This moment we find ourselves in...

For a brief moment I drift off into a dream... I float like a phantom from a lost reel of a Fritz Lang film, down an abandoned hallway, passing suites named after dead artists with do not disturb signs hanging on the doors like tombstones in a field of fallen soldiers ambushed by the conquering armies of love and lust and an assortment of deadly desires... I tumble down the stairs into the lobby avoiding bell hops and chambermaids and lost travelers... in my own spiritual hopscotch... I skip and I duck... and I pause just in time to catch two lovers in an embrace that can only qualify them as cheating spouses on a scheduled rendezvous... I skip and I duck and pause at the revolving entrance... a brass and glass merry-go-round... ever coming and going from our dream world to the chaos that is the reality waiting for us outside the Charlie Chaplin suite... I watch a fire engine roll by but the wale of its siren echoes at a distance... my heart begins to race... another red engine streaks past me in a blur followed by an ambulance... my heart pounds... don’t let me die in a dream... surrounded by strangers... I hear a voice over the lobby intercom... It’s not God... the concierge is paging some one... It is your voice... calling to me... whispering to me... it drowns out the hum... that hum you can’t hear... that follows me everywhere... that strange electric hum that seems to come from nowhere... and I think I must be dying... if I am finally free of the hum... but then I feel your hands pressing down on my chest as if you were trying to keep me from leaving my body... I open my eyes to find you hovering above me like a phantom from some lost movie reel... you stare at me with fear in your eyes... “I don’t want to lose you...” you whisper with a trembling in your voice that I have never heard before... you close your eyes and bury your head in my chest... for a moment... I don’t know where I am... I don’t know who you are... and you kiss me... you kiss me... slower than you have kissed me before... with a tenderness I have never felt from any lover... you bring your hands up slowly to my face and embrace it delicately... as if you held a Faberge egg between your fingers... it feels like snow flakes melting on my skin... it tingles and melts into my cheeks. I try to calm the chaotic voices in my head but it feels like it will explode... My head spins and it is getting harder to breath... My memory drifts to a summer long ago in Mexico when I got caught by a strong current in a muddy river when I was very young... how I was pulled down into the water and how I crawled my way back up... I remember how I tried to yell for help but not able to make any sound ass the dark water would only fill my lungs and take me under again... I don’t know how I made it to the side of the river... somehow I made it to safety... I remember chasing my fathers voice... I remember opening my eyes and feeling lost and alone and wondering if anyone knows I am gone... they found me that night sleeping under a bridge... I take a deep breath and you release a long sensual sigh into my mouth... a take it in... and I let it out... I take it in... and I let it out... I breath in deep and I can taste your kiss... a mixture of wine and pastries... “come back to me...” I hear a voice whisper... “come back to me...” my hearing fades in and out but I can feel the blood as it races past my eardrums - pounding out some Morse code that I cannot decipher... my eyes focus from the darkness of my dreams as if I am stepping out of a limousine into a street filled with the flashing lights of the paparazzi... I see you now... you are crying and you are trembling... I can see your lips move but the voice I hear is not yours... for a moment... again... I don’t know who you are... I don’t know where I am... down the hall way I hear my fathers voice... singing the songs of his youth... I hear him call me... I wake up... you fall on top of me shaking like a rabbit in the winter snow... crying the way I have never known a woman could cry... “don’t ever do that again...” you whisper in between sobs... I want to put my arms around you to comfort you... but I can’t feel them... my fingers are heavy... my shoulders are unfamiliar to me... “Rebecca...” I almost call you by another name... but the smell of your skin is undeniable... I could find you in the darkest ally of hell... “get off me...” Like a rabbit chasing a butterfly you jump to the side... I follow you with my eyes as they are the only part of my body that I can move... before I can ask what happened you shake your head and put your hands on me once again... you wipe the perspiration and the tears off my chest... “what do you remember?” you ask
I look up at the ceiling “floating... drowning... drifting... in and out...”
“You stopped breathing...”
I close my eyes...
I think of Carmen...
I hear the hum... that strange electric hum that the people around me don’t seem to hear...
You lay down next to me and rest your head on my chest... I want to tell you... all my secrets... But my mouth is dry and my lips want to call you by another name... “Rebecca...” I whisper... you bring a finger to my lips to silence me...
We stay like this all night... both of us too frightened to close our eyes... too frightened we might not recognize one another should we stumble into the others dream... too frightened to lose this moment we find ourselves in...