Lessons for Sleeping -or- Heart to Heart

Author's Note:  This story is a bit different to read than probably most of what you've read before.  At first it seems very disjointed, very vague, very hard to understand.  A "bad acid trip," if you will.  I did this on purpose. 

Too often we are just given the stories to read.  There is no challenge.  There is no fight for comprehension.  All, then, is dependent on the satisfaction of the story being told.  Clearly, this story is a little different.  This story is a more active story.  It forces the reader to scrutinize each section, each flash, each scene, to try and find a common thread.  There are many common threads throughout.  I wrote it that way.  But I'm not just going to give them to you.  And this might be the hardest part of the story. 

I wrote this story in a reductionist fashion.  To better explain, visual artists use several different methods to abstract something.  They can blow it up, twist it, turn it into shapes, any number of different things to change it from the original.  They can also reduce from it until there is just what's needed to understand the picture and nothing else.  This is what I did.  To better imagine this idea, think of a pitch black room with a scene inside.  One could simply light up the entire room and easily understand the whole scene.  Or one could light up certain essential details without touching the superfluous to see the same thing.  I chose the latter.

So this story is going to be difficult to understand the first time.  If you were just looking for an easy story to read, this probably isn't for you.  But if you want a more rewarding experience as a reader, I salute you.

Milo


It’s difficult to watch a man live in dream.  But I did.
         I used to watch him every day.  At first out of curiosity.  Later out of concern.  (Habit?  Heartbreak?  No, too simple.  Too simple.)  Out of identity.  (Identity?  Not quite right, but it’s the only word that comes to mind.)  Identity.  Or the lack thereof.

         “How come?” he asked.
         “It’s just how I feel,” I shrugged.
         “I guess I’m just not sure.”

         It’s difficult to watch a man live.  I couldn’t.  Or didn’t.  I didn’t watch a man live.  I think that’s more difficult.  I watched him make his bed the same way for years.  A sheet.  Blanket.  Comforter.  Two pillows.
         “How come?” I asked.
         “It’s just how I feel,” he shrugged.
         But he always kept the second pillow.  I’m not sure when it started.  Maybe it’s always been there, just. . .dormant?  Subterranean?  Lurking and sinister.  Or creeping.  Perhaps it’s always been there, I just keep seeing it more and more.
         It’s difficult to watch.  He always sleeps on one side.  Eats at a table for two.  Sleeps—or worse, doesn’t sleep.  Stays awake until five o’clock on Saturday nights.  Takes long showers and doesn’t know why. 
         
         “I guess I’m just not sure.”
         “Don’t you feel like you’re falling?” I asked.
         “Not falling.  Just asleep.”
         “But that’s just it.  Where’s the line anymore?”
         “Does it matter?”
         “I guess not,” I conceded.

         I came home one night.  Must have been a Friday.  No, a Saturday.  The house was dark—probably four or five o’clock.  How difficult.  I saw his door open.  There was a light inside.  His bed—sheet, blanket, comforter, two pillows—lay unrippled.  Curiosity.  (Concern?  Habit?  Heartbreak?  Certainly.) 
         He sat at his table with a cup of coffee (assumably cold) and a candle.
         Listen:           a table.
                   Two chairs.
                   Drawn blinds.
                   Hunched over his cup but not drinking.
                   Hunched over his chair but not resting.
                   (A long glance through the windowpane.  A sigh.  A sip of coffee.  Repeat until desired
                             effect is achieved.)
         I never mentioned it.  But I watched him on Saturday nights.
         
         I met her once.  We walked to the train, accompanying each other with the unsettled comfort of strangers.
         “Good morning,” I said.
         “Yes.”  She blinked, faltered, continued walking.
         I blinked, faltered, continued walking.  I sat down next to her and we waited together.  We sat in silence for a time until I looked at her hands.
         “Why?” I asked.
         She didn’t answer.

         “Don’t you feel like you’re—“
         “Falling?  No,” he snapped.  “Not falling.  Just asleep.”
         “But that’s just—”
         “That’s just it, right?  Where’s the line?  It doesn’t matter.  It.  Doesn’t.  Matter,” he punctuated.
         “I guess not,” I conceded.

         I didn’t talk to her after that.  But I certainly worried.
         And maybe I started getting a sense of curiosity about her.  (Habit?  Perhaps.  Heartbreak?  Well.)  Finding out things about her. 
         Name:  Maria Rosas.
         Occupation:  Waitress.
                   Where?  A café downtown.
         Parents:  Not on speaking terms.
         Status:  In a relationship.
         Just random things I picked up.  Stopped in her café once after work and found she worked there.  Got her mail once on accident (letter to Paulo Rosas:  returned to sender).  Things like that.  Built a picture.  (Built a life?  Precisely.)  Thought about her.  (Fell in love with her?  Hardly.  Loved her?  Impossibly.)  Had voiceless conversations with the back of her head.  Had daydreams.  (Loved her?  Inexorably.)
         
         He worked methodically.  Systematically.  Indefatigably.  (Indifferently?  At times.)  He worked in boxes, small boxes carefully.  Each was identical, unquestionably cuboidal, white, matte.  Small.  Loud.  At times, scraping.  He laid them down slowly. 
         “How come?” I asked.
         “It’s just how I feel,” he shrugged.  He finished the row he was working on and proceeded to stack a new plain of boxes.
         “Do you. . .” I faltered.  “Do you need help?”
         He paused for a moment, considering.  He edged the next box into place.  “No,” he answered.  “It’s something I need to understand for myself.”
         “What do you need to understand?” I asked.
         “I guess I’m just not sure,” he sighed.  He placed another box down.  Always one at a time.  He could have just as easily done four or five, saved time.  But no.
         “Don’t you feel like you’re falling?” I asked desperately.
         “Not. . .not falling,” he said, picking up another box.  “Just asleep.”
         I nearly screamed.  “But that’s just it.  Where’s the line anymore?”
         He didn’t look away from his box.  “Does it matter?” he asked. 
         “I guess not,” I conceded.  “But it’s difficult to watch.”
         “What is?” he asked.
         “A man living with two hearts when I have none at all.”

         I came home one Saturday night to a dark house.  The only light came from the candle in his room, casting strange silhouettes of hunching men and lightning on the stairwell.  I climbed up the stairs and pushed his door open a little more.  He sat there with his lukewarm coffee and breaking shoulders.  The curtains were drawn.  I stood in his doorway for a while.  Watched him swell at passing cars.  Watched him crack when the streets quieted. 
         At quarter past four, I saw him stir.  He stood up straight, coffee forgotten, and braced himself on the windowsill.  He stood there for a moment (a millennium?  Precisely.) and for a split second I saw everything.  I saw me watching him watching a light flick on in the house across the street.  Me him light, telescoping, everything focused through to that light.  When it flicked off, I flicked out, and he slept.
         We kept this ritual from that night on.  (Told him?  Never.)

         She sat down next to me one day.  I was at the train station, pulling my jacket closer to me while I waited.  She wore gloves that day, white gloves that looked a little dirty.
         “Who are you?” she asked.  I thought for a moment.
         “Does it matter?”
         She considered this momentarily, fiddled with her purse.  “I guess not,” she conceded. 
         A train on the other side of the tracks thundered in, solid, blue, the only real thing left.  The few scattered souls on the other side of the station seeped in, the train howled and squealed away, and all was silent again.  I looked at her gloves.
         “Do you . . . do you need help?” I asked.  I felt very awkward.  She sat for a while.  Didn’t breathe much.  Didn’t say much.  But then her head dropped to her hands, and she broke.
         “Yes,” she said. 
         
         “I keep having the same dream,” he said.  He cut his banana into thin slices and dropped them one by one into his corn flakes.
         “What about?”
         “Every night it’s the same.  I’m at the train station.  You know, the big one at the end of the line.  I’m walking around.  I have a train to catch, and I’m looking for it, but I can never find it.”  I spread some jam over my toast and took a bite.  “So I come to one of the platforms.  It doesn’t have a number.  You know how dreams can do that.  At least,” he paused, thinking.  “At least, I don’t know the number.  I don’t think it has a number.
         “I’m at the platform, and the train rolls in.  Naturally.  It’s not my train, but all the people get on, and so do I.  I sit down in my seat by the window.”  He takes a moment to swallow, and I pour myself some coffee.  “I sit down by the window, and I look out, you know how you look out the window kind of absent-mindedly?”
         “Sure.”
         He continued.  “I was looking out the window and then I see her.”  I looked at my cereal with sudden disinterest.  “She is there, and she is looking at me.  And then she starts yelling something, but I can’t hear.  The window won’t open.  I try getting off the train again, but the door’s already closed and the whistle’s already sounded.  I look back out the window and she’s still yelling.  She’s not upset or anything.  She just looks . . . sad. 
         “The train starts moving,” he pressed forward, finishing off his bowl of cereal and draining the milk into his mouth.  “And she starts running.  What she has to tell me is really important.  I run down the cars, sprinting to see her as she speeds forward and then slows backwards.  I get to the end of the train and look out the window.  She runs for a little while, and then she stops.”  He took a sip of his coffee.  “Then I wake up.”
         
         It’s difficult to watch a man.  It’s even more difficult to watch a woman.  Difficult to breathe.  Difficult to retreat.  (Difficult to hold?  At times.)  But I promised.
         She sat opposite me, tracing orbits around the rim of her untouched coffee with a gloved finger.  “I need to leave,” she said suddenly.  I nodded.
         “I’m glad.”
         “But when?” she asked.
         “Not when, but how.”
         “How, then?” she asked.  I thought for a long while.  There was very little of her left.  I didn’t want to say it.  I said it.
         “My brother.”
         “Does he know me?”
          “Yes.”
         “Do I know him?”
         “No.”
         “Well, then there’s that.”

         He worked methodically.  Systematically.  Indefatigably.  (Indifferently?  No.  Passionately.)  He worked in boxes, small boxes carefully.  Each was identical, unquestionably cuboidal, white, matte.  Small.  Loud.  At times, scraping.  He laid them down slowly. 
         “How come?” I asked.
         “It’s just how he feels,” she said.  Blue and purple shaking fingers placed a white box alongside one of his.
         “Do you. . .” I faltered.  “Do you need help?”
         “No,” they responded immediately.  “It’s something we have to understand for ourselves.”  They finished the row and began the next plain of boxes. 
         “What do you need to understand?” I asked.  I picked up a box, but then they stopped.  He kicked the boxes he had just laid down, and white cubes flew everywhere.  It all broke.
         “It’s not what we need to understand,” she said angrily.  “It’s what you need to understand.  Don’t you feel like you’re falling?”
         “Not falling,” I answered.  “Just . . . asleep.”
         “Just asleep,” he spat.  “But that’s just it.  Where’s the line anymore?”
         “Does it matter?” I asked.
         “Completely,” she responded. 

         Two weeks later, they boarded the train together.  I never saw them after that.