The Between (17 page)

He shuddered, then remembered he must be cold because he was nearly nude and dripping with perspiration.

He walked to the closet and slowly pulled the door open, triggering the dim light inside. He searched for the robe to match his silk pajamas. Then he paused and turned instead to the section reserved for his suits, which hung neatly in a row. He buried his hand behind his navy suit and felt the smooth fabric of an unseen jacket. He pulled it into the light.

His gray pinstriped suit. Jacket and slacks, on a hanger.

Hilton heard a faint snore from Dede and jumped, then he sank against the wall and closed his eyes, sobs tugging at his throat again. He sealed his mouth shut with his palm. He didn’t dare look at the suit again. He had seen it. It was there.

The floor seemed to move beneath his feet. His brain began to play fragments of that Eliot poem he’d been forced to learn in high school. This is the way the world ends, he thought. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang.

A whimper.

By the time Hilton reached the corner of Northeast Second Avenue and found the nondescript Cafeteria Borinquén with its faded facade and chipped paint, he was ravenous. Raul had apparently been waiting some time; he was already working on a plate of rice with pigeon peas and
pinchos,
pork roasted in small chunks on wooden sticks. He shrugged, seeing Hilton, and tapped his watch. “Sorry. If you had said one, I would have arrived at one. The food smelled too good,” Raul said.

Hilton pulled out the wooden folding chair at Raul’s table in the center of the busy cafe, beneath the whirring ceiling fan. The decor was jovial, with posters of Puerto Rico and cartoon images of the islands trademark frog, the
coquí,
blanketing the wood-paneled walls. The spastic cowbells from a salsa song danced from hidden speakers. “I got my east and west mixed up. What the hell is a Puerto Rican restaurant doing in Little Haiti?” Hilton asked.

“The great melting pot, no?” Raul said, absorbed in eating. He glanced up at him, stripping pork from its stick with his teeth and chewing quickly. “You look like hell.”

“I love you, too,” Hilton said, darting his eyes away. His stomach growled loudly. “Are there any fucking waiters in here, or do I have to go back there myself?”

Raul continued to gaze at him thoughtfully, then he raised his hand toward a lanky, dark-skinned man standing near the back.
“Oye, Pedro. Ven aqui, por favor, compadre.”

“Damn, the music’s loud in here.”

“Silence, you,” Raul said, patting Hilton’s hand as the man neared their table with a water glass, which he set down near Hilton. “Tell me what you like, and I’ll translate for you.”

“I don’t know what food they have. He can’t speak English? Jesus Christ.”

Raul spoke rapid Spanish to the man, who nodded and replied.

“How about what I’m having? The
arroz con gandules?”

“Yeah, whatever. Why aren’t you drinking beer? They don’t have beer?” Hilton asked.

“You know I don’t drink during the workday. You don’t either. Let’s have coffee.
Dos cafes,
Pedro.”

Hilton didn’t answer, emptying his water glass in a series of long swallows. The ice clanked against the glass as he set it back down. He stared at the red-and-white checkerboard pattern on the tacky plastic tablecloth, drumming his fingers on the table.

“You’re in a real mood today,” Raul said.

Again, Hilton was silent. He wanted to launch right into everything, explaining that he was losing his mind somehow, but he’d lost his nerve after seeing his friend in person. He couldn’t remember the words he’d chosen. The whole story sounded ridiculous, even to him. And what was the story, really?

The waiter brought a basket of warm flat bread, moist with melted butter, and Hilton dove into it hungrily while he felt Raul’s eyes watching him. Raul reminded him of Dede sometimes, the way he probed without words and simply waited. Well, it would be a long wait today. Hilton didn’t feel like talking.

“You might consider plastic surgery for the bags under your eyes,” Raul said. “But I’m not certain it would help.”

Hilton glared up at him. “That’s not funny.”

“It was no joke.”

“Look, just lay off of me. I don’t even know why I’m bothering with this.”

“Bothering with what?”

“Trying to deal with you like a human being.”

“Oh, I don’t know . . .” Raul said gently, sipping from his half-empty water glass. “Sometimes that actually works.
Que pasa,
eh? What’s so important it couldn’t wait until your party?”

Hilton set his jaw, staring at the bread basket while the waiter returned with tiny cups of Cuban-style coffee. Sullenly, Hilton bit into a second slice of bread. Raul reached into his linen jackets front pocket and pulled out a business card, which he slid into Hilton’s eyesight. Hilton read “Psychiatric Services” before he looked away.

“Get that away from me,” he said.

“She’s good. An M.D. I send her all of my former clients.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Dede’s been talking to me.”

Hilton paused in midchew, glancing back up at Raul. The same probing eyes were there, trying to slip inside of him. “And?”

Raul shrugged. “And she’s worried about you. She says you’ve been acting strangely. I, of course, said, ‘How can you tell?’”

“You’re an asshole.”

Raul rested his chin on his palm, his gaze more serious. “She said something interesting: If she were still prone to jealousy, from the way you behave, she’d think you were having an affair.” Hilton sighed, running his hand across the top of his head. The frenzied beats of the drums and blares from the salsa trumpets were making him feel fevered.

“So . . . are you?” Raul asked, not blinking.

Instead of turning away from his gaze, Hilton decided to face Raul. He leaned toward him. “You can’t discuss this, Raul.”

Raul nodded. “So you are, then. You’re a prick if you are, I’ll tell you that right now. As if you couldn’t learn from me and my ex . . . You see how miserable I am, with no one.”

“I’m not having an affair. But I did . . . ”—he swallowed,with considerable effort—“I did sleep with someone. A former client. At least, I think I did.”

“Are you in denial, or do you have amnesia?”

“I know, I know. It sounds crazy. But I slept with this woman, and then she said she didn’t remember. I mean, like it never happened. I don’t think it did. And the jacket I left at her house was in my closet. It was like you and that Mets cap that time, remember? At Miami Arena?”

“You’re making no fucking sense, Hilton. As usual.”

“Some fucking doctor,” Hilton shot back, stung.

“Your premise is wrong. I’m not your doctor.”

“That’s for damn sure. Just shut up and listen a minute. I think all of this has something to do with my dreams. I mean, things are happening to me and then I find out they never really happened. More than once. Like your Mets cap, and now this woman . . . I think maybe I just dreamed it. I never slept with her, I just thought I did. But Raul, it was so realistic. I was there. I can remember every detail, down to how she tasted.”

“Do you mind? I’m eating.”

Unexpectedly, Hilton slapped his palm down hard on the table, making his silverware jump up against his glass. Raul hesitated with his fork halfway to his mouth, surprised.

“Don’t you get it?” Hilton said, his teeth gritted and his arms trembling at the elbows from anger and hunger combined.

Raul glanced around briefly to see if they were drawing stares, then rested his fork on his plate. He sighed. “No, Hilton . . . I don’t get it. Explain it to me.”

“There’s something going on in my dreams I need to know about, because I don’t think I’m really awake sometimes. Okay? It’s like I could call you later and say, ‘Thanks for lunch today’ and you would say ‘What lunch?’ I don’t know what’s real anymore. I’m afraid to sleep, man. I feel like I can’t ever go back to exactly where I left, like I never know what I’ll find.”

For a long few seconds, Raul ate and didn’t answer. The waiter brought a steaming plate of rice and beans to Hilton and set it in front of him with a smile and nod. Hilton didn’t move to touch his food, waiting for Raul’s assessment. He hated to feel so dependent on his friend, but Raul was all he had now. What you’ve described is very common, he might say. Nothing to worry about. A quick dose of hypnosis and you’ll be fine, just like before.

Raul dabbed his mouth with his paper napkin. “Dede told me about the dreams. She hears you wake up at night, crying out.”

“They’re worse and worse. I only wish I could remember them.”

“You approach dreams the way my brother does. Your dreams aren’t
causing
your problem, they’re a symptom. You can’t view dreams as isolated entities controlling your life. Dreams are just that—dreams.”

“Bullshit,” Hilton said. “Live a day in my shoes, man, and then give me that crap. There’s something in my dreams—I know it. If I could remember, I would understand. Maybe it goes back to Nana again.”

“Ay, Dios mio,”
Raul muttered, shaking his head. “Hocus-pocus. Is there a ghost in your dreams following you?”

“Maybe. Yes.”

“You and my brother are quite a match. You know who you remind me of? A Haitian girl I treated more than a year ago. It was all the same thing, about dreams. Dreams and ghosts.”

Hilton felt a sense of awakening in his lagging spirit. “Tell me about her.”

“She was obsessed by her dreams, afraid to sleep. Just like you said just now. The stories she told . . .”

“Then she could remember them?”

“Unbelievable detail. I tell you, she was obsessed.”

“What happened in her dreams?”

Raul sighed. “It’s hard to remember now. They were nightmares. She was being chased, that sort of thing. Standard dreams. But you sounded just like her, talking about what’s real and what isn’t. She talked about that, too.” “What’s her name?” Hilton blurted, anxious.

marguerite

“Never mind her name. I still have some ethics left.”

“Where is she, then? What happened to her?”

“She quit therapy. She was a student. I know my brother talked to her for a project he’s been working on at the university about near-death phenomenon.”

“What does that have to do with her?”

“That’s why her parents sent her to therapy. She fell from a fourth-floor balcony on spring break and nearly died. Very lucky, that one. Her dreams started after that.”

Hilton felt a thudding boot in his chest. “Like Nana.”

“Oh, stop with that already. What’s like Nana?”

“That’s when the dreams started, after I found her on the floor. She’d had an attack, remember? She was—”

“Everything is Nana with you. Listen to me, you’re wasting your intellectual and emotional energy this way. What you need to do is call this doctor I recommended and keep your pants zipped up. You have to solve your problems with what’s real before you can solve your dreams. Stop fucking around on your wife, and maybe your nightmares will go away. You disappoint me,
compadre.”

Hilton tasted his food but suddenly had no appetite. “I shouldn’t have said anything to you.”

“I hope at least you were safe.”

“I’m crazy, not stupid.”

“Don’t piss it all away, I’m warning you. You have a self-destructive nature, and I see what you’re doing. You don’t deserve Dede, you’re thinking. You don’t deserve those bright children. So you work to destroy it. It’s very, very foolish.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hilton said. “It won’t happen again, and maybe it never happened at all.”

“Hilton,” Raul said in a somber tone, sliding the business card closer to him. “See her. Make an appointment. I do agree you need help. You have a severe sleeping disorder.”

“I don’t need her. I have you,” Hilton said, his voice cracking unexpectedly as his words turned pleading.

“Don’t you see? I cannot help you.”

What did he have to tell Raul so he would understand? That he thought he had lost his mind? That he’d woken up the other night and nearly been compelled to put his shotgun in his mouth, that he’d come this close to blowing his brains out? Maybe that was what he needed to say, but he couldn’t.

“You know who I’d rather talk to?” Hilton asked in a strained voice, staring at Raul. “Your brother and the Haitian girl.”

“To chase dreams and ghosts?”

“Man, they’re all I have left to chase,” Hilton said.

For one glistening pearl of a moment, everything was once again all right.

The dreadlock-wearing deejay stilled the sweaty bodies contorting to lively African high-life music with an abrupt switch to the soulful keyboard tease of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “That’s the Way of the World.” Hilton, who stood talking to Curt near the front door, saw a faraway look creep across Dede’s face as her eyes lighted on Hilton.

Without a word, Hilton handed Curt his beer can and walked up to Dede to slip his arms around her waist. As they swayed, she sang the song’s lyrics softly near his ear and he closed his eyes, imagining that they were in the studio apartment he’d rented near the UM campus in grad school, with his posters of Funkadelic and George Clinton and the prickly sofa bed where she first spent the night with him. Her scent was the same, natural and wholly Dede. The voice in his ear was the same. He held her more tightly, as though he could physically meld them together.

This feeling was beyond desire; it was his being he clung to.

Hilton half expected to find them both transported back to UM when he opened his eyes. But he was afraid they would be right back in the same spot, so he didn’t dare ruin it—not until the last of the song faded and the Afro-pop once again blared from the speakers.

No, they weren’t back at UM. Dede’s face was broader with the pounds the years had brought; her eyes were world-weary and sad. They were at a party in their own home with such tight security that each guest had been scrutinized at the door by Curt, who was wearing his uniform off-duty. The guard dog marched in the backyard, barking at the unfamiliar guests. Hilton’s life with Dede wasn’t at its beginning; he couldn’t help feeling it was near its end.