They didn’t seem to hear me.
They didn’t react to me at all.
“Come on, Mitchell, don’t be a square your whole life,” Erna said. “Just one old-fashioned at Brady’s. Or maybe a beer. It’s quitting time. I want to have a little fuuuuuun.”
“It’s Tuesday night,” Mitchell said, “and you should be going home to bed.”
“You always say that. And you never join me.”
“Stop it. You should really check on your boy.”
I was beginning to get a little freaked out so I started waving my arms.
“Uh…Yo! Over here. Can you people really not see me, or are you just screwing around?”
“Stop worrying about the boy,” Erna said. “You’re always telling me what to do with him. You act like he’s yours sometimes.”
“No, I don’t. I’m not good with kids.”
“I’m not asking you to be. Which is why he’s downstairs and I’m asking you out for a drink.”
Erna took a final drag from her cigarette, then blew the smoke out long and slow before mashing the butt in a glass ashtray on Mitchell’s desk. I noticed a black nameplate on a brass holder: DR. MITCHELL DEMEO. Doctor, huh? I checked the rest of the room. There were two filing cabinets shoved up against one wall.
Then I realized this wasn’t an apartment; this was an office. How the hell did I end up in a doctor’s office?
Erna turned and walked past me, the rough fabric of her dress brushing against my bare arm. She sat back down on the couch, which was more of a high-backed lounge chair, all dark wood and maroon cushions. Her polka-dot dress flowed around her. She turned her feet inward and stared off into nothing. She was pouting.
“You never want to do anything fun,” she said.
With nothing else to do, I sat down next to her. Maybe one of these two crackheads would notice me then. My limbs felt impossibly heavy, as if invisible weights had been strapped to my wrists and ankles. I needed a minute to think. I turned to Erna and drilled my eyes into the side of her head.
“So, just to be clear,” I said, “you can’t hear a thing I’m saying, can you?”
Erna said nothing.
“Not one thing.”
Erna said nothing.
“Like I’m not even here.”
Still nothing.
“I’ve got this rash on my testicles that, I swear, is brighter than those red dots on your dress.”
Still nothing.
“Okay then. Just wanted to have it straight.”
I might have been invisible to her, but I could smell her perfume, which was sweet and pungent. Her lips were open slightly, like she wanted to say something but was holding back. Outside, the El train cars rumbled down their tracks, vibrating the floorboards beneath our feet. I could hear them screech to a halt, the doors thump open, and after a short while, close again. This all felt real. I felt real. Why couldn’t these people see me?
“Come on, Mitchell, don’t be an asshole. I’m not asking you to abandon your work. I’m just asking for one little drink.”
“Erna, please. Not tonight.”
She sighed, stood up, then padded softly across the room until she was standing next to Mitchell. Then she dropped to her knees. Mitchell pretended not to notice, but he was a bad actor. His eyes flicked to the left. On the floor, Erna tugged at his belt. It wouldn’t come loose. She tugged again.
“Erna. You don’t have to do this…”
“Ah, there we go. You’re too tense. You need to relax.”
There was the soft metal purr of a zipper, and then Erna’s head disappeared behind the desk. Mitchell let his oversized head fall back, mouth open in a fat O, and all of a sudden I really didn’t want to be here.
I darted across the room, averting my eyes, wishing I could turn off my ears so I wouldn’t hear the slurping.
Now that I was seeing it up close, the door also had a piece of cardboard taped over one panel of pebbled glass. I reached for the knob. It was slippery. I tried to turn it quietly, but I couldn’t seem to maintain a hold on the bastard.
There was more slurping, more moaning.
I forgot about being stealthy. I grabbed the knob hard, like I wanted to crush it, and gave it a cruel twist to the right. Behind me a moan turned into an oh that’s right momma that’s right. The door latch clicked. The door opened with a creak.
“Wh-whoa…what was that?”
“Nothing, Mitchell. Just relax.”
The door went clack behind me. I looked down the hallway, which was dark but clean. The walls were gray and peeling. The threadbare carpet was gray, too, with faded pink floral designs blended into the fabric. Which was weird, because when I moved in earlier today the walls were painted off-white and the bare floor was covered in grime and dust. This was not the hallway I’d walked through earlier today. None of this made any sense whatsoever.
On the second-floor landing there were three doors leading to other apartments. As I walked by, the door to 2-C opened a crack. A sleepy-eyed boy of about twelve, with a shock of unruly red hair and wearing oddly old-fashioned footie pajamas, peeked out at me.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m nobody,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”
“Did you come from the doctor’s office? Is my mom up there?”
Oh God. His mother was Erna. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him that yeah, his mother was upstairs, but she was a little busy at the moment. Then I realized something.
“Wait,” I said. “You can see me, can’t you?”
The kid narrowed his eyes skeptically.
“Are you one of the doc’s patients?”
“No. I just moved in.”
“Moved in where?”
“Upstairs.”
“Nobody lives upstairs. Nobody except the doctor. And he doesn’t even live there. That’s his office. Who are you?”
“What I am is really confused and lost and I’m starting to think this is one long, weird-ass dream. What do you think? Do you think we’re both dreaming right now?”
His eyes went wide. He quickly slammed the door shut.
Okay. So to recap: I wasn’t totally invisible. I was in the correct apartment building.
Only, I wasn’t.
I needed some fresh air. Maybe that would wake me up. Maybe I could walk downstairs to that beer bodega and have a nice cold one while I waited for consciousness to return. That would be a nice way to pass the rest of a dream, right?
I stepped outside the front door, expecting a sticky wave of early June humidity. Instead, a gust of icy air sliced through my body. Jesus Christ, did the temperature just drop sixty degrees?
Then I looked down Frankford Avenue. It took my brain a few seconds to register what I was seeing.
Cars.
Very, very old cars.
Frankford Avenue was lined with them Buicks, Cadillacs, Dodges, Fords, Pontiacs. All of them vintage autos you don’t see outside of 1970s crime flicks. Giant slabs of American-made steel. It was as if someone had moved all of the normal cars off the street in preparation for a 1970s muscle car show. Which didn’t make sense. If you were throwing a vintage auto show, you weren’t going to throw it under the El.
Another cannon blast of freezing air cut through my body so hard my eyes teared up. I’d never had a dream this vivid before.
This was still Frankford Avenue—sort of. The El was still up above me, but the framework was the old green metal one they tore down in the late 1980s. The store windows were naked—not a single metal security shutter in sight. And the stores were all different. Candy shops and children’s clothing emporiums and nonchain drugstores, with hand-painted paper sale signs advertising new products and sale prices taped to the windows.