Lair of Dreams

The wind whistles down into the skyscraper-bound canyons, across the broad expanses of the avenues and the narrow confines of the streets, where lives unfold in secret, day in, day out:

Sometimes a man sighs for want of love.

Sometimes a child cries for the dropped lollipop, its sweetness barely tasted.

Sometimes the girl gasps as the train screams into the station, shaken by how close she’d allowed herself to wander to the edge.

Sometimes the drunk raises weary eyes to the rows of buildings rendered beautiful by a brief play of sunlight. “Lord?” he whispers into the held breath between taxi horns. The light catches on a city spire, fracturing for a second into glorious rays before the clouds move in again. The drunk lowers his eyes. “Lord, Lord…” he sobs, as if answering his own broken prayer.

The cars drive on. The people hurry to and fro. They sigh and want and cry and dream. Taken together, their symphonic whyohwhy might reach the heavens and make the angels weep. Alone, they are no match for the noise of industry. The jackhammers. The cranes. The streetcars, subways, and aeroplanes. The constant whirring machinery of the dream factories. And do these things dream of more?

Another day closes. The sun sinks low on the horizon. It slips below the Hudson, smearing the West Side of Manhattan in a slick of gold. Night arrives for its watchful shift. The neon city bursts its daytime seams, and the great carnival of dreams begins again.

Evie woke in the middle of the night with a throbbing headache. With tremendous effort, her eyes struggled open. The room wobbled, then settled into focus. She had a vague memory of kissing Sam. In a woozy panic, she looked down, relieved to see that she was still in her party dress and alone. A wave of boozy nausea washed over her and she stumbled to the bathroom, where she splashed water over her puffy face. It was early, before dawn. Plenty of time to sleep, and to figure out a way to let Sam down easy. Evie angled her head to drink straight from the bathroom tap. Then she crawled back to bed to sleep it off.

It was the light that woke her.

Evie blinked, her eyes adjusting to the buttery morning sun bathing her room in a hazy glow. But this wasn’t her room at the Winthrop. This was her room on Poplar Street, back in Zenith. Slowly, she took it in: the dresser with her silver hand mirror, the painting of a Victorian girl selling flowers, the star-pattern quilt sewn by her grandmother when she was born. She was home.

Hurriedly, she dressed and went downstairs, passing through the living room, where the Philco had been left on and a familiar voice burbled out of the radio cabinet’s speakers: “Now, dear Mr. Forman, you must let me concentrate! The spirits are throwing a real lulu of a party.…”

How could her voice be coming from the radio if she was here in her parents’ living room in Ohio? She vaguely remembered standing on the platform in a pretty subway station and boarding the sweetest little train. She must’ve fallen asleep. This was a dream. That she knew this was a dream didn’t lessen her excitement. Quite the contrary; she felt everything even more, as if she were one step ahead of the moment and desperate to hold on to it. As if she would do anything to make it stay.

The smell of bacon wafted out from the back of the house. Evie followed it through the dining room and into the familiar blue-and-white kitchen with the big window over the sink that looked out on a neat row of black-eyed Susans lining the gravel driveway.

“Good morning, dear.” Her mother smiled as she settled flapjacks onto a plate. “Breakfast is nearly ready. Don’t play too long.”

“I won’t,” Evie said, her voice quiet and even, as if she were afraid that to speak any louder would break the spell and end the magic of this dream.

Her father strode into the room and kissed her mother on the cheek before sitting at the table with his newspaper. He looked up at Evie and smiled. “Don’t you look pretty as a picture today!”

“Thank you, Papa.”

Still at the stove, her mother called over one shoulder, “Evie, be a dear and call your brother in to breakfast, won’t you?”

Evie’s heartbeat quickened. James. James was here.

Light poured through the screen door, so bright she couldn’t see what lay beyond. She pushed through and saw that it was all as she remembered it—the rope swing tied to the enormous oak tree, the summer garden with its ripe tomatoes, her father’s Buick parked by the toolshed. The hazy sun bathed it all in ephemeral beauty. Birds tweeted at the feeder. Cicadas buzzed pleasantly in the sweet, feathery grass.

Someone was singing. “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.…”