The Silence of Dreams

We meet in a dream, Charlotte and I, in a quiet cafe at the end of a vacant street, where streetlamps peer in through the windows. The location, like the scent of burnt coffee or the long hand on the wall clock that moves soundlessly, is inconsequential. What matters most is time, the time we have, the time that runs out. Some people have even gone so far as to say nothing in this world matters except time. It gives meaning to everything. Here, in our dreams, time is infinite, but when we leave this place, the dreams fade, and we start to forget.

Charlotte turns to look at the clock. The short, stocky hand descends slightly. That means something, something I was supposed to remember, but the dreams make us forget. Charlotte flips her long, dark hair and tilts her head toward me. She smiles and takes my hand, squeezes gently, and her bandaged palm scratches mine.

“I have to go,” she says.

Stay, I want to tell her. Stay, just a little longer. I wish time would stop, and we could sit for hours or days or years, and I could spend a thousand mornings watching the sun reflect in her eyes. She places her other hand against my cheek. Please don’t leave. The words almost reach the soft skin of my parted lips, but the dream pushes them back. I feel so helpless, like a flower pulled from the earth against its will. I want to tell her my name, but she pulls away from me, and when the last of her fingers grazes my skin, I look up at the clock again, and I think about what I am supposed to remember. And when Charlotte is gone, and there are no more streetlamps, and the smell of burnt coffee fades, I sit up in bed and stare at the darkness.

The real world, with its picture frames and books and decorative candles, feels hollow. Already, I miss the shabby floors and broken walls of our beautiful cafe in the middle of nowhere. I want to sleep for a little while, but I'm afraid of being swept back into the dream, afraid of being alone in a world made for two. I climb out of bed and sit down at my tiny desk in a tiny corner of the room, and I tap at the laptop screen. It flickers to life. I squint at the bright lights.

My fingers stumble over the unlit keys, sounding out a name they are not allowed to know. C-h-a-r-l-o-t-t-e. Hundreds of images appear, showing silvery skyscrapers reflecting across a lake and lush fields that look more like paintings than photographs. I refine my search, then refine it again. Each time, the screen displays countless images with black hair and silver hair with white streaks. Charlotte's is long and nearly jet-black, like crushed dahlias tumbling down the back of her neck. There is nothing particularly remarkable about it, but it’s all I recall from the dream.

We’re not supposed to remember the people we meet in our dreams, not the same way we remember the ones we meet in our waking lives. Charlotte’s face is obscured in my thoughts, like staring through a broken television, but I remember the raspiness in her voice and how she smiled at the most insignificant things. I huff and jerk my head away from the screen. “So many of them,” I say. My voice sounds strange. I wish I could speak to them, one after the other. Then I would know. I would know my Charlotte by her smooth, prickly skin, like she’d stayed in the sun too long. Since this morning, I have been sick with loneliness, and now the afternoon dawdles, having little regard for my health.

I spend the day in front of my computer, suspended between this world and the other. By the time I finish most of my work, the sun is no longer visible from my window, and the clouds have gathered into the shape of a saucer. The clock chimes at thirty minutes past eight, and, instinctively, I turn to stare out the window where the skyline winces at me through rows of giant maple trees. I take melatonin with club soda and head upstairs to my bedroom, which has become unusually cool during my absence. I lay twirling an ink pen until my bedroom has disappeared, and I am standing in the café. Charlotte is not here. From the center of the room, everything feels unfamiliar. The walls are a different color, and the sun leans against the window, waiting for Charlotte to appear. Even the emptiness, which has been our solace, feels desolate. Our table near the jukebox – where a pair of coffee mugs would always materialize, somehow – stands barren for the first time. The door clicks open, and the wind pushes it against a wire rack filled with old magazines.

The world outside the cafe is large and pale, and the road that begins here stretches across a withered field and spills over the horizon. It is beautifully gray, with its barren tree trunks forming pillars to buttress the sky, and yellow ridges lie with their knees bent, staring up at the clouds. I stand in the doorway with my hands pinned against the frame, desperate to keep pieces of us from drifting away.

Standing on the sidewalk outside the café, I sound out the name printed above the doorway. It’s a French name, I think. It’s familiar, vaguely, but then everything in dreams feels like déjà vu.

In the distance, I see Charlotte’s willowy frame, her hair and limbs ruffled by the soft wind. I start to run toward her, but my legs are heavy, and the ground scratches my bare soles. I reach out to brace myself, and my fingers graze the sky. “Charlotte!” I gasp. She turns toward me and takes slow, measured steps. My heart chugs in the silence. I’m here. I came back. The words pry at my lips but eventually succumb to my exhaustion. Charlotte presses fearlessly across our broken world for a while longer and then stops abruptly and raises one arm. I want to reach out, but a chasm still lives between us, and the air is too heavy. I don’t know how Charlotte finds the strength to keep her slender legs from buckling. I gather my strength, as much as I have left to gather, and I attempt to glide one foot across the leathery earth. Despair crumples Charlotte’s face, and it is not until I see her finger extended toward me that I turn back to the café. The roof has begun collapsing, and the wooden floorboards have nearly all disintegrated. I am being dragged back toward the entrance, back into my cocoon of sadness. Over the whirling chaos, over the tables crashing and dishes tumbling over countertops, I hear Charlotte screaming, but when I look up, she’s already gone. The café, determined to save itself, clutches my shirt, and I, in response, reach out for something to hold onto. Nothing is left except Charlotte’s voice, which lingers in the darkening void and the half-crushed sheet of notebook paper lying next to me on the bed.