There’s always a moment of confusion when I wake up, after the dreams drip away and before I remember the who, what, and where of being me. Sometimes it’s stressful, not quite remembering. Sometimes it’s a relief; depends on just what I’ve been doing, and what bills are due this week. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling. I shouldn’t have been able to do that, not from my four-poster bed. Then, too, even if I could have seen my ceiling from straight above my bed, it was white, with dollar-store glow-in-the-dark stars clinging desperately to the chipped horsehair plaster. The ceiling here was sky blue.
The eternal scent of coffee from the clothes thrown in my work hamper was missing, too. Something nicer, something… in its place was some scent, incense, something, that was almost polite enough to ask before approaching the nostrils. Then, too, there was a less... intangible... smell. Sweat. Clean sweat, not the smell of my socks piled in the corner.
Not my bed, not my house, not my smells… the last of the confusion burned away in the growing daylight and I remembered: the stress of a double shift at work, the customers, the co-workers, the smells, the burns from scalding coffee—and the customers. The customer. The regular who had been coming into the shop at least once a week, sometimes twice. He portrayed a perfect picture of politeness to every barista, but I had imagined a gleam in his hazel eyes for me. Dark, tall, and handsome: his height, his smooth, dark skin, his curly black hair cropped close against his head, the impeccable clothes that always made him seem stylishly out of place in that garish mint-and-aqua den of caffeine… there were a hundred reasons my heart started rushing whenever his cool hand brushed mine when I handed him his coffee.
I guess that gleam in his eyes for me hadn’t been my imagination, after all. As the last dregs of waking confusion drained away, I knew this was his bedroom, and here we had—well, a lot had happened. After months of writing fake names on cups—he’d never given me the same one twice—he’d given me his real name. Daniel Greene. I turned over to look at Daniel Greene. I don’t know where the blankets went during the night; I was uncovered, and a single corner of the trailing sheet was almost artfully placed over Daniel like a bedroom figleaf. His long, glossy legs were fully outstretched; one was crooked toward me slightly.
My eyes eventually made it to his face. His personality was lessened with his eyes closed, and I could take the time to look at him. His eyelashes were almost obscene; they were thicker than mine. His face was regal, his mouth full and broad, and his nose straight as an arrow.
He was beautiful. There was also something wrong about him. I couldn’t place it, which only made it worse. Something in me was doing its best impression of a frightened rabbit. I tried to quietly rise from the big bed, but the silky fitted sheet slipped and I dropped to the plush carpet. I jolted onto my hands and knees.
Images, then emotions, hit me like shards of glass. Sunlight streaming, laughter, girls with flowers in their hair, a plump woman with hair longer than any I’d ever seen, a flower, a—a car? No, no, a… there were horses. Carriage. No, chariot. Greek car thing. So much fear. Desperation, frustration, anger, despair, adrenaline, that out-of-body sense that comes with unbelievable things. Tastes that I had no name for lingered on my tongue as food and drink that I had once had every day, but were long gone now.
I clutched at the thick carpet as I tried to hold onto myself. Daniel—he was. He was... I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t stay here now in this room with him. If—I’d been kidnapped. He had kidnapped me. And then... The face, the skin, it didn’t line up, but it didn’t have to. Suddenly, I remembered. I drew in breaths with a struggle; I tried not to gasp aloud. The most important thing in the world had become not waking up “Daniel.” I fished for my underclothes and my jeans under the bed. I wiggled and stretched to get them on while laying on the floor; I couldn’t trust myself to stand right now. Not while images of places that no longer existed flashed through my brain. I had seen the pictures of this place, and this time, and seen the statues. They were all off, all wrong, according to the memories flooding me. There were colors, details, scents, that archeologists could never know. They hadn’t been there—but I had. Hadn’t I?
Sensations of alienation and belonging tripped my brain circuits back and forth; there were too many perspectives, too many memories, in my brain. Had they-we-they really been so garish? If that was the popular style where he-we-he was from, no wonder “Daniel” didn’t mind the coffee den and its mint and aqua. My tee-shirt was half under my pillow and half under his. I left it. I’d come in here wearing an off-brand pea coat with the plastic buttons all stitched on too loosely. That’d be good enough until I could get home, even if I had to hold it closed.
“Daniel’s” apartment was nice as I remembered from the night before. A color scheme of white, black, and gray. Small surprise, for who he really was. But even as I surveyed that, my eyes lit on little bits of colors here and there—flowers in a vase, a picture on the wall, a rug. It was in a nice neighborhood, which made me feel better about my rumpled clothing. It was small, too: the bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchenette that shared space with the living room. No television, no couch. It looked like a small dining table and a reading chair was it. I wasn’t surprised, now that I knew what I knew, or what I thought I knew. He’d never been one for loud distractions.
The size of the place worked in my favor; I could have gotten lost in a bigger place, but I remembered where the door was, and my rain boots were where they had been cast off last night. Getting them on was more difficult than getting them off, and I’d done that halfway wrapped around a man. Him. The thought made me uneasy, now that I’d really seen him. It became even more important not to wake him, and when I slipped against the wall with a thump while struggling with my boot, I gritted my teeth.
Even if I hadn’t been in a panic about the man in the other room, I wouldn’t have wanted to speak with him. Did he know who he was? Was that his real face? Did he remember me as a different person? I hesitated with my hand on the doorknob. Then, trying not to squeak in my boots or stumble, I moved back to the bedroom. The doorway was as far as I could bring myself to go. The dark face I’d enjoyed seeing for the past few months was still there, but so was his other face. That imperious face with the bump in its nose and the chalky skin somehow lay over Daniel's dark features. was bizarre to see the more imperious face with the bump in its nose and the chalky skin somehow overlayed on Daniel’s dark skin. One person peeked through the other, like left-over writing on an erased and rewritten page.
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