything has changed and there might be other duties I might take on, acquisitions, organizing library lectures and programs, things like that? In other words, can my job be . . . expanded?” Something crossed her eyes. “I—I do appreciate your work, Jim. You do a good job. But as you said, we’ve discussed this and, no, I really can’t see much change in your responsibilities anytime soon.” |
10
He licked his lips. “I understand.” He nodded. “I see.” He paused. “So, in that case, I’d like to submit my two-week notice now. I’ll send you a letter later today.”
She pulled back in her chair. “Do you have another offer, if I might ask?” He wasn’t sure she could ask, but there seemed no reason not to say. “No,” he said, “I haven’t even looked. But I feel like it’s time for a change. I need something more . . . challenging, creative maybe.” He smiled. “Or maybe just different.” She nodded. “I see. I’ll be sorry to see you go. I know it’s been frustrating for you, and sometimes things haven’t gone completely smoothly between us. But don’t worry, I’ll give you a good reference. Good luck with finding something more . . . satisfying.” He nodded too, took that as a dismissal and got up and started to leave. Then he turned back, reached across her desk and extended his hand. “It was good working here, Madge,” he said and surprisingly found that he meant it. She shook and smiled, and he headed towards the door. “Wait.” “What?” She beckoned him back down. “I don’t have anything here in the Main and don’t think anybody else does either. But I have an idea.” She raised a finger for him to hold on, picked up the phone and dialed. “Hi Laura,” she said into it. “It’s Madge.” She glanced at Jim. “I was wondering if you’ve filled that Library Assistant II job?” Another pause. “Okay. Well, my assistant, Jim Vance, just gave notice because he’s looking for something with more responsibility,”—she glanced at Jim, eyes sparkling with, he wasn’t quite sure what—“you know, more of a challenge, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in interviewing him.” There was talking on the other end, then Madge said, “Let me find out,” and turned to Jim. “Laura Abrams at the Richmond Branch has an opening and it does have more responsibilities. Laura is really busy and, unlike me, who prefers to do just about everything myself, needs help with book selection, event organizing and several other things.” Her eyes glinted and suddenly Jim understood what he couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized before—she had a problem with insecurity or control or some such thing and that compelled her to do all of what she considered the important work herself. Probably because she was so Goddamned tall, the thought shot through his head. He stifled a laugh. She stared at him. “What?” Somehow she didn’t seem so tall all of a sudden, no longer seemed to tower over him, as she always did even when they were both sitting down. “Nothing,” he said making sure not to smile. “Nothing at all.” |
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“So, would you be interested in going out there at six today for an interview?” she said.
The laughter sped away. A tingling went up his arm. The shadows seemed even darker—but lighter too. “Sure,” he said. “I’d love to.” Madge confirmed with Laura, talked some more, then told him, “One caveat—though Laura said it’s not a requirement. An instructor in the volunteer art program is leaving unexpectedly and she wonders if you’d be willing to fill in and conduct a few art classes.” Jim blinked. “I wasn’t an art major.” Madge waved him away. “You took a few courses in college, didn’t you, and this is pretty casual, so you could probably improvise.” She smiled. “Maybe you’d like that.” Something tingled in his other arm and there was movement in that lackluster desert landscape in his mind. “Sure,” he said. “Tell her I’ll be glad to consider doing that.” Back at his desk, he rubbed his hands together. “Yes. Hell, yes.” He picked up the phone, put it down again and wrote Ruth instead. “I won’t be able to get together tonight because I have a job interview at the Richmond Branch at 6 o’clock. No time to explain now.” She replied right away. “Thanks for letting me know. Good news that you have an interview. Good luck with that.” He squinted at the light screen in the cascading darkness. Suddenly, a ‘spark’ of darkness soared up into the bright screen, and he understood Ruth a little better. He wasn’t exactly a placeholder for her while she waited for someone better to come along, but the fact that she’d rejected his proposal to move in and now, although she’d been needling him to find another job, appeared to have minimal interest when he actually had an interview, made him think she almost saw him that way. If the situation were reversed, he’d have wanted to know all about it and insisted she call immediately afterwards to tell him how it went. He smiled ruefully. He also couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t even proposed an alternate day to get together. So he would propose one and, when they met, tell her he thought it was time for them to part ways. He doubted she’d be crushed, maybe even relieved. He knew now that he didn’t want a halfway relationship. He wanted a real one or none at all. Bouncing around on the Geary bus on the way to the interview, he felt pretty good. Of course, he couldn’t count on wanting the job, let alone getting it. But in his mind, his ‘other’ self was walking around the mini-desert and there was a hint of wind, and that made him feel there was a chance. He wondered again, as he had all week, if this world was a dream and the desert-image, another dream within it. He wasn’t sure he’d ever know. He smiled. Maybe it didn’t matter. Right now he needed to concentrate on that open, sandy space in his mind which was his life and which he could work to develop, with a lot of light and perseverance, and a dark spattering of will. |
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlene Anderson received an MA in English Literature from Purdue University and an MA in Research Psychology from San Francisco State University and spent most of her working life at the University of California San Francisco in grant administration. As a child, she always knew she would write, told stories to her friends, and even invented a pen name for herself, Charles Andrè. So, while working on budgets and submitting grant proposals at UCSF, she continued to write and, in 2001 published a novel, Berkeley’s Best Buddhist Bookstore. When Vistas & Byways was launched in 2015, she was pleased to be asked to chair the Editorial Board. She has served in that capacity ever since.
Other works in this issue:
Poetry The Mississippi, Paradise Lost, California Visual Arts Three ‘Literary’ Landscapes Vertical Divider
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