Endless Night

3

A thousand dreams for one who sleeps deeply. Julia sat at the little kitchen table, a mug of weeping tea between her small tanned hands, and sung to me a dream she experienced as vividly as a waking memory. She pondered the meaning, she poked at me for superstitions, then, putting her cup in the sink and gazing out the window, dropped the wonderings and pursued silence.

A thousand and one dreams for one who dreams with eyes opened.

The mundane followed for days. Thrown back into the everyday life that stuck to me like syrup before the night on the beach. Life before that night wasn't mundane in my eyes: I'd left home for a new home—but meeting his eyes rumbled and shattered all. He paused the kaleidoscope of life. I had a foot between the doors of an elevator, I breathed hesitance and remained in.

I spent the following days poring over French, the language and culture. It was the one subject I missed with a crazed passion after leaving university. The love began as a child after seeing photographs of the Eiffel Tower. That sparked something within me, perhaps I was French centuries before.

The city near my hometown prided itself with its loose French heritage; and Burroughs, for some mad reason.

Mornings and noons in the library, walks after lunch, wandering and pondering along the beach in the evenings as if Jim would float down and appear on a rock like Albion. The occasional night chats and exchanging of a letter with Robby never heard nor saw the name "Jim" from either of us. Robby's short tale of their show in Denver illuminated snowy dreams reminiscent of home. Before dawn, in the midst of a dream, I'd wake and through the crimson curtain see the familiar silhouette of Julia. She'd be wavering like silk in a soft wind returned from Mictlan for one last word.

"Telephone." The vibration would tremble and become purple.

I'd rise like a mummy and float to the phone in the hall. Softly, he'd be breathing softly through the phone. Dream me, though not so quite a dream, would close my eyes and see Jim. Cupping the phone and engulfed in darkness. Lips parted, his breaths like light steps. Lightly, lightly, he'd be walking the distance of the cord until he heard my breaths on the other end. My eyes would open, and out shouted a southern voice: Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Half-crazed, half-scared I'd whisper: But I'm not there yet, but I'm not there yet.

Oh, to lie on a bed of leaves in the grass and listen to Whitman's soul howl.

Awaken!
Awoken in sweat and quickness of breath I'd jump at the Goya-like painting on the far wall peeling into the depths of my shivering soul, the eyes swirls of black like hypnosis—it was hypnosis . . . the beginning of the beginning, white light soft and peeking over the horizon, birds stretching and discussing their plans for the day, the scratch, scratch, scratch of a tree limb against the window, my body aching from the floor and my head spinning just as madly as my soul.
Awaken!

Night slipped cool and slow like a mudslide along the Mississippi River, The Gateway to the West.

I sat on the threshold of two worlds as I stepped into the nightlife of L.A. Drinking and drugs and friends and music and fun fun fun but no fun at all at Julia's boyfriend's cousin's friend's girlfriend's brother's bands' party. Tables and tables of food, the only fun there was. "'We must cut down on the cost of living!'" her boyfriend smiled as he shoved brown paper bags in our hands. "Truman's from Missouri like you, kid." Illinois, but I didn't and couldn't correct him. Who thought of that lonely little state unless it was about that great big city in the north full of skyscrapers so high the sun couldn't touch the streets?

He and Julia hugged and kissed and grew distracted, no longer caring to fill their bags with food. Julia with her candle making and supermarket job wasn't cutting it for the increased bills, but still she hardly uttered a word to me about a job, but it hung over my head like a dark cloud. I was a lost and confused little girl wanting to squeeze tight with the fleeting hippies who came from well off homes and had old money to run back to when their phases of seeking freedom were through, but I was from a low class black family and separated myself from the town that didn't want to push past the late 1800s, there was no looking back for me, no running back and smothering my face in a bed of money like a child smothers their face in their mothers' bosom.

"The chicken is really good too." Came a monotonous voice flittering through my left ear.

And there he was perched in the corner on a chair, away from the connected room with the flashing lights and partying and drinking and sniffing and smoking and needles and music and laughing girls and smiling boys wanting to make it with whatever girl they could.

"The wings or breasts?" I asked.

He only smiled. I turned away. Warmth filled me. Dreams of his presence yet when the mystical became actuality I could not spin and take him in for his very being was celestial.

"Let's go for a ride," he said.

He was near, so near. His warmth vibrated and clung to me, he didn't have to physically reach through the plane and caress me.

A strange man with a stranger offer and I was the strangest for hopping in his blue Mustang.

The night was bright with neon lights bouncing everywhere. Club lights, bar lights, dirty theater lights, Mexicana restaurant lights, motels, oh, so many motels! Stars flashed flashed flashed and burned above us. Smoke, engine oil, frying oil, cigarettes—the smells of L.A. at night.

The wind slapped us and shouted for us to turn around, but he kept fighting and pushing forward, leaned over the steering wheel with his back hunched and gripping so tight his knuckles paled; he howled and I howled, he laughed at me and I laughed at him, he reached a hand out, palm up, and I put my hand on his, palm down. We rode that way and could've chased the moon across the continents, never leaving the night. One hand on the wheel, the other in mine, my head against the seat and eyes shut. I'd slide left into him, right, forward, and back and never opened my eyes, not even when horns blared and headlights blasted through my lids.

Rebelling against death itself, or unafraid for the moment to welcome Him.

When the car stopped we were with Dante in Purgatorio. Not a soul but for the gods, goddesses, creatures, and tortured lost souls in the depths of the roaring ocean.

He told me he named his '67 Ford Mustang Blue Lady for she was blue, moody, and indestructible.

"My mom called me the Child of Satan," I said. It slipped from me. I wanted to tell him all; from skinning my knee at six to the wild epiphanies I had on the road and my fear for death and my everlasting soul.

"Why?"

I shrugged and hugged myself against the whistling wind. "I'm weary and ask questions."

We were children standing above a cliff over a dark hissing ocean as if we had reached the end of the world. And like children who exchanged names at lunch and declared they'd be friends forever by recess, we exchanged life stories and decided we'd be side by side in our journeys until our paths divided, if it ever did.

He stood hands clasped behind his back and looked over the ocean like the Wanderer Over the Sea of Fog.

My gaze swam on him. There was a pinching worry beneath the surface of slipping and drowning but there was a feeling even greater—curiosity?—that made me fight to stay afloat and advance nearer.

Curiosity, I decided as my hand touched his arm. Et une soif d'amour—a thirst for love.

He broke from his brooding and took my hand. As our eyes met I was a glutton soaking him up. Eyes as blue as his Blue Lady that appeared black in the night. I could fall or I could drown.

His mouth stretched in the tiniest of grins as he asked me, "Have you ever been to Hawaii, Faye?"

"No."

He wrapped an arm around me and my coldness was no more. He was the warmth people ached when the sun slid behind clouds. He smelled of cigarettes and booze and nature.

"Child of Satan, it's time you come with me."

Newborn awakening.