Hiding In His Dreams (20 page)

Luke released Jessica's hand, but she
did not get the message. She lunged in, and tried to kiss him. He
could smell chocolate on her. Alyssa never ate
chocolate.

He whipped his head away, and stepped
to the side. "What are you doing?"

"Just trying to have some fun," she
said. "What's the matter? Don't you want to kiss me?" She licked
her glossy lips and leaned in again, but Luke pushed her
away.

Finally, hurt flashed across her face,
then anger.

“
You little prude!” She spun
around and ran away.

Luke took a minute to catch his
breath.

What had he been doing with her anyway?
It was cheating on Alyssa, even though she had given him
permission. He regret ever talking to Jessica.

Shame invaded him again, the same
feeling he had that evening when Alyssa told him about her
traumatic night and all he could think about was being passed over
for a promotion.

I don’t want another girl, Luke
decided. And that is that.

* * * * *

Luke wandered around for the rest of
the day, and finally, at 6 pm, he decided to return to his
apartment for dinner.

He entered the door of the lobby, and
was about to call the elevator when something on the apartment
bulletin board caught his eye.

A flyer said,
Free Painting Classes at Bonsor Recreation Complex
today! 6:30 pm sharp! All supplies provided.

Painting. It reminded him of Alyssa.
She wanted him to have new hobbies. Maybe that would take his mind
off her. Maybe that would make him feel better. He bought a slice
of pizza from the local pizzeria, wolfed it down, then headed over
to the recreation centre.

The automatic doors slid open and Luke
went over to the bulletin boards. Painting class was in Room 2394
on the second floor.

He arrived and peeked inside the room
from the safety of the doorway. Easels were set up in rows of five.
Luke took a breath, inhaling the paint fumes.

A wrinkly-faced woman with frizzy
blonde hair caught him peeking.

“
You here for painting?” the
woman asked. She wore red-rimmed glasses and a black unitard. Luke
assumed she was the instructor.

He nodded.

“
Come in,” she said,
beckoning to him. “I’m Lydia. Please take a seat.” She gestured to
the seats behind the easels, which were mostly empty, except for a
handful of bored-looking teenagers, a smiling elderly man and an
excited-looking middle-aged couple.

Luke looked at his watch. “Oh, I must
be early.” It was 6:45 pm.

“
No,” Lydia said. “We’re
running late actually.”

Luke walked in, looking unsure of
himself.

“
It’s OK,” the instructor
said, noting his hesitant expression. “Join us and have a
seat.”

When he was seated, Lydia surveyed the
class and smiled. “Welcome to painting here at Bonsor. This is a
free trial class for beginners. If you find that you enjoy
painting, classes will be offered here weekly at a reduced rate for
twelve sessions.”

She picked up a paintbrush. “Now let us
paint. Everyone, please pick up your paintbrush, dip it into your
paints and draw whatever comes to mind. Instructions will be given
later. Right now, I just want you to explore and play
around.”

Luke picked up the paintbrush on the
little stand beside him, dipped it in black paint and lifted it to
the easel.

He did not know what to draw, so he
doodled, painting random streaks of black. When he was done, he
inspected what he had painted. It resembled a five-leaf clover. But
he was not done yet. Something was missing. He cleaned his brush in
water, then dipped it into pink.

Now that the pedals were pink, it
looked like a different kind of flower. Not a clover.

Luke was so absorbed in his art that he
did not notice someone standing behind him. He turned around and
saw Lydia there, one hand stroking her chin.

“
Hhhmmm,” she mused.
“Interesting. It’s a very beautiful flower. What is it? A
daffodil?”

Luke shook his head. “No. I’m not sure
what it is.”

The fading sun cast a gentle hue on the
painting as Luke inspected it. To his surprise, he realized it was
a pink cherry blossom.

“
It’s a cherry blossom,” he
finally replied.

“
A cherry blossom? Very
nice. Any reason you drew this?”

“
Yes,” he said. “Yes there
is.” He did not know what to tell Lydia if she pressed for more
information.

“
Very good,” the instructor
said again, then moved on to look at the paintings of the teenagers
around him.

Luke was surprised that she had not
pried.

He continued to work on the painting,
adding finishing touches: a splash of pink here, a little more
black there.

When he was done, he stepped back to
examine the painting. It looked like the painting that Alyssa had
made for him, one of the ones he had taken down when he first heard
that she had died.

A wave of melancholy washed over him,
drowning him in its suffocating flood. Just when he thought he was
feeling better.

He continued to stare at the cherry
blossom. He knew he did not want to return to painting class
again.

* * * * *

When he got home, Luke fell into his
couch and did nothing. He stared out the window. The night was
quiet, empty, even lonely.

He felt like crying but he had no more
tears.

His face started to itch, so he
scratched it, but the itching would not go away. He began to feel a
little hot, even feverish. Luke got up and went into the bathroom.
He soaked a facecloth in cold water, then applied it to his face.
He looked in the mirror.

It did not help. His face was red. He
thought he saw pinkish-red blotches breaking out. Ignoring them, he
went to bed, but found he could not sleep.

He returned to the bathroom
and fumbled around in the medicine cabinet. He took out a bottle
of
SleepAid
, then
rattled it around. It sounded very full.

He pried open the lid and examined the
pills in the bathroom light.

How could something so tiny make me so
happy? He wondered.

He knew he should not, but he took one
out, and popped it in his mouth. He drank some water from the tap
and swallowed the sleeping pill.

Luke returned to bed and fell
asleep.

* * * * *

That night, he dreamed that he was in
an indoor swimming pool. The lights under the pool glowed a bright
green.

He was bare-chested, wearing only his
swimming shorts. He was standing in the shallow end of the pool,
staring at the vastness in front of him. The water was clear, a
Caribbean green. He felt really comfortable soaking in the warm
water.

He heard a splash beside him and turned
his head. It was Alyssa in a red bathing suit. He smiled and hugged
her. She was wet and smelled of chlorine.

“
You came to see me,” he
exclaimed. He ran his fingers through her hair, but they were
quickly entangled in the webby wetness.

She nodded. “You‘ve had a rough
day.”

“
You know about that girl
Jessica and the painting class, right?”

She nodded again, drops of water
dripping off her face.

“
Obviously, finding you new
purposes isn‘t working,” she said. “We have to take drastic
measures.”

“
No!” he shouted. He was
surprised by the volume of his voice. “Screw all that!”

“
You’re taking sleeping
pills again,” she said. “That can’t be a good thing.”

He put both arms on her shoulders. Her
skin was wet and smooth.

“
I love you so much I want
to kill myself to be with you,” he said slowly, as though speaking
too quickly would cause Alyssa to misunderstand. “Then, we’ll both
be spirits. And we can be together.” His intensity surprised even
himself. He had not expected this sudden outburst.

He wrapped his arms around her, but she
backed away, giving him her disapproving-teacher look. He felt like
one of her students again, caught fighting at recess.

“
You can’t. We’ve been
through this before. You have to live life. Without me.”

“
Why?” he demanded to know.
“Why do I have to do that?”

“
You’re still living for a
reason. I can’t tell you what it is. And killing yourself would be
the easy way out.”

He gave her a defiant look. “And what
if I want to take the easy way out?”

She sighed, and rested her head on his
shoulders, her tone softening. “I know it hurts. Sometimes I think
that when I really love someone, my soul becomes attached to his.
And when we separate, it hurts.”

She released a breath, which tickled
his skin. He felt his anger dissipate.

Alyssa held something up in the air.
Luke saw it was a bottle, holding cerulean-colored liquid that he
saw her scoop up from the pool.

“
I know you cried since I
died. You never cry,” she said. “I hate seeing you cry. There’s
nothing I can do to make it better.”

She shook the bottle, the liquid
sloshing inside. “Except for this.”

Puzzled, he asked, “What is
that?”

She pointed to the pool. “This isn’t
just any pool. The water has a special property. We’re meeting here
for a reason.”

She shook the bottle again. “This is
the unlove potion.”

“
Unlove?” He was not aware
that ‘unlove’ was even a word.

“
Unlove,” she affirmed.
“When you wake up, you will find this bottle on the nightstand. You
have to drink it three times for it to work. I will feed you the
first one. You can take the last two yourself.”

“
I don’t understand. Who do
I unlove?”

Patiently, she explained, “After you
drink this potion, you won’t love me anymore. That way, you won‘t
hurt anymore. You could move on in the waking world and not live
your life through your dreams.”

As understanding registered in his
mind, he was shocked. He felt like he was discovering that she had
died all over again. He did not know what to say. “This means I
wouldn’t love you anymore?” he repeated stupidly.

“
If you don’t love me, then
you wouldn’t hurt anymore, right?”

She had a point. But it was an ugly
point.

Luke shifted in the water. The warm
pool no longer felt comfortable. In fact, it was starting to
boil.

For the longest time, no one talked.
They listened to the churning of the strengthening
current.

Then, Luke found his voice. “You’d
rather see me not hurt, even if it means I won’t love you
anymore?”

“
That’s how much I love
you,” she said quietly.

Luke allowed the profoundness of her
sentence to sink in.

This is love at its most selfless, he
thought.

Water began to spray them as the pool
roared to life.

“
There are three stages,”
she continued, raising her voice to be heard in the growing noise.
“After the first spoonful, anything that reminds you of me will
disappear. The paintings around the apartment. The pictures of us.
The cherry blossom. After the second one, your memories of me will
be hazy. After the last drink, you won‘t feel love for me
anymore.”

Alyssa choked when she said her last
word. Luke could tell she was trying not to cry, but he did not
know whether she would succeed. Even if she failed though, the
restless water would conceal her tears.

Luke took in the image of his
wife.

There she was in her red bathing suit,
her hair wet, her skin wet, everything wet, water rising and
splashing her in the face, telling him that she would rather have
him not love her anymore, than see him continue to
suffer.

“
I read somewhere love is
like a drug,“ she yelled. “It’s a drug when you fall in love. So,
logically, you take a drug when you fall out of it.”

“
But I don’t want to fall
out of it,” he screamed. The water was so loud that he was afraid
she had not heard him.

“
I want to love you!” he
hollered.

“
I just can’t stand to see
you hurting.” She pulled the lid off the bottle and pointed to
it.

“
That’s how much I love
you,” she said again. “Now don’t be dreaming of me anymore. For
your own good.”

Luke absorbed her words as the raging
water almost knocked them both over. Quickly, Alyssa thrust the
bottle in Luke’s face. He turned away, but she managed to
anticipate his movement, and thrust the bottle to his left, which
was exactly where his mouth ended up.

The glass bottle hit his teeth.
Stubbornly, he clamped down, refusing to open his mouth. She would
have to tackle him if she wanted him to drink it.