She stirred her coffee while looking absently out the window at the traffic on Main Street. No words were necessary now. The look that had passed between them was all the introduction that they required.
He sat opposite her, not uncomfortable, not happy, not any feeling that he could readily recognize, for it was a feeling that he had never encountered before. Her sleek body, her golden hair, her overly feminine features were just as he had seen them two nights before. No detail was out of place, not a hair was missed. It amazed him.
She turned back to him now, smiling, looking down as if afraid to meet his gaze, but no fear showed in her movements. Looking up, she spoke. “You are just as I remembered. Am I a disappointment to you?”
“No. You are just as I remembered you as well. Maybe even more beautiful, if that is possible.”
This brought a blush to her cheeks, “Do I look as good with my clothes on as I did with them off?”
“Of course. But don’t make me out to be single-minded. Remember, we did many things outside of the bedroom. We went to Las Vegas for a week, to that wonderful resort, we spent the nights going from show to show, dancing, laughing, holding hands. You looked fabulous in that slinky dress. Did you like it?”
“Yes. It was the kind of dress I always wanted to wear, cut down to the navel and laced in the middle. I never had the nerve to do it in real life. I was happy that you put me in it.”
“It’s funny”, she went on, “but I remember seeing myself through your eyes. Could that be possible?”
“Is this possible? Is this happening? I feel wide awake. Do you?”
“Yes I do, yes I am.”
“Then it is possible. If this is possible, anything that happened two night ago is possible.”
“But I don’t look like that. You gave me breast implants or something. And my hair! It was very nearly flaxen! Are my eyes really that blue?”
“Of course they are and you do look like that, you have just never seen yourself through the eyes of a lover.”
“Do you suppose that was it?”
“I know it was, because I saw myself through your eyes.” This seemed to catch her off guard. For the first time she squirmed against the wicker seat of her chair. He felt her uneasiness and for a while quietly enjoyed it.
“Don’t worry so. We all have our images of each other. I was glad you gave me so much hair–was it real or a toupee?–surgery maybe? And those pants! They were very tight, in just the right places. I would never feel comfortable walking around in them, even if I could fit into something like that.”
Her face lit up with the memory. Her smile, in reality, was ever more radiant than he imagined.
“You do look like that. Sitting here, in what you are wearing, you look like that. You are very handsome.”
“As you are beautiful, yes more beautiful than I remember.”
Reaching out, their hands met. The spark that passed was electric, anyone in the City Bakery, who noticed, could tell they had been lovers. Wild, passionate, uncontrolled and unafraid lovers. Now they were here together, in the light of day for everyone to see.
As if this was perhaps more than they could bear so soon, they retreated from each others touch. What they shared happened two days ago, this was now, and a lifetime, or possibly more, lay between them.
“How do you suppose it happened? How could we have met like that and then like this? Is this what people refer to as destiny?”
He looked thoughtful. In just the few minutes they had sat across from each other, his mind had conjured up many words: fate, kharma, predestination, and a hundred other words men had tossed about in its search for an explanation of why things go as they do despite all of their exotic plans.
But of all of them he liked her word. Destiny. It was the most beautiful of all the words, it was appropriate that she had chosen it. It fit her so well.
“Destiny.”, he echoed, “I like the sound of that word. I just wish it was so, but I fear that it isn’t. I fear that ‘accidental’ is the more appropriate word. No, don’t look so sad. I am struggling not to. Although I am beginning to feel that way.”
It was now her turn to be thoughtful; gazing into the coffee she had yet to take a drink of like a fortune teller looking into her glass orb as if the answers would suddenly crystallize and reveal the truth. She sat this way for some time before looking up. The faint wetness around her eyes revealed that the answers had not come, only the cold reality that was now quickly enveloping them both could be seen. They had precious little time left.
“Do you suppose”, she asked, “that this is how it always is?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is this how it always is, the ones you meet in your dreams, are they always real people? Are they just in different parts of the world? Have they lived at different times? Were we never meant to meet them?” She had paralleled his thoughts exactly. He was not surprised, she was, after all, a part of his life. For one lifetime, in a night, they had been soul-mates, had been partners for ever.
“I believe so. We are the accident, the exception to the rule. It may be just that we remember each other so well and because the time has been so short that is the difference. I know I have often met people who I thought I had met before. Perhaps they were all just apparitions, memories from the night, before the real world fleshed them out for me. I don’t know for sure. I do know that if I had to meet any of them in any circumstance, I am happy that I met you, like this. You were special.”
“As were you. Will–will we ever see each other again?”
“Of course.” he said, rising to go home to his wife and children.
“I will see you in my dreams.”
©,John Darling, All Rights Reserved.