How much of our lives is spent saying farewell or waiting for someone to say hello? I neither dreaded nor welcomed being alone, but still, one enjoys lively company when it can be found. It had been good to see the girls again. After such a night, I was overwhelmed with sleepiness, and to no great surprise, darkness filled the windows. It would not shock me to learn the clocks read eight minutes until five once more. The cat, perhaps sensing my fatigue, lifted its head from the coil of its body. He appeared curious as to what had transpired during his nap, but no more curious than usual. Unwinding himself, front legs first, then the uncurling tail, and then an invigorating stretch that starts in the claws and ends at the back legs, Harpo woke slowly and meowed once. Inscrutable yet again, he leapt off the bed and swished his tail back and forth. He seemed hesitant to depart, yet anxious to go. I would have preferred he stay but knew better. “Go on,” I said. He quick-stepped through the door and into the dark hallway. “I hope you get to be a tiger next time,” I said, but he may have been too far gone to have heard.
Where Sita had rested, the comforter lay bunched and ruffled, and her impression remained. I thought I’d lie just for a moment where she had been, for the bed was warm with her memory. I dozed off for a spell. I loved her, perhaps more than I realized at the time when it would have made a difference. Had I any sense that June night of the fireflies, I would have kissed her under the canopy of the great leafy trees or told her how excited I felt just to be near her, but nothing much happened. Her arm brushed against mine every now and then, and I could almost taste her skin. Her hair shone under the string of Christmas lights hung around the railings of the deck. She smelled of cardamom and honey. It was perfect exhilaration, and yet, and yet, I failed to say any of this. And now it is too late. She was good for me, far better than I for her.
I loved them all, in my own way, the women who came to me from the past: Dolly, impetuous and loyal to the end; Jane, from whom I beg forgiveness; Alice, who bewitched me; Marie, most delicious; my darling Flo with whom I struck it rich; my biggest fan, Adele; and Bunny, who brought out the beast in me. I see now how I wronged each of them in one fashion or another. Maybe next time I will get it right. I do not claim innocence or push the blame on any of them. Yet at the same time, I wonder why they bothered to put me to the trial. Is it just possible that they loved me, too, that they came because they missed me and wished for one more day? For I see now that I have been a rascal over centuries, but not without some appeal. And my brother has always been a bit of a rogue as well. These thoughts give me comfort and hope.
Every once in a while, I wake up in the morning in exactly the same position in which I fell asleep. The sheets are barely wrinkled, the pillow holds its shape, and the blanket is merely creased like a flag from where it had been folded before I laid my body down. Following the wake, this is how I slept, as though the bed had been designed to enclose my body and nothing else, and the darkness fell like a lid, reassuring me that I was safe and free to rest. My pounding headache had vanished. Such a peaceful sleep with no thoughts or cares or dreams or anything to wake me.
Recently, though, the space changed, and that changes everything. The light—if one may call it light; perhaps a better term is the shade of darkness—stimulated a nerve cell or two deep in the mind, and by reflex, I kicked and the box smithereened apart. A kind of Big Bang return to consciousness, to a more fluid state of being, yet still somewhat restrictive, as though living in a bubble. It was not an unpleasant transition, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. The room dark, though not of a smothering sort, but rather an enveloping darkness, and around the edges, a tad cooler. The air itself had become viscous and tasted faintly like the ocean. Life has slowed to a lunar cycle.
The voices, when they became audible, startled me. Emanating from beyond and above yet within the room, they seemed at first to be the gods in conversation, a woman and a man usually, but sometimes a third or fourth person could be heard over some infernal public address system with periodic announcements that buzzed and shook the walls. The actual words were nearly impossible to make out, though every once in a while, a phrase would filter through. “But I don’t even like milk,” the woman said. And much later, when the man exclaimed, “Hey, look it’s snowing,” I realized that we were not in June anymore, perhaps not even in the same year, or who knows, the same century. Of course, it was far too dark for me to see anything happening outside, even if I could somehow get up and find a window. For I was trapped in place, barely able to find my thumb with my mouth. And when I finally did manage the trick, that’s when I realized what was actually happening in here.
Soon I will forget again everything I ever knew.