A Far Away Voice

I spent most of this past Saturday evening curled up on my bed and writhing in pain (when not running frequently to my bathroom to, well, you know), stricken with some sort of sudden and thankfully quickly-lived illness of as yet undetermined origin. I, of course, was convinced that it was The Bubonic Plague; as I am so rarely ill, I loathe it when it happens. (Possibly the only thing I abhor more is the act of vomiting.) The Painter had already assured me that it was not, in fact, The Bubonic Plague, an assertion I only truly believed when the illness receded sometime late Sunday afternoon. As one may imagine, it was quite a glamorous and sexy Saturday evening Chez Bartelby.

Anyway, this piece is not about projectile vomiting (I know, thank Hera, right?!), but about a dream I had while ill, about a special voice from very, very far away.

As usually occurs when I am this fantastically ill, I drifted in and out of the most profoundly vivid dreams, specific down to the smallest of details. Thankfully, my very patient friend in the SFO was always willing to take my Trans-Pacific calls throughout the evening, and attempting to distract me with conversation. One such conversation concerned our impending purchases of unlocked GSM world cell phones, and I passed into sleep while hearing him compare the features and prices of three such phones.

Which would explain why I emerged into a dream being handed an alarmingly large, very chic, but frighteningly complicated-looking device by whom was apparently my new boss at a (still nonexistent, by the way) new agency. I was expected to use this monstrosity because my position involved a plethora of presentations, extensive travel to Asian markets, you know, the usual. My new boss watched me stare at the thing in trepidation.

“But…” I stammered, “…I like my phone.”

“Nonsense,” she chirped. “These are the latest models and you’ll have everything you need for anything.”

I gasped and jumped in abject horror as a button I had innocently fingered revealed a flip-out mini-CD/DVD player. The thing was an electronic Victorinox!

“Who uses these things anymore?!” I queried regarding the mini-CD/DVD player, becoming increasingly annoyed. “Aren’t my laptop and jump drives enough?!”

“You never know!” she chirped again, calling over her shoulder as she traipsed away from me, “your service is already live and I’ve synched it to the agency’s contact database so you may begin using it immediately. Don’t forget you have that seven o’clock red eye to Hong Kong!”

I stared warily back at the “phone.” The only thing I could think of to do was dial my little sister. When she answered, “Hi, puta!” all I could do was whine, “I need coffee and five cigarettes like now. Meet me at The Standard.”

The next thing I knew I was at The Standard, chugging an Americano and fingering the thing in my hand. All I could do was glare at each feature as I touched the different buttons, each one clicking, whirring out, and lighting up: the phone; the mini-CD/DVD player with LCD screen; the web browser; the camera; the keyboard. I felt a hand on my shoulder and a breathless, “Oh my God, what’s wrong?!”

I shoved my open palm at her, each gadget splayed out for her to see. “This!” I exclaimed melodramatically.

She immediately inhaled in awe and whispered, “Oh my God, Darling! I can’t believe your new agency gave you one of these! Why are you so upset about it?! It’s the latest in communication devices! According to an article I read yesterday on the interwebs, you can contact, like, anyone!”

I stared at her in shock, jaw slack.

“Oh my God!” she hissed at me. “I am so jealous that you have one of these before I have one! I have to dash out to buy one right now! Ciao, puta!” And she was gone.

Suddenly, I was in Hong Kong. I stood at a railing in a park on a high hill overlooking the buildings of the city. It was twilight, and a light mist was falling that was beginning to grow harder as the lights began to come up in the city below. I remember the way the rain smelled, the way the wind felt as it separated the long strands of my hair.

I was still holding my “latest in communication devices,” at which I sneered down derisively.

It began bleeping at me.

I sighed and touched the button that activated the phone feature, immediately answering the call, and tried to sound cheerful as I said into the piece, “Atherton Bartelby.”

“Atherton, Darling?”

I inhaled sharply through my mouth and got a sudden splitting headache.

“I just realized that it’s been so long since our last chat, my Dear, and I wanted to give you a call to catch up and just…just to hear your voice.”

It was my mother.

Down to the last specific inflections in her voice: the pauses; the accents; the way she lilted upward at the end to turn “Atherton, Darling?” into a question.

Everything was so real, in fact, that it took me over thirty seconds to realize that the call was an impossible one, as her memorial service had been five years ago this weekend.

I awoke in tears to my own completely normal yet devastatingly thin Samsung ringing. It took me several seconds to answer it, afraid of what or whom I might hear when I did, until I looked at the caller ID to read “The Painter.” I answered and immediately rushed to describe the dream through sniffles, including the real, impossibly true, sound of her voice.

When I had finished, he said, “You’ve been thinking about her a lot, lately. Any guess as to why?”

I sighed, indelicately blowing my nose. “I don’t know,” I said. “This time of year? My life? I don’t know.”

“Well,” he said softly, a smile in his voice, “for whatever reason, I’m sure that this dream was a very good omen.”

Filed under: Writing , alucina, analyze this, dick lit, emotional landscapes, family, memories, needful reminders, painter, questions