Page 46 of Two Couples

I hurried down the steps. As I got closer, Jordan pulled away, almost cowering. Her face was streaked with tears and grime. Dirt was caked around her knuckles and wedged under her fingernails.

I stopped, unable to speak as I stared at her disheveled hair and the grief-stricken twist of her mouth.

A tiny cry came out of my throat as my mind leapt to the worst imaginable explanation for her appearance.

THIRTY-FOUR

TODD

Recent Past

When she walked into the bar, I felt my shoulders relax. She hadn’t yet seen me even though she knew I was always seated in a corner near the back, away from the bar itself, unnoticed by most of the patrons, and unseen by anyone walking past on the sidewalk. The light was dim, which was how we liked it.

Half a minute later, she was pulling out the chair across from me. The glass of white wine she liked was already sitting on the table. I’m not a guy with a lot of money, but I liked doing this little thing for her. And she always smiled, as she did now.

I sipped my beer and asked how her day had been.

“Good.” She played with the stem of her wineglass. “I had a dream that I can’t get out of my head.”

“About her?”

She nodded, still stroking her thumb and index finger up and down the glass stem.

“A dream, or a nightmare.”

She gave me a smile that changed her entire face. “How did you know? I should have called it a nightmare. I was little again. And she was holding me on her lap, reading a book to me. But I couldn’t see any of the pictures. They were just blurred colors. No matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t make any of them turn into a picture with objects I could identify. She kept pointing to things, making comments, acting like I was a little bit stupid.”

She paused and took a sip of wine. “I was so bored, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe because she was holding me so tightly against her.”

“That sounds like real life, not a dream or a nightmare,” I said.

“Pretty much. I tried to slide off her lap, but she wouldn’t let me go. The harder I tried to get free, the more tightly she hung on to me. She was squeezing my arms against my sides, almost crushing my ribs.”

“Sounds bad,” I said.

“It was awful. I started crying and she still wouldn’t let me go. She told me I was going to hurt her if I didn’t stop thrashing around. It was story time and I needed to sit still.”

“It sounds terrible.” I swallowed some beer.

“I haven’t told you the end yet.” She took a sip of wine, then looked over her shoulder. “I’m hungry. I think I’ll get⁠—”

“I’ll order. What do you want?” I was already pushing my chair out, already reaching into my back pocket for my wallet.

“Just some fries.”

“You got it.”

When I returned with the basket of fries and a small paper cup of ketchup, her wineglass was half empty. “More wine?”

“Not yet.” She grabbed a fry before I’d put the basket on the table. She shoved it into her mouth. “Ow. Oh, that’s hot. I should have waited.” She chewed carefully, then took a quick sip of wine.

When I was seated again, I grabbed a few fries for myself. “What was the nightmare part of your dream?”

“She grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. I screamed. She told me if I didn’t sit still, I would be punished. She said I was always trying to push away from her. Someday I would push so hard, I would push her heart right out of her body.” She gulped some wine, then grabbed three fries and shoved them all in her mouth. “Maybe it doesn’t sound that terrible out loud, when you weren’t in the dream, when you didn’t feel it, but I felt like she was pressing my chest so hard, holding me so tight, my heart was being crushed.” She shivered, then let go of her wineglass and rubbed her hands on her upper arms.

“It sounds terrible.”

“The same as the other dreams.”