a House That A Dreamer lived In

Do you remember believing in wishes?

Do you remember thinking that if you wished on enough falling stars and tossed enough shiny pennies and blew out enough birthday candles, perhaps your dreams would come true?

Joe died at 37, and I was 26, and there isn’t any reason or rhyme to this story. He died at 37, and I am nearly twenty years older than that now, but I am thirty years older than when I received the news. I didn’t believe the words across the crackling phone line. Some information isn’t digestible. You don’t fully comprehend the black-and-white facts, no matter how deeply they are inked into your skin.

Do you remember believing in Joe?

You might not remember. You might have pushed down the knowledge of who he was and how he walked through life. It might hurt too much to remember, and I understand that because I carry the love for him like a bruise I’m always always pressing on to see if it still hurts.

It still hurts.

You might not recall that he was good with his hands but bad with his timing. That he would rip up his kitchen but never replace the linoleum. Not because he was unable, but because there were too many choices. So that there was a hard-packed dirt floor in his bungalow while the fancy mansions that he built for wealthy people featured imported Italian tile and marble from distant lands.

He had too many ideas and not enough follow through, and his house was a house that a dreamer lived in.

There were candles in colored jars on the mantel. Tiny white fairy lights strung from the fruit trees in his backyard.

We used to fight. We used to fight about dumb things and smart things. Big things and small things. We’d come together after with laughter. He was the first man I felt comfortable enough to be myself with. And we weren’t a couple. I was dating his best friend. He was dating just another blonde. Always just another blonde. His women were like accessories. Bookends. You didn’t even need to learn their names. They never lasted long enough.

And yet… maybe… do you remember what it was like to want something that you couldn’t have?

There was a chemistry between us that was palpable like a drum beat in the distance. Undeniable. Getting closer. He had one time come to my apartment and banged on my door at two a.m. before I started seeing his buddy officially. This was after a Halloween party at the top of a building in a big city, and I was small-town girl still trying to figure out how to walk in a pair of black satin pumps. I’d stood on the other side of the door. I hadn’t let him in. What would have happened if I’d let him in? Would he have pressed me up against a wall? Kissed me with a ferocity that I couldn’t resist?

In my dreams. In my dreams. He lives in the house of my dreams.

I’d been 21 to his 32. I knew I wasn’t ready for his world.

Every once in a while for decades now, I have thought I caught a glimpse.

It is uncanny. I will be striding down an empty street, and around the corner, here comes Joe. Walking in that way he walked. As if he was going somewhere important.

I will be on a train, or in a busy store, or just gazing out the window of my office, and there he goes. And if I take the chance to run after him, I will never catch up. He is always just out of reach.

The blondes were like carbon copies of one another. They’d stay long enough to realize he was never going to finish his floor. He was never going to commit. And I think I know why. I think that what he wanted was me. Not a blonde. Not a climber. Not slick or polished. But someone who made him laugh. Someone he sometimes called late at night from a payphone to tell me he needed to hear my voice.

I need to hear his voice.

People are imperfect.

The ones who matter, anyway. The ones who linger.

I was too young for him at first. And then I was with someone else, so I couldn’t be with him. But he had wanted me from the moment our eyes met, and shouldn’t that count for something, if we’re counting? If we’re emptying our pockets and sorting the pennies from the nickels. The dimes from the quarters. Shouldn’t that count for something?

I see him again. I see him at a bar that I’ve been to so many times. It’s uncanny how I’ve aged, but he’s stayed the same. But when I look in the mirror behind the bar, I only see me. Silver in my hair. Hollows under my eyes. Purple, like ink stains. Like smudges.

I have another drink.

There is a shift in space and time. The lights overhead flicker and go on bright then dim once more. I seem to be the only one who notices.

When I slip off the burgundy barstool to choose a song on the jukebox, he comes up behind me, puts his hands on my hips, nuzzles his lips underneath my hair, kisses my nape. He holds me in his big arms and he aligns his body with my body, and he says, “Do you remember…?”

And I do. I remember all of those nights when I should have stayed over. When I should have been with him instead, cozy under too many patched quilts and worn velvet blankets. I remember all those nights when I should have taken the right route instead of the one bordered by the fear of making people angry at me. Of rocking the boat.

You need two coins to cross the River Styx.

They stopped minting pennies this year.

I should have ended things with the wrong guy, and maybe I could have saved Joe. Could I have saved him? Could I have saved him? Can you save anyone? Nickels in your pocket.

We leave the bar together, walk out into the night, and down the lane lined with jacaranda trees to the house that once was his, to a house that has been boarded up and discarded, forgotten, destroyed by time. Graffiti on the baseboard. Kilroy was here. I am younger with every step. My silver fading back to black. My clothes shifting from shapeless to formfitting. My desert boots swapped for heels once more. We walk down the path and the weeds part for us, and the stairs rebuild themselves, and the front door is painted lemon yellow and the doorknob is shiny brass, cold to the touch.

Inside, there is no electricity, but a fire lights the grate. The floor is smooth and there are pillows. He pulls me down on him, and he tells me that I’m beautiful, and he tells me that he loves me. From a payphone. From a phone booth. Dimes in his pocket. Pennies in my mouth.

He’s been dead for thirty years. But so have I, my friend.

So have I.