Direct call for the Publishers. My last idea for a book.
I’am Dreaming.
By Francesco Barone
Adam Todds is a 33-year-old bank manager who lives in Boston with his wife Sophie Cummins, who is also a bank manager at the age of twenty-nine. The Todds are a perfect couple, like their life, their career and the healthy lifestyle they lead. They play sports regularly, they are esteemed in their work environment, well-liked by the community of the neighborhood where they live, even their breed dog is a reflection of a perfection sought in small details. Ron, a six-year-old labrador, has a well-sheer honey-colored coat, clean legs, cut nails, and temperate and never insolent behavior.
As a couple, they met when they frequented the same fruit and vegetable shop in downtown Boston, De Marco’s Fruits and Vegetables, a place for those young snobs looking for red tomato or cucumbers of the right size. Adam was analyzing the roundness of an orange when he heard a woman arguing with a boy who had tried in vain to approach her. Sophie wore a denim skirt and rust-colored blouse, her red hair falling to large curls on her shoulders, Adam instinctively threw orange on the boy’s head, sending the fruit crashing into pieces of citrus pulp.
<<I am sorry>> Adams said to the boy with his head full of orange flesh <<I wanted to test the roundness of the fruit and its maturity>> He closed the sentence in this way and from that day every single stage of their engagement became a puzzle of idyllic moments that brought their lives to this precise moment.
Adams closed the book he was reading and placed it on the bedside table to his left, turned off the light of the abat-jour, and put himself in his favorite position to sleep, the one on the side, at the last second he remembered to give his wife a good night, a moment before falling into a deep sleep. Sophie heard in her the call of the sweet sleep, a long and relaxing yawn made her close the evening newspaper, she also turned off the light and fell into a comatose sleep letting the newspaper slip from her side of the bed.
Adam found himself catapulted into a room with no furniture to adorn her, a white light dangling from the ceiling, the door opened and a black woman came in, her hair was almost curly and from a distance it looked really soft. The woman’s face was bright with thin eyes and pronounced cheekbones, her white teeth reflected a dazzling and contagious smile, the woman came in front and Adam who in the dream was powerless to move, could see a curvy body, soft at the hips and burly but with a grace that only the angels know. She touched him by passing a hand over his face and let a warmth come to confuse even more confused sleep. Now they were inside a furnished room and were playing with a group of friends at the twister game, they already looked like a couple started, maybe they were married, Adam could not say, he could not do anything except witness a random scene of a story that interested him even more to this woman. A man inside the furnished room calls her by his own name, Cecilia, she turns and the dream changes again, in the same room and they are at a party of friends, one of those quiet parties with cocktails in hand, Adam is sitting on an armchair and Cecilia is sitting over him answering his friend’s call and before turning his neck , she give a big kiss on Adam’s forehead letting that same warmth as before envelop him even more. Everything about her has a pleasant scent, her hair, her face, even the clothes she wears, to Adam that scent of vanilla and peach flowers reminds her of the detergent that her mother used to wash his clothes as a child. The room flips over and transfers Adam and Cecilia into a kitchen with wooden furniture of a style that Adam doesn’t know, something modern and simple, totally minimalist. Cecilia wears a purple dress and an apron of jeans, her eyes are bright and do not peel a second from Adam, her hands are packed in a bag of fresh pasta, the flour is all over the table and some grains have ended up on Cecilia’s face, this makes her laugh and makes her curl her little nose. Adam can hardly believe that such a beautiful creature can exist only in a dream. The kitchen shelves close and the furniture bends over themselves, now he and Cecilia are lying on a thick carpet and the fireplace laps two wooden flakes, they are intent on hugging to hear something that between them had been born several years before, perhaps in a dream that Adam did not remember, Cecilia seems so comfortable with everything around them , his voice as his laughter are beats of a heart that can not be operated if he gets sick, is the expression of happiness. Adam squeezes her more and more understanding how to move in his dream and the first words he utters are <<I want to sleep with you tonight>> Cecilia’s face changes by leaking her discontent, it’s the first time Adam sees her unhappy. She replies that she has to run to her birthday, something her work colleagues have organized. The voice doesn’t seem to come out of them maybe it’s Adam himself who puts those words in her mouth. Adam falls asleep in his dream and awakens in a bar, one of those with low lights and neon on the signs, can no longer guide his body, can only follow his movements like those of a movie character. He approaches the bar and asks for an Old Fashioned, the bartender serves him with three candied cherries inside, Adam turns to his left and notices Cecilia sitting at an all-male table laughing with gusto, understands that it’s his birthday night but can’t intervene at all. Cecilia wears a cream cloth dress and her hair loose, Adam can only drink his cocktail and let the alcohol do its effect, which does not happen. At the end of the evening there is only him and the table where Cecilia and her friends arrive at the end of the party. She approaches the counter to pay for all the consumption and sees Adam intent on finishing the third cocktail and he realizes that he has been seen meeting cecilia’s fury for the first time, she sees him well and the face turns into a shock, his mouth widens in an expression of anger and disapproval , her forehead wrinkles outlining three even darker lines but her eyes remain small and kind, she is disappointed, she is bitter, she would never have expected such behavior from her man. His only man.
<<What are you doing here, don’t you trust me? Is that what you do?>> asks her, Adam feels blood freeze, does not speak, does not dare to reply. He would like to embrace her and explain to her that she has no body power, it’s just a dream but it’s so damn true and the feelings are the deepest she’s ever felt in her entire life. Adam gets up and goes under a blanket of lights that goes off slowly behind him, leaving Cecilia’s face unchanged with tears in his eyes. Adam suddenly wakes up in his bed, in his house, with his wife next door sleeping stone and as if for a feeling of incompleteness he recovers in his sleep but this time sees nothing but a deep light emanating from the screen of a smartphone, the open chat with Cecilia and those messages without any response.
Cecy- Are you going to leave like this?
Cecy- You ran away.
Cecy- You left me alone at the bar.
Cecy- Do you realize what you are to me?
Cecy- Go back now.
Cecy, so he had saved her number on his mobile phone in his dreams, Adam thought about how much they must have laughed at this abbreviation. The last awakening was the worst, in the last hour he had dreamed of the best feeling and the most disastrous of his life. That love so involuntary but so strong and rooted. She fell asleep but without dreaming anything, a deep darkness without any face and in the distance the echo of her voice that marked the name of that woman coming from a world of dreams and imagination.
Sophie was crossing a forest on foot, leaf trees and surrounding terrain had different shades of brown, from the darkest to the lightest changing with the reflections of the light of a not-too-hot autumn sun. It reminded her a lot of Wisconsin where she was born and raised for the first ten years, unclear images looms large in her mind as she dreamed. Some birds took to the skies as soon as they saw her shaking the branches of a large chestnut tree, on the trunk an engraved heart and the initials S. I. inside. Sophie continued to walk past a tiny pond where the water seemed as still as the sky above her head, the roof of a house appeared just above a small hill, a Japanese house. In a few steps he came up to it, the large sliding door was open and a lounge with a low table awaited it.She came in and took off her shoes, the gesture seemed sincere as she had been doing for several years, a man appeared from behind a large beam, a man with oriental features, wore a light blue shirt and a brown cardigan like leaves, the glasses resting on his nose were tied to a cord around his neck.
<<You’re finally home, I thought you’d never come back from the walk.>> Said the man with a big smile and then handed her hand to help her sit at the coffee table, the tea water had boiled and now the darjeeling was infused.
<<How was the walk in the woods? Tell me>> He asked, handing Sophie a cup. She initially struggled to move her mouth trying to express a sensible concept, but she could only say <<Ishi>> That was the man’s name.
The man smiled big << Yes that’s my name, you have to be really tired to just say this >>
Sophie ceded on the big pillow behind her letting her body settle into that feeling of eternal beauty, the leaves outside began to fall as soon as she felt the warmth of Ishi’s hand touching her hair, it was a matter of elementary mathematics, it was as if she could control the outside world from the window of that big house and be able to decide.
<<How beautiful you are Sophie, I seem to see our daughter>>
Sophie barred her eyes, the thought immediately went to their eldest daughter
<<He’s quiet, he’s her sleeping, she’s waiting for you as long as she can>> Ishi used his warmer tone to whisper this phrase.
<<You know I had a dream but I don’t remember>> Ishi laughed with gusto at Sophie’s phrase, filling the emptiness of silence with a perfect sound as if they were only engaged for a few months and any of their moments were made of uniqueness. Sophie began to understand that of that world so suspended in an indefinite time where she was married to a japanese man completely unknown and with whom she had had a child; curiosity puked her down, letting her imagine the traits of their human creature born of that love as absurd as true. Her daughter came out of her bedroom, wore long pajamas with a drawn pokemon, her eyes as her defined chin were a copy of her husband Ishi, her copper hair was so light that she sensed a new kind of blonde, as she could exist only in her dream. Her daughter approached her to touch her face, with her father had a different understanding, they had looked at each other for a moment only, with her mother she needed a few more seconds to get to know her, perhaps for the first time. After careful analysis, she had raced against her to curl up in her arms.
Sophie smelled biscuits and raspberries, her little girl’s skin smelled like affection and soft wool. He instinctively gave her a kiss on the forehead and all three remained in a frame for several minutes.
The alarm sounded, the ceiling of the room was as white as an immaculate sheet and never touched. In part to her husband’s sleep was light almost silent with a completely uninfluential hum with the world around her, Ishi and her daughter had remained in her dream.
<<I think I’ve dreamed of what my life is>> She said and turned her head toward the window she gave to a city that did not belong to her.
