We can go to this dude’s house, but he’s kind of crazy, Reinaldo halfheartedly suggested. Part of Michelle wanted to see the crazy dude and have sex in his run-down apartment, and she was proud of herself for overriding that part. She was so mature in her dream! Instead they hid from his girlfriend by climbing chain-link fences and navigating piers so rotten Reinaldo’s sneaker pushed straight through the wood. The terrain — a landscape of soggy piers and crumbled buildings and wild, weedy trees — was off-limits, which made it beautiful and sexy. Standing in grass that sprung up to her neck, Reinaldo told Michelle she looked pretty. She paused to consider the tiled foundation of the bulldozed building they stood upon. Michelle could tell from how the tiles turned smaller and pink that they were in what used to be a bathroom.
Reinaldo put down his Che T-shirt to protect Michelle’s back from the broken glass that scattered the tile, but they were too out in the open, anyone could see them — people hanging out the windows of the housing projects on the other side of the fence, bored, people on the booze cruise toodling around the harbor, drunk. They found a slab of stone hidden by collapsed piers, the wood soaked with seawater and furred with neon algae. Sober and armed with a condom, Reinaldo was a disappointment, his creative mania gone. He seemed to have forgotten that Michelle possessed a clitoris.
Arch your back, girl, arch your back, he kept saying in that wonderful voice, but Michelle found it as frustrating as yoga instruction — did arch your back mean she should round her spine or dip it? Michelle missed having sex with someone whose penis was store-bought, possessed no nerve endings, required nothing from her but the frenzied bucking of her own wild pleasure. When Reinaldo’s cell phone rang he answered it, spoke Spanish, said Puta. Michelle wished she could understand him fully, but she was not in love in this dream and so could expect no magic from her mind. Reinaldo dropped the condom to the shore with all the other condoms, that slab beneath the fallen piers was something of a love hotel. Michelle pulled her dress back over her head.
Getting out of the place they’d snuck into was a challenge, the sun setting at their back a real threat. Michelle considered simply waking up. Would dreaming Reinaldo — presently a twelve-year-old boy asleep in Chelsea — awake suddenly from his first wet dream? Michelle stayed in the dream. Reinaldo was telling her how his family had escaped the war, how running from war was in his blood and he could feel it when he hopped a fence or trampled a jungle of weeds in his sneakers. Sometimes he wished for the apocalypse so he could experience that part of himself, surviving. They scaled a shaking wall of chain link and dropped onto the backside of the housing projects. Michelle found climbing the fence more physically exhilarating than the sex, but she didn’t regret meeting Reinaldo or staying inside the dream with him. It was all one experience — the particular smell of the rotting wood, Boston like an enchanted city across the harbor, the spires of its office buildings flaunting themselves against the dusky sky, the smashed and ruined waterfront, the weeds run riot. It was a good dream. Reinaldo walked Michelle to the subway and went on to meet his friends at a street festival. Michelle was not invited. His girlfriend/not-girlfriend would be there.
I’ll tell her I was eating oysters, Reinaldo smiled, and sniffed his fingers. Michelle slipped a token into a turnstile.
You’re Twelve Years Old, she told him. You’re A Boy. Wake Up. Reinaldo’s face held confusion, then a swirl of recognition even more confusing, and then it shimmered like the harbor waters and was gone.
20
The bookstore shelves emptied as Michelle allowed shoplifters to shoplift. At first she had tried to stop them, even waved her gun at one but the woman had called her bluff and began hurling paperbacks at her. Michelle tucked the gun back into the waist of her cutoffs and allowed the woman to ransack the place. She was disappointed in herself for caring but sometimes the chaos bugged her out. She appreciated Joey, who ran an ever-tighter ship in the shadow of the world’s end. The bookstore was cleaner than it had ever been.
Beatrice and Paul hardly came in anymore, preferring instead to sleep. Apparently the couple had found a way to sync their dreams and experience, together, adventures in a wonderful world. They hiked into pine forests and sat side by side on the edge of a smoking Hawaiian volcano, eating shave ice. They experimented with herbal sleeping remedies, testing for a dosage that allowed them to sleep long hours without degrading the quality of the dreams. They were like drug addicts, Michelle thought resentfully. She shared her analogy with Joey.
It’s Like They’re On Heroin, she snipped. On The Nod, Having Visions. It’s Fucking Weird. It’s Sad.
Joey considered. No, he said, They’re just dreams. You know, like the ones everyone’s having. You’re having them, right?
Michelle nodded. She shared with Joey the story of the painter, the boy in the garden.
Girl! Joey high-fived her. The imagination you got! I just keep sucking dick, sucking dick, sucking dick. I swear. He fanned himself with a copy of Howl. It’s a good time, though.
Joey hasn’t figured it out, Michelle thought. Nor had she. Apparently, he’d been destined to a lifetime of fellatio. Michelle had been destined to a lifetime of casual sex with teenage girls who grew up to become transgender men. And Beatrice and Paul, their love was real and lasting. They were destined to a lifetime with each other. Michelle burned with a quiet jealousy. It really was like her employers were on heroin, which made Michelle wish she were on heroin, too. Michelle remembered the feel of it inside her body, side by side with Lu. She didn’t care if the love had been real or fake, the chemical reaction synthetic opiates or organic dopamine, she wanted those feelings again. She thought about Andy and the softer feelings of safety she inspired — that was oxytocin, wasn’t it? The cuddle hormone that makes moms love their babies. Michelle wanted a dopamine/oxytocin IV drip, or, at the very least, another visit from Matt Dillon. With fresh certainty Michelle realized there was no such thing as love. It was all a quilt of sexual compulsion, unmet childhood needs, and brain chemistry. For the first time, Michelle felt glad that the world was ending. Without the illusion of love, it was no good place to be.
This is my mother’s favorite song. Michelle hadn’t heard the jingle of the door opening. Patti Smith blared on the stereo behind her and Diane di Prima’s Loba was clutched in her hands, a good combination. She pulled herself out from the world of vessels and prostitutes and wolf-ladies. A young girl, barely teenage, stood at the counter, a sweet smile on her face. Her brown hair fluffed past her shoulders, held back from her freckled cheeks with a wide headband. Little earrings sparkled in her earlobes. Patti Smith crooned around them, Little sister, the sky is falling. I don’t mind, I don’t mind.