“Do you have a ghost?” he whispers.
She cannot tell him. Even if she wants to, what is there to say? Her dreams are just a compilation of feelings, lights, and shadows. There is nothing to tell.
She runs her other hand through his hair. He closes his eyes.
“I’m so tired,” he says. “Can I spend the night here? I need to be with someone I trust.”
“Yeah. Sleep,” she says and gives him the pillow from behind her.
Benja curls into a fetal position. He falls asleep at once. A smile touches a corner of his lips.
The moon is high in the sky. Aris gazes at Benja’s sleeping face bathed in moonlight. He looks more vulnerable than he’s ever shown himself to be.
So beautiful. So broken.
Why does he want to chase the past? There is so much he could be living for in the present. Five months left, and he is squandering it on dreams. Why can’t he see that Tabula Rasa is a gift? Four years at each life. If this one doesn’t work out, you have the next. Shedding lives like hermit crabs shed shells. A lifetime of possibilities.
“How can you love someone you don’t remember?” she whispers to no one in particular.
Aris opens her eyes and sees Benja’s silhouette leaning against the headboard. He stares straight ahead at the curtained window. The eerie image gives her goosebumps. She has never seen him so silent and still. Outside, the first light of the day is slowly transforming the indigo sky gray.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“You know we’re told so many things in our lives,” he says, not looking at her. “Facts and fiction face off like pawns on a chessboard. So we learn through books and education, hoping they will advance us toward the ultimate truth. But at the end of it, when we look back, all we have is a bare chessboard. Truths and lies lie like a mountain of dead bodies in the trenches.”
She reaches for his arm and touches it. His skin is damp and warm from sleep.
He looks at her. “I saw him in my dream. As clear as day. I saw his face. He wore a white hat. We had a life together. Absinthe worked, Aris. It opened the gates of my memories, like the Sandman promised. He told me it would help me see my past lives. The strongest memories survived Tabula Rasa. They live inside dreams. They only lie hidden, waiting to be unlocked.”
Aris’s finger feels a loose thread on her bedcover. The long fiber reminds her of an old woman’s hair—white and soft. She pulls at it, puckering the fabric. The thread catches against a stitch and resists her pull. She tugs, and it comes free.
“What if what you saw was just a dream?” she asks, playing absentmindedly with the coil of thread in her hand.
He sighs. “It’s not. I can’t explain how I know. I just do. I saw my life. The memory of it. The man in the white hat and I, we were lovers. I loved him. I still do,” he says.
“But Tabula Rasa erased all our memories. The people we met, the relationships we forged, what we did. They’re gone,” she says.
“Look, I’m not making this up,” Benja says, “And I’m not the only one. There are others like me. Many of them. They take the drink and see their past lives. There’s one woman I met who wants to also find her lover.”
“How can you find someone just from a face?” Aris asks.
“I don’t know.”
“What if who your friend believes is her lover is just a man she crossed paths with on the subway?” Aris asks.
“That’s not how it works.”
“Okay, so let’s say he really is her lover from the past. What would she do if he doesn’t remember?”
“He will remember,” he says, “She’s sure of it.”
“What if he doesn’t? You can’t force your belief on another.”
“You’re just a nonbeliever. I’m not going to sit here and prove to you what you want me to. All my evidence is in my head, and I can’t pull it out except through my words. And if you don’t believe me, that’s your prerogative. But please stop trying to convince me otherwise.”
Aris sighs. “Okay, so for the sake of argument, some dreams are memories—how can you know which are real and which are made up by your mind? Don’t memories change and shift over time?”
“This is exactly what the Sandman warned me about,” Benja says.
“He warned you about me?”
“Not you in particular. But nonbelievers. We’ve become a society of faithless people. That’s why most of us can’t believe in things we cannot see nor touch.”
She worries about the people Benja is mixed up with. The fanciful ideas. The drug that makes people think they can see their pasts.
“If only everyone could take Absinthe and see for themselves,” mumbles Benja.
“Oh, so they want to drug everyone?” she asks.
Benja frowns. “Unfortunately not. They’re secretive. They don’t just take in anyone. You must be selected by one of the members. You’re not even supposed to talk about it outside the group. By the way, we never had this conversation.”
Aris rolls her eyes. “You forget they wanted me first. The crane was left for me, before you hijacked it.”
“Maybe you should join the Dreamers.”
She scoffs.
Benja sighs. “I know this all sounds like make-believe to you. And I can’t make you see what I saw. But if there’s a way to turn my dream into something more than just a memory, I need to find it. I have to find him.”
He springs up from the bed and wobbles. He eases back down.
“Ow. My head.” He leans on the headboard, massaging his temples.
“It’s probably a side effect of the drug,” she says. “Let me get you water.”
She goes to the kitchen and gets a glass out. At the sink, she pushes a button, and cold water flows into it. Her mind swirls with questions.
Could dreams be memories? How can that be? Why doesn’t Tabula
