Amor Fabula Ep. 04

"I am not sure. I don't think I can program the device in that manner."

Rudy thought this over. "I know a little something about quantum entanglement, monkey. If I say take me to where my ex-wife is, and your gizmo can do that, there is some kind of entanglement going on. The same thing goes if I ask you to take me to a woman that I like. How about this? Ask your gizmo to show me a woman that likes me. Can you do that?"

"Yes. There is a function that allows for loved ones to be quickly focused on. I can adapt that feature for potential love partners."

"Cool! Let's do it!"

In a moment, Rudy and the monkey appeared in another bedroom.

It was a small room, cluttered with too much furniture and with things like clothes and shoes and other junk all over the place. Instead of curtains, the windows were draped over with blankets, and it looked like the door couldn't even open all the way because an ironing board was wedged up behind it. The bed was full-sized, with a dresser so close on one edge that a person would have to walk sideways just to get onto the mattress.

From the start, Rudy didn't like the room. It was too small and it had too much crap in it. It showed too much gaudy materialism for his tastes. It gave too much importance to belongings than it did to open spaces and maneuvering room. Sure, Rudy's room was only a studio apartment, but he'd purposely chosen furniture with a short height to it and he kept his room nice and tidy. That way he felt liberated by the broad expanses of the uncluttered walls. Just looking at the crowded space before him caused Rudy to feel twinges of claustrophobia. He doubted those dusty blankets were ever taken off the windows to let in any natural light. He couldn't see how people lived like that, like animals trapping themselves in a cage.

"So somebody in here likes me?" He questioned, as he tried to make out the two forms on the bed. "You'd better give me some light here, because I can't see anything."

As the monkey did whatever he had to do to his remote control, the aura-like glow around them increased. Rudy stepped close to the foot of the bed, leaning over until he got a good glimpse of the sleeping couple.

"There are two women living close to you," The monkey told him. "They both have more than passing affection for you. This is the first one."

Rudy took in the form of a short Hispanic man with brown skin, and the woman next to him, who was much taller and fair-skinned. He said, "I know who these people are. They're the couple that lives in the house behind where I'm living at. The guy, he works in construction. He's got this shitty truck that he parks on the street. He's always taking up two spots even when he doesn't have to. That used to piss me off when I still had a car, because I had to park like half a block down the street because of him."

"What about the woman?" The monkey asked him. "What do you know about her?"

"The guy comes from Mexico, but the lady, she's local." Rudy replied. "I bumped into her when I went jogging a few days ago. Her name is Valerie. She's, uh, I think she said she was thirty or so. She's got four kids and she stays home all the time. When I told her that I was going jogging, she said her husband prohibited her from doing any exercise and losing weight. This guy thinks that if she slimmed out some, other guys might start looking at her and take her away from him. Her husband wants to keep her fat. Can you believe that shit? I already know this woman likes me. She was giving me the once-over when she saw that time, just a couple of days ago." Rudy shook his head. "She's not my type, monkey."

"Why not?"

"Because she's married, first of all!" Rudy chuckled. "And she really is a big girl. I understand that she told me her husband wants her to stay fat, but a woman's got to have some kind of willpower, you know? I'm not the leanest guy in the world, but I do what I have to do when it comes to staying healthy and eating healthy." Rudy walked back to stand next to the monkey. "Let me see the other chick."

"You understand that this woman has feelings for you?" The monkey pointed the remote control toward Valerie's side of the bed.

"Yeah, but what am I supposed to do about that? She doesn't take care of her body and she doesn't take care of her house. This place is a pigsty. Hey, I get it. She's a human being and all that. That day I bumped into her, I stood there and I talked with her. I had a good conversation with this woman. That's fine, monkey, but that's as far as I'm going. As far hooking up with her, definitely not, because she's not my type. Valerie has no ambition in her whatsoever. She's not studying anything, she doesn't go out anywhere and she isn't expanding her horizons like I am. Even if she were single she wouldn't be my type. You know what? You're making me sound defensive here!"

"Do you know that the conversation Valerie had with you that day, was the most meaningful conversation she's had in months? Nobody asks her what she thinks or how she feels, the same way you did. Not even her husband cares about what she thinks."

"Thanks, monkey." Rudy frowned. "Now you're making me feel bad. I guess I should have expected something like this, when I said show me a girl who likes me. So what do you expect me to do here? I'll be nice to her the next time I see her. What else can I do?"

"You must tell me what you must do." The monkey replied.

"I'm my own psychologist, I guess." Rudy grumbled, studying the scene on the bed for a short time. "I know some things about manipulating the dream state. I have an idea."

The sun was warm but not hot, and the time was early in the afternoon. In this place, Rudy was in his mid-twenties. He had on a tee shirt and loose running shorts. Rudy was just about to leave the property where he lived and step onto the sidewalk. The hedges running down the front of the house were six feet high. As he went past them, he nearly ran into Valerie, just like he'd almost done in real life.

"I'm sorry!" He called out, as both he and the woman had been startled upon seeing each other. "I didn't know there was anybody out here!"

In this place, Valerie was about the same age he was, in her mid-twenties. She was the same height, standing as tall as Rudy, but her plump form was gone. Instead, Valerie was thick and curvy. She wore attire that looked partly like a business suit and partly like something a sophisticated woman might wear to a formal party. Her coat and skirt were black, while her blouse was colored in strong pink. She wore black heels that she would never wear outside the dream state. Valerie's black hair was longer than it was in real life, pulled back into a ponytail and reaching to her shoulder blades. Her eyes and smile radiated upon seeing him.

The woman looked beautiful, Rudy thought. Because he had dealt with such matters before, he understood that she had chosen her ideal image to meet with him in the dream state. So had he, for that matter.

The dream state had no beginning or end; it was a setting beyond Time and Space. If they chose to, they could talk forever while they were there. They did talk, about their lives and their hopes, about their ambitions that they had accomplished, and about what they hoped to accomplish still. Valerie frequently pulled on her small, hoop earrings, and she ran her fingers through her hair. She shifted from one side to the other coquettishly, and had a cute way of shrugging her shoulders. Valerie smiled and laughed a lot, Rudy noticed, unlike how she behaved in real life.

And they talked for hours and hours...

The sudden music from an alarm clock woke Rudy up. His apartment was set apart from the main house. It had its own door and bathroom, but unfortunately, two of his walls were shared with the neighbors. When their alarm clock rang, it always woke him up. Even worse than that, the music, every single morning, was the same exact music, as the family next door always played the same CD in their music player. No, not the whole family, Rudy corrected himself, just the lady; the mother of the two kids who lived there.

"Damn it." Rudy growled, as he felt his sleep being robbed away from him.

Surely, it was five in the morning, as that was the usual time his neighbors woke him up. The sky was still dark out, he observed, as he shifted his legs to the floor. The image of a monkey came to him. Rudy flipped on the light, as if he expected an animal to be right there in his room.

"A monkey?" He asked out loud. "Why would I be thinking of a monkey?"

Some of it came back to him. He'd dreamed of a monkey in his room, a monkey that he could talk to and have a conversation with. Then Rudy remembered Valerie. He'd bumped into her in real life, and he had a lucid dream with Valerie in it. Rudy grasped on to as many of these memories as he could, as he made his way over to his desk. He kept a notebook there where he wrote down any memories from his dreams. As he scribbled them down, he tried to expound on them. The monkey was vague, but he remembered all that Valerie had on, and how she'd spoken to him, and how she'd been flirting with him for so much of the dream.

"Why Valerie?" Rudy asked, hoping that by hearing those words he could jar more of his dream out. "Because she likes me, that's why. We met in real life and then we met in the dream state, both times at the same exact spot. What kind of dream was this? It wasn't a sexual dream. It was a talking dream, like two people who hadn't seen each other in years might have. Valerie had a lot to say in the dream state, but she hardly ever says anything to me in real life. This is because she's shy; she's shy because she's such a big girl. Wow. I have two explanations. My mind created an ideal Valerie and inserted her into my dream, or that was the real Valerie and we met in the astral plane. Huh!"

The music from his neighbors was still playing, causing Rudy to lose the rest of the dream. Instead, he felt his temper rising because the neighbors had, yet again, woken him up some two hours before he should have woken up. His sleepiness was all gone now. One of these days, Rudy thought, he was going to start pounding on the wall and start up a racket, except Rudy was into meditation and serenity. He tried to see this commotion more as a challenge for him to instill a peaceful state into his mind and soul.

Rudy performed a few breathing exercises, before he calmed down and booted up his computer. There were things he could do to pass the time. The worst thing was that the chick next door was always playing the same CD, so every morning he heard the same tracks in the same order. No matter, he had his headphones to take care of that.

He knew the routine, too. The man of the house would head out at six, while the chick would take the kids to school at seven. If all went well, he might try to take a nap at seven-thirty or eight, when things quieted down again.

At 8:30, Rudy lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. At 9:00 am, the music started up again, and yes, it was the same fucking CD he heard nearly every single day. He meant to meditate for a short time before lulling his body into sleeping, but he hadn't gotten very far. Another hope was for him to draw out more of his lucid dream, as he'd fixed his mind on the image of Valerie right before closing his eyes. He hadn't gotten very far except for a new phrase, 'the second woman.' He didn't know what that meant.

Rudy was now officially pissed off. He went up to the shared wall and banged his fist into it. "What the fuck, lady?"

The chick next door had the music on too loud to hear him. She was probably vacuuming or exercising or doing Zumba or some shit, oblivious to the fact that she'd woken Rudy up at five and was now preventing him from taking a nap at nine. That meant Rudy was going to be crabby and drowsy pretty much for the rest of the day.

"That's it, lady, I'm not taking it anymore!"

Rudy trudged out from his door, stalking his way past the side of the house and to the front yard, before stomping up the steps to the small porch and front door. When he got to the door he started banging on it. A few long moments passed by before the woman of the house realized he was out there, despite the racket he was raising up. He heard the volume for the stereo shut off.

"Great, now she turns it down." Rudy grumbled, peering through the front screen.

The woman's name was Connie. Rudy watched her silhouette leaning toward the door as she walked up, as if he'd scared the crap out of her with his banging. She came right up to the screen, relaxing a little when she realized it was him.

"Yes?" She asked.

"I need to show you something, over near the back of the house." Rudy said.

"Right now?"

"Yes, right now." Rudy emphasized. "Do me a favor, will you? Can you turn the music back up to how loud you just had it?"

"Why?" Connie asked.

"It is part of what I want to show you. Just put the music back up, okay? And then come with me over to the back of the house."

Rudy watched the woman retreat. When she returned, the music was blaring again. Connie came to the door and stepped outside, but by then Rudy was already walking off. He didn't bother waiting for her, or even looking at her, because he was still peeved at the noise and how he hadn't gotten his full sleep. Rudy simply strode back over to his apartment and halted by his door. He said he was taking her to the back of the house. That was only because he thought she'd refuse if he said he wanted her to go into his apartment. When Connie stood there looking at him, he swung open his door and went in.

Maybe she assumed there was something wrong with the plumbing or the lighting, as Rudy did rent the room from Connie's husband. Whatever the reason, she meekly went in and took a look at his tiny bachelor pad.

"Stand right here." Rudy absently took her by the arm and walked her to the middle of his room. "Can you hear how loud your music is? Do you realize that your alarm clock wakes me up every morning with that same music?" He pointed at the wall. "I mean every single morning!"

Rudy took a couple of strides away, meaning to take a seat on his armchair. That was the chair the monkey had been sitting on, he realized, as a new glimpse of his lucid dream filtered through his head. The monkey said there were two women that liked him, he recalled. Valerie was the first one, but he didn't know who the second woman was.

Rudy turned to look at Connie. She'd been looking at the wall at first, but now she turned to scan the rest of his small living space. She observed his dresser with the stereo on top and his wide, open closet with all the shirts and pants hanging in there. Her eyes ran over his desk and computer, past his fridge and the armchair he'd been about to take a seat on. Rudy saw the look on her face change, as she witnessed the tussled bed covers that he slept on. Finally, she turned to look at him.

Rudy didn't like that look, not coming from her. Not only was Connie a married chick, but her husband was the landlord. No way he was messing around with a chick like that, not after attached chicks had given him such big headaches and hassles after his divorce. The thing he had to do right now, Rudy felt, was to get this woman the hell out of his room. Fuck the loud radio, he thought, he'd just have to live with it.

Determined, Rudy went to her and grabbed her arm again, ready to usher Connie out the door. He pulled her, only to feel her actively resisting him. That's when Rudy made his biggest mistake. He looked into Connie's eyes. So many things rushed through his mind then. These were things that he shouldn't have known about her, that sometimes popped into his head whenever he got too spiritual with somebody. The same way he'd understood things about Valerie from his lucid dream, he was fathoming things about Connie now.

Connie was a year older than him. She's been a bigger girl in the past, but had lost some weight since then. The skin around her belly was still a little loose, and she was very conscious and embarrassed by that. Connie felt like a failure sometimes, because her life hadn't gone the way she'd hoped. Too many times her hopes had been dashed or her dreams broken. She thought nobody wanted her anymore. There were times that Connie accused her husband of cheating, because Rudy heard them fighting about it, but a lot of that came from Connie's fear of being abandoned. This same sort of fear crept up inside of her when she was left alone in the house, after her husband went to work and her kids were off at school. She didn't like this feeling of being alone so much that she turned her radio up too loud, so there would be some kind of noise around to fill up her house.

Not another married woman, Rudy thought, letting go of her arm when he realized he was still touching her.

Connie didn't like that her breasts were sagging so much, now that she was older. He knew this, when he shouldn't have known anything intimate at all about that woman.

Rudy felt like walking outside, far away from her, and letting her leave when she felt like it. He didn't want to be in the same room with Connie anymore. He didn't care if she stood in there all day, as long as he was somewhere else.

She wanted her children to be little again, because they didn't need her as much as they used to. In another year or two, they wouldn't need her at all, because they would be doing everything for themselves that their mother was doing for them now. To Rudy, it felt as if Connie's many anxieties were written on a big, lighted billboard.

Rudy remembered the part about two women that liked him. One was Valerie, but the second woman, he didn't know who she was...

Reality began to distort around them, as if Rudy's apartment had just gone Montauk on him. At first, he was several feet away from Connie, and wanting to be even farther. Then, after the distortion took place, he was standing right in front of her with his hands on her arms. He held her and looked into her eyes, and in their depths he could see all the way to the opposite side of the world. Her arms felt so soft in his grip. Those eyes, he thought, those sad eyes, with only glimmers of hope, traces, still left behind after a long lifetime of disappointment. Traces of him were in her eyes.

When Rudy kissed her, it felt as if he were kissing every woman in the entire world. That's what kisses sometimes felt like in lucid dreams, like everything and everyone is connected, like the harmony of listening to the heartbeat of the universe. People were really made of electricity, vibrations, and by coming together as they were, their individual frequencies paired up and melded and produced a new and unique sound. A cosmic harp was playing with two sets of hands now, producing something richer than what was heard before.

In this world, clothing did not exist. Bodies were nude and entwined, flesh rubbed against flesh, yet it was not flesh but music. Hands that ran through hair and against soft skin were really combing through a galaxy of spiral star clusters, or like warm sand at the beach sifting through eternal fingers.

Rudy heard gasps, Connie's gasps, as his hips thrust into her thighs. His manhood plunged into forbidden places, prodding even more ragged pants. He touched her loose parts and her saggy parts, hoping that his caresses would become miracles, so that this woman who lay beneath him would have some comfort for what she had become as her age progressed. Her legs pressed tight against his thighs, causing Rudy to wish Connie's husband would come in and pry them apart. No more married women, he had promised to himself, yet his promises were made of rice paper. Connie's breasts were large and bounding, so he sought to stop their movement by crushing them with his chest. He didn't want to see them, or to see her, because there were always consequences for loving those women who were supposed to be beyond his reach.