Dreams Underfoot

No words, he thought.

She was right. There was no need for words.

He let her lead him into Lucia’s bedroom.

Afterwards, he felt so still inside it was though the world had stopped moving, time stalled, no one left but the two of them, wrapped up together, here in the dusky shadows that licked across the bed. He raised himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

She seemed to be made of light. An unearthly radiance lay upon her pale skin like an angelic nimbus, except he doubted that any angel in heaven knew how to give and accept pleasure as she did. Not unless heaven was a very different place from the one he’d heard about in Sunday school.

There was a look in her eyes that promised him everything—not just bodily pleasures, but heart and soul— and for a moment he wanted to open up to her, to give to her what he gave his music, but then he felt something close up thick inside him. He found himself remembering a parting conversation he’d had with another woman. Darlene Flatt, born Darlene Johnston. Belying her stage name, she was an extraordinarily wellendowed singer in one of the local country bands. Partial to slowdancing on sawdusted floors, bolo ties, fringed jackets and, for the longest time, to him.

“You’re just a hollow man,” she told him finally. “A sham. The only place you’re alive is on stage, but let me tell you something, Matt, the whole world’s a stage if you’d just open your eyes and see.

Maybe in Shakespeare’s day, he thought, but not now, not here, not in this world. Here you only get hurt.

“If you gave a fraction of your commitment to music to another person, you’d be ...”

He didn’t know what Darlene thought he’d be because he tuned her out. Stepped behind the wall and followed the intricate turns of a song he was working on at the time until she finally got up and left his apartment.

Got up and left.

He swung his feet to the floor and looked for his clothes. Katrina caught his arm.

What’s wrong? she signed. What have I done?

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s not you. It’s not anything. It’s just ... I’ve just got to go, okay?”

Please, she signed. Just tell me ...

But he turned away so that he couldn’t see her words. Got dressed. Paused in the doorway of the bedroom, choking on words that tried to slip through the wall. Turned finally, and left. The room. The apartment. Her, crying.

Lucia found Katrina when she came home later, redeyed and sitting on the sofa in just a Tshirt, staring out the window, unable or unwilling to explain what was wrong. So Lucia thought the worst.

“That sonuvabitch,” she started. “He never even showed up, did he? I should have warned you about what a prick he can be.”

But Katrina’s hands said, No. It wasn’t his fault. I want too much.

“He was here?” Lucia asked.

She nodded.

“And you had a fight?”

The shrug that came in response said, sort of, and then Katrina began to cry again. Lucia enfolded her in her arms. It was small, cold comfort, she knew, for she’d had her own time in that lonely place in which Katrina now found herself, but it was all Lucia had to offer.

Matt found himself on the ferry, crossing from the city over to Wolf Island, as though, by doing so, he was completing some unfinished ritual to which neither he nor Katrina had quite set the parameters. He stood at the rail on the upper deck with the wind in his face and let the words to longdead ballads run through his mind so that he wouldn’t have to think about people, about relationships, about complications, about Katrina.

But in the dusking sky and in the wake that trailed behind the ferry, and later on the island, in the shadows that crept across the lawn and in the tangle that branches made against the sky, he could see only her face. Not all the words to all the songs he knew could free him from the burden of guilt that clung to him like burrs gathered on a sweater while crossing an autumn field.

He stopped at the statue of the little mermaid, and of course even she had Katrina’s face.

“I didn’t ask to start anything,” he told the statue, saying now what he should have said in Lucia’s bedroom. “So why the hell do I have to feel so guilty?”

It was the old story, he realized. Everything, everybody wanted to lay claim to a piece of your soul.

And if they couldn’t have it, they made you pay for it in guilt.

“I’m not a hollow man,” he told the statue, saying what he should have said to Darlene. “I just don’t have what you want me to give.”

The statue just looked out across the lake. The dusk stretched for long impossible moments, then the sun dropped completely behind the horizon and the lamps lit up along the island’s pathways. Matt turned and walked back to where the ferry waited to return him to Newford.

He didn’t see Katrina again for two days.

I’m sorry, was the first thing she said to him, her hands moving quickly before he could speak.

He stood in the hallway leading into Lucia’s apartment, late on a Wednesday afternoon, not even sure what he was doing here. Apologizing. Explaining. Maybe just trying to understand.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It’s just ... everything happened too fast.”

She nodded. Do you want to come in?

Matt regarded her. She was barefoot, framed by the doorway. The light behind her turned the flowered dress she was wearing into gossamer, highlighting the shape of her body under it. Her hair was the colour of soft gold. He remembered her lying on the bed, radiant in the afterglow of their lovemaking.

“Could we go out instead?” he said. “Just for a walk or something?”

Let me get my shoes.

He took her to the lakefront and they walked the length of the boardwalk and the Pier, and then, when the jostle of the crowds became too much, they made their way down to the sand and sat near the shoreline. For the most part, his voice, her hands, were still. When they did talk, it was to make up stories about the more colorful characters with whom they shared the beach, both using their hands to speak so that they wouldn’t be overheard, laughing as each tried to outdo the other with an outrageous background for one person or another.

Where did you learn sign language? she asked him at one point.

My cousin’s deaf, he replied, his hands growing more deft, remembering old patterns, the longer they spoke. Our parents were pretty close and we all saw a lot of each other, so everybody in the family learned.

They had dinner at Kathryn’s Cafe. Afterwards, they went to the Owlnight, another of Newford’s folk clubs, but this one was on the Butler University campus itself, in the Student Center. Garve MacCauley was doing a solo act, just guitar and gravely voice, mostly his own material.

You’re much better, Katrina signed to Matt after the first few songs. “Just different,” he said.

Katrina only smiled and shook her head.

After the last set, he took her back to Upper Foxville and left her at Lucia’s door with a chaste kiss.

Thursday evening they took in a play at the Standish, a small concert hall that divided its evenings between repertory theatre and music concerts. Katrina was entranced. She’d never seen live actors before, but then there was so much she didn’t know about this new world in which she found herself and still more that she hadn’t experienced in his company.

It was just past eleven by the time they got back to the apartment. Lucia had gone out, so they could have the place to themselves but when Katrina invited Matt in, he begged off. His confused mumble of an explanation made little sense. All Katrina knew was that the days were slipping away. Saturday night, the lake witch’s deadline, was blurring all too close, all too fast.

When he bent to kiss her on the forehead as he had the night before, she lifted her head so that their lips met. The kiss lasted a long time, a tangle of tongues. She pressed in close to him, hands stroking his back, but he pulled away with a confused panic fluttering in his eyes.