All I Have to Do is Dream

The smell of coconut and almonds finds me half asleep in my sailboat.

I check my watch. 2:40AM.

My navigation tablet wakes with a touch. A satellite streaks overhead, beaming wind forecasts through my companion way. I fold my arms along the washboard and rest my chin in the crux of my sunburned elbow. The marbled night sky tilts as the earth spins.

No one said after weeks at sea I would smell land before I saw it. I didn't know I spent my whole life acclimated to it's scent or that in three weeks my nose could forget entirely then rediscover the rich and strange taste of land.

It surprised me the first time I crossed from San Diego to Hawaii. A friend and I were still two days from Oahu when Hawaiian red clay, volcanic rock, and the sweet decay of thirsty broad leaves decomposing in the rainforest found my tastebuds among the waves. Now its coconut, almonds, and sunbaked plantain skins carried in a sillage of ripe sugarcane reaching me in the dark.

I'm so close to Puerto Rico I can taste it.

I'm strolling through a neighborhood built when this was Spain eating everything served from carts. I ran a line on the sail from Turks and Caicos but gave each of those little fish a second chance at life. I get a refill of Coke and another to-go box of bacalaitos then find a bench.

I share a bite with a tabby street cat sneaking between my feet. Another appears. I leave the rest with them and stroll along the waterfront.

I pass a fried dough confectionary, a tourist portrait painter, and a henna art stand and...

I glance back. A stunning young woman dots henna ink along the forearm of a tourist girl giggling from the pen's tickle. The artist looks familiar, like a beautiful echo coming back to me.

It can't be.

My fists clench and I forget to breathe. I don't like to feel knocked off kilter. I'm glad she can't see me staring. She pauses her work and glances my way, but I slip back into the passing crowd and don't stop walking until I'm back in the marina chewing the last of my Coke's ice on my boat. I turn on the fan and lay across my hammock. I let the final ice cube melt against my chest.

"Impossible" I finally say aloud.

I chalk it up to something like deja-vu. Fate arrives in vague suggestion, like a soon to be lover sharpening the moment.

There's just no way its the same young woman.

The one I saw at the airport when I was stuck in Atlanta. I watched her twist the top off a water bottle and take a drink.

I implored the universe to let me see her again.

I dream I'm in a temple of warm sandstone with walls of translucent pink and purple glass. The outer windows are almost translucent, while opaque and frosted glass form inner chambers, each unique. I pass a cube, a sphere. I can see the faceless shapes of people sitting inside them, some close together, their limbs mingled. I press my ear to a curved facet of the largest shape; a glass bulb twisted like the head of a rose about to bloom. It feels warm against my ear.

I hear a woman moaning. Maybe two.

A man's handprint and the hips of a woman smear condensation across pane next me. I can make out another figure with them, but a film of condensation obscures anything more than a phantasmal suggestion of a woman. I feel moans humming against my palm when I press my hand flush against the lightest, thinnest facet of glass. The lone person joins the other two. I know they aren't alone in there.

I look up for a ceiling, but the temple's inner ward carries towards a pyramid's point. A silhouette looks down at all the chambers from a perch. I feel her eyes on me, pushing my back on my heels.

I find the stairs and skip two at a time, I don't know what I'm going to say when I find her. She's still looking down as I catch my breath.

She tilts her head and looks back at me, the robe that seems to be the uniform in this place slinks off her well tanned shoulder. She tugs it back.

"Your echo found me," I tell her.

"Ah" she says.

She reaches for my shoulders and rests her forearms on my traps. Her thumb nail cuts through my beard and traces the angle of my jaw. She lets the robe part enough for my hand to slide pass the loose knot and tuck into the small of her back, fingers wide. I drag my thumb close to her ribs so I have just enough purchase on her skin to squeeze. She cups her hands against my chest and smiles. Rivulets of water warmed by my flushed muscles spread across my stomach.

"Where did you get the ice?" I ask. She keeps the secret. The temple is always warm as an intimate whisper. I run my folded knuckle from the notch between her collar bone to the cusp of her breast as she indulges the parting neckline of her robe. She has this smirk as my palm grazes her nipple, then fills with her perfect breast. Her hand sneak into my pants and seem to weigh my manhood in her fingers, touching just enough to feel her the aching contemplation. She smiles wide at how fast her touch makes the head of my cock press against her palm. My thumb swipes across her nipple as she nibbles her lip.

"It's mine to bite."

I pull her close and kiss her with a gentle bite I drag across her bottom lip. I flick my tongue under hers. Her hand squeezes my cock and strokes it in my pants. I kiss her forehead as she looks down at me then up with at lust drunk eyes, smearing my precum around my head with her fingers as our foreheads touch. Her knees just begin to bend, and I wake up.

I sleep twelve hours a day for three days straight. Maybe I'm getting used to land, sleeping free of an alarm that woke me every two hours to adjust my sails.

Maybe I'm looking for her in the dreams.

The cat I fed slinks between my legs as I exit the marina.

"Lo lamento," I tell it. Whether its for nearly stepping on his tail or my lack of snacks, I'm not sure. I double back to where I saw her but the shops and stands appear closed. Only opened on the weekends, it seems.

It must have been deja-vu. I strain my memory; the girl in the airport had red hair. I'm almost sure of it.

The henna artist had dark hair. I'm less sure of it.

I find a neighborhood of narrow, brick streets lined with pastel stucco buildings. The shops are open here, packed tight with narrow aisles. Vintage clothes. A second hand book store. A bar packed with soccer fans gathered around an early plasma flatscreen television with the brightness cranked all the way up. I thumb through LPs at the vintage record shop that shares a wall with the bar. The hefty fellow working both the register, the record player, and the bar next door gives me the slick-guy finger gun.

I return fire.

"Te gusta el reggeaton?" He asks.

I shrug. I think he mentioned reggaeton. Maybe he loves reggaeton.

"No, mírate. Abandonado y perdido en el tiempo. Solo tengo el registro para ti, amigo" he says.

I'm out of my depth, Spanish wise.

He switches a record as soccer fans next-door drum their hands on the bartop. He dashes back to serve them.

The saloon doors dividing the bar from the record shop swing longer than I'd expect. They knock like a metronome.

I'm alone in the record store. Old JBL speakers hiss with the dead air. I reach over the counter to check the needle as I hear the first chirp of organ.

"You Showed Me," by The Turtles starts playing. The tune makes me feel what I describe as "erotic paranoia." Its not the sort of thing I'd play, so its always a surprise to hear though I like being reminded it exists. Lilting background vocals shift pitch with the ease of someone sinking in an old leather couch.

I could never decide if the words were about sex or drugs, but as my eyes trace cracks up the plaster wall to a ceiling fan that couldn't spin any slower and still be spinning, I realize its about sex as a drug, reveling in crossed lines, two people realizing themselves with the body of another.

The song ends. The speakers crackle.

I reach over the counter to reset the record player. The needle's cartridge balances on the pad of my index finger, ready to drop. I watch the old record wobble as it turns.

A bell above the door of a bookstore opposite this record shop jingles. Its metallic ping taps me on the shoulder. I look up and catch the last stride of a young woman walking away, an eggshell canvas book bag airbrushed with "San Paw'n Cat Shelter" swings by her knees.

I don't remember dropping the needle, but the song is playing, the erotic paranoia seeping back through the cracked plaster.

I try for a better look to see where she went, leaning over a window display of the shop's most valuable collection with my hands on the glass. The music stops with a scratch.

The shopkeep turned bartender must be back. I don't look to see what he's playing next. Probably reggaeton again after trying to sell me The Turtles' record.

I'm too focused watching the girl with the canvas book bag turn the corner out of sight.

Her bare shoulders.

It can't be her: the woman from the airport, from the henna stand, from my dreams. I'm just losing my mind, is all. Those were her shoulders, though. Those were her shoulders?

"All I Have to Do is Dream," by the Everly Brothers starts playing. The saloon doors hang perfectly still. A tabby cat sits jumps up and stretches out across the counter. It looks like the cat I fed, but all tabbies look the same. Women, not so much.

The girl with the book bag had dirty blonde hair, I tell myself. The girl in the airport had red hair. The henna stand girl, it was dark, I think.

"Who changes their hair this often?" I ask the cat. It waves its tail as it drifts off to sleep. The song plays.

"When I want you in my arms

When I want you and all your charms

Whenever I want you, all I have to do is

Dream, dream, dream, dream"

I guess the direction she headed and start walking, hoping, dream dream dreaming.

I walk until the sidewalks crowd with people leaving work and going out. Heat radiates from the stone and sidewalk. I shake my shirt to cool my chest, but its starting to stick to my shoulders. There are so many side streets, walk up shops, and apartments she could have dipped in, so many buses she could have waved down and taken. I make it to a wide plaza. The crowds are unbearable.

Then I spot her. Her long legs in blue shorts bending over for her bus pass, I guess, as she picks a card off the pavement and boards muni, swiping the card as the doors closes behind her.

I walk, then jog, then run across the plaza for the bus. I catch up just as the driver starts to pull away. I slap the plexiglass door and he stops, swings the door open. I step in and look down the rows of seats. The bus is too crowded with people sitting and standing. She's among them, but I can't see.

"Pase?" The driver asks me. I pat my pockets as I catch my breath but he doesn't buy the pantomime. "No!" He shames me out, almost closing the door on my knuckles. My sweaty palm print on the plexiglass door waves me goodby as it pulls off the curb. Its compression brakes exhale hot air around my ankles. I look down to see if it sprayed brake fluid on my pants. My hems are fine.

Hmm.

Someone dropped their keys. A floating foam keychain, so popular at the beach, reads:

San Paw'n Cat Shelter.

On the other side, an address. The shelter, maybe? No; an apartment number.

It's a seven story apartment building around a kidney shaped pool. I guess which of her three keys unlocks the front gate and take a seat at an aluminum table, one of half a dozen around the pool, each with a parasol and pair of tinny chairs that would blow over in a strong wind. A building with this many units should be abuzz with people coming and going, taking dogs for a walk, deliveries, and - in this heat - front doors propped open with fans pulling the day's warmth from the concrete.

It's just me, though. I check the key.

#515.

I skip up the first flight of stairs and discover a laundry room just off the stairwell. None of the laundry machines are in use. A puddle collects under a soda machine's struggling condenser. I buy a can of sparkling water and lean on the rail overlooking the pool and foyer. I'm not sure I actually wanted the water, or just the cold of it in my hand. I press it against my neck.

I didn't hear a splash, but there had to be one.

Criss crossing waves facet the silhouette of a woman gliding just under the surface. She swims the length of the pool and back without taking a breath then slinks up the ladder.

Dirty blond hair. Sun pinked shoulders. Water wrenched from her hair dribbles on her neck, down her chest and the small of her back, around the bell curve of her ass and long legs. I want to be that water, all over her all at once.

It is her.

From the airport. The dreams. The henna shop. The bookstore.

I skip down the stairs, can still ice cold, and sit again at one of the little tables. I imagine the words will come when I need them. I let her keychain's floaty dongle hang off the edge of the table in plain sight.

I watch her dry-off ritual. My heart slows from beats to detonations as she walks towards me.

She sees her keys hanging off the table, but betrays no surprised as she hooks a pinky through the ring and inspects them. The apartment number removes all doubt.

Our eyes meet.

She tosses her keys back on the table and steals my bubbly water.

I don't turn to look until I hear the drink crack open in the stairwell. Painted cinderblock walls project the sound through the whole building.

I'm exactly one flight behind her, so each time I turn a corner up the stairs, I catch a brief glimpse of her shadow starting the next flight. Odd, then, she's only three or four steps ahead of me when I exit on the fifth floor. She slips the towel from her hips and tilts her head to catch water from her ears as she slurps the bubbly water. My big hands need to be on her biceps. Nothing feels more crucial and true. Desire wells up in me, my imagination awash in details springing one after another.

She hangs her towel on the rail in front of 515 and shuts the door. I'm standing there between the towel and her door squeezing the life out of the floaty foam keychain. Fifteen, sixteen seconds pass before I hear the firm metallic pang of a deadbolt lock smashing shut.

I almost knock.

But I have the key.

I'm a knocker, usually. It's true.

A boldness I always suspected teemed behind my manners seeps through my pores, reacts with the air, and stands the hairs along my arm and neck straight up in an ecstatic field that burns away inhibition. The lock seems to pull the key home. The deadbolt slides so easy.

I push the door open and smell a candle burning with hints of a just-extinguished match. Plumbing trembles in the wall before I hear her shower turn on, blasting. I slip my shoes off, I unbutton the top button of my shirt and survey her small apartment. Everything is neat and organized. Textbooks. Novels. Art projects. I hang her keys on a hook by the door. Her "San Paw'n Cat Shelter" bag leans against a shoe rack.

A tabby cat sits on the back of her sofa watching me.

I take a steady breath as I pass her bedroom. A reading lamp casts her room in warm yellow.

It matches the hue of light peeking under her closed bathroom door. I taste steam infused with her coconut and almond soap filling the hallway. I imagine suds foaming off her perfect body. I press my hand to open the door as the water thundering through the plumbing stops.

Dead silence. Not even a fan.

I press my ear to the door. I hear my heart beating and a faint dripping, but no shuffling about or humming the way people do alone in the shower. I press the door open. It shoves a gust of steam that flutters through her shower curtain.

The can sits next to her sink collecting beads of condensation against its cool aluminum. Wax from her lip gloss keeps droplets from gathering along the rim in the perfect print bottom lip.

I tuck two fingers behind the curtain and tug it back. The rings from which it hangs clink one into the next like a second hand ticking down.

She seizes my wrist and peeks around the shower curtain.

She has this smirk as she guides my hand her face, kissing the base of my thumb before holding my palm against her cheek. Her other hand slides the curtain open all the way. She stands on her tip toes, her long legs braced against the edge of the tub, back straight, chest forward, her beautiful tits rising as she breathes in the smell of my cologne and sweat dotted on my wrist. I swipe my thumb across her bottom lip and just touch the petite ring in her nose.

A dainty gold cross hangs from her neck, shimmering with droplets.

I could explain how I came to believe the universe conspires with and against us and how I intuit its inscrutable design in the prayers it answers and the hope it crushes. How might she react to a figure from a dream standing in her bathroom, his hand so close to her neck, explaining how the moment I glimpsed her in an airport all my desires locked in an orbit around the very idea of her? Sometimes I talk too much. I always think too much.

Anyway.

I'm here to fuck her, lights out, like she's the only woman in the world.

I hook my other arm around the small of her back and yank her towards me, my other hand still flush along her jaw as our lips and tongue mingle. I breathe her in, the aroused heat of her skin warming the coconut and almond oils from her soap. I kiss her cheeks, her chin, her bottom lip, dragging it in the softest my teeth can muster before she does the same, nibbling my bottom lip as her fingernails dig in my shoulders. She leans into me and I pick her up, her long legs wrap my hips as I turn and sit her on the counter, her toothbrush and soap dish scattering in the frenzy. We knock bubbly water off the counter. It pulses fizzy water across her floor, drenching her bathmat.

We are oblivious.

My whole world is the taste of her skin, the heat of her neck against my lips as she pulls my face to her tits. I kiss along her collar bone to her nipples. I clasp her tits and roll them in my hands, my thumbs teasing her nipples as I plant a single kiss on her chin before her fingers twist my hair and drive my lips to her breasts. I squeeze them and I kiss them as my watering mouth slips over their curves, trailing spit and faint lines from my dragging teeth. The hand on her knee slides between her legs as her squirming knocks a cup from the counter. Soft thighs trap my hand.

I use my other hand to push your knees open but you refuse, shaking your head with a wicked grin and playful laugh punctuated with an unconscious lick of your lips.

I pull you to the very edge of the counter, sliding my hand towards your pussy as I play a dirty trick, tickling just behind your knee.

"Ahh!"

Your legs part and I find you warm and wet. You spread your legs and I slide my middle and ring finger along you, my thumb circling your clit as I curl my fingers in you. I kiss the ridge of your hipbone before kissing my fingers and sliding them back as your taste lights fireworks rattling in my skull. I push you back against the mirror, pinning you with my palm pressed between your tits as I fuck you with my fingers. You squeeze my forearm, steadying yourself on the now shaking counter. I close my eyes and press my face against your stomach, my whiskers maybe scratching as I listen how wet you are.

"Holy fuck yeah."

Not me at my most eloquent, but lust like hijacks my whole mind. I bully my fingers deeper, curling them towards your belly button as I search for your g spot and drum my fingers against it. I can't see. I kiss the inside of your thigh before kissing your lips and sliding my tongue behind my thumb, smearing the mess of you around your clit while my fingers work you. Tendons up my forearm burn as the muscles fatigue and almost cramp. I relax the pace and massage you slow from the inside as my arm recovers.