Crossing Tracks

As usual, over breakfast, he told her about what he had dreamt the night before, not the whole dream, just the leftover scraps and remnants and clinging ivy, nothing special that morning, a dream like any other, like so many others. He had found himself on a train and it had started to leave that city, slowly at first, like trains do in reality, and then he had looked through the window and she was on the platform, she was not onboard, she was there looking with amazement at the train but not seeing him because he was in the menacing gray dark inside and she was in the sunlit station, not really full of sun but one of those cathedral stations covered with glass that lets the rays of daytime filter and dapple through, not seeing him but already knowing he was gone, already sad that he had left without her, even if it was not his fault in the dream, he had supposed she had clambered on at the last minute or was waiting for him in the next wagon, he had not supposed for a second that she would be stranded on the platform. And there was nothing he could do, no way to stop the train, no emergency brake, no passengers to help him or inspector to approach, no way to communicate with her—just when you needed a cell phone they haven’t been invented yet in your dreams, he joked to cover the anguish and asked her to hand him the butter for the toast—there was nothing to be done at all as her image disappeared from view, getting smaller and smaller, nothing to be done but let the train hurtle to wherever it was threatening to take him, far from her, nothing to be done but wake up, and that is what he had done. The best solution because she was gloriously asleep next to him, and he let the loving beat of her heart diminish the drumming in his, and he rolled over and held on to her like a raft in the sea and closed his eyes and slumbered off till dawn came, and then breakfast, and the mere telling of the dream would dissipate it, this time it would also be swallowed like a piece of cotton with some drops of blood flushed down the toilet, that would be the end of it, there would be no look of amazement and abandonment on her face in the falsely luminous station and he would not be stuck on a train without her, they would be together as always and nothing could separate them, not ever, not anything.

That’s the way it had always been with their nightmares. You articulated everything bad, brought it out into the open so it could fade and dissipate and ultimately vanish.

Not this time.

The next morning, over breakfast again, it was her turn to tell him what she had dreamt.

“I don’t quite know how to put this,” she said, genuinely puzzled. She poured the coffee, made sure her husband’s cream was slightly warm just like he liked it, placed the fresh fruit in front of him in a blue porcelain bowl. She had been up way before he had awoken, which was not typical of her, but that was not the only strange thing about the morning. “I was there,” she said, finally. “I was there, at the station when the train left with you onboard.”

“You were there?”

“In the station you dreamt of the other night, at least the situation was the same, a glass-covered station, the train suddenly moving, and I saw someone just like you through the window, looking out toward me, but it was just a glimpse and then the train that had started slow picked up speed and you were gone. Except that my dream didn’t start with me on the platform, left behind. It started somewhere else, a hotel next to the sea, it felt like France somehow, though nobody was speaking French, and we had to catch the train and your bag was dragging along, folds flapping on the floor, a sort of carry-on, but you hadn’t packed it well or closed it right or something like that. So I took the bag—by now we were in the waiting room outside the platform—and I fixed it, made sure it was zippered and upright, and when I stood up, you weren’t there. I went out and looked for you up and down the platform and that’s when the train departed.”

“I didn’t know you weren’t onboard.”

“Of course you didn’t, darling. But I was desperate to catch the next train and there was nobody to ask for help, just like you in your dream, I was alone and you were alone, and then I saw a train about to leave and I got on.”

“With the bag?”

“The bag had disappeared. It was the bag’s fault, this mess, so maybe I decided to punish it in the dream and get rid of it, but what I did clutch was my handbag, you know, the sleek black one you bought me for my birthday, so elegant, much too expensive, but you know how I love it, I was holding on to it for dear life. For dear life, yes, but not mine—yours, as if your life depended on it.”

“Oh, poor thing, darling, I’m so sorry.”

“It gets worse. The train was full, though the only people I can remember were some women, they seemed like…servants, I guess, maids, refugees, women who clean houses and don’t have papers, and they didn’t seem to know whatever language I was speaking, but they told me that the train was not going to New York——”

“Wait, wait, didn’t you say you were in France?”

“Well, the train you were on was heading for New York and that’s where I had to find you, except the one I had jumped on so hastily was advancing at a hundred miles per hour in the opposite direction. I found a conductor and told him I had to get off, he said it wasn’t possible, the next stop was an hour away, but I told him that I would jump off if he didn’t stop the train, and he relented, ‘We’ll take care of you, madame,’ he said—in French! ‘You can join your husband in Paris very soon.’ Because by then you weren’t going to New York anymore, your train was headed for Paris. And then we pulled up to a small rural station and I got off and just as the train was leaving, a man stepped down from the train. He was very deliberate and meticulous in his movements, but there was something messy about him, something sprawling, and also kind of helpless, but it was all a sham, that he was vulnerable and trustworthy, because he came up to me and grabbed my handbag. I didn’t let him, I fought him off. There was nobody in the station and the train had already left and it was really in the middle of nowhere, but I knew that I had to keep that handbag with me and that it contained the name of the hotel where we had stayed the night before and I needed to get there—if I couldn’t catch your train, there was no other way for us to find each other. But there was something else in the handbag that mattered. I wasn’t sure what it was, but once the man melted away, he was gone from one instant to the other, once I was no longer in peril, I looked inside the handbag and there was a photograph.”

“A photograph?”

“Of another man. I can’t describe his features, what he looked like, I didn’t recognize him, had never seen him before, but this much was certain: He was going to kill you. That man was on your train, both of you heading for New York, or maybe by then it was Paris, and if I didn’t warn you, he would do it, he would murder you.”

“Murder me? What had I done? Aren’t you the one who’s always——”

“Yes, yes, that’s what was strange about it—even in the dream I thought, My, this is really bizarre. I’m the one who’s been threatened, I’m the one who wakes up with chills because someone is——”

“And this wasn’t like any of the men who in your dreams…?”

“I’d never seen him before.”

“So not a clue?”

“Hold on, yes. He only had one eye—not an eye patch on the bad one, just a sort of hollow and then his other eye was glinting in the photo, a ray of black light reflecting back at the photographer like a razor blade. Horrible.”

She stopped now, took a sip of her coffee, found it cold, placed it in the microwave even though she hated to heat coffee in the microwave. Though not as much as she hated plastic.

“And then?”

“And then, nothing. I woke up and you were sleeping so soundly, even chuckling to yourself——”

“I was dreaming my mother was alive and she had made me a beef stew and that was funny because she’s the one who turned me into a vegetarian.”

“And turned me into one as well, bless her soul,” she said. “But what matters is that you were having a sweet time, obviously, in your dream, and it didn’t seem right to wake you up to tell you that some one-eyed man wanted to kill you, so I slipped out of bed and made you this extra special and super nice breakfast.”

“Thanks,” he said. “It was great to spend some time with Mom and have a good laugh with her. Sorry that my dream the other night should have upset you so much that you ended up inside it, but the good news is that I am alive and well and enjoying the fruit and the fresh eggs, and that tonight we’ll both have a good night’s sleep and all these silly trains and platforms and criminals will be gone.”

But that’s not how it turned out.

He dreamt that night he was back on the train and desperate to find her, to get back to where she was. But they had made no plans for this separation, they had not done what they always did—thanks to her, she constantly anticipated that something could go wrong (there’s always a first time, love), and therefore had an elaborate code of behavior, it was necessary to go back to the last place they had been together and she stipulated how long each of them should wait and she specified such and such a corner in each city. Here, she would say, if we ever get lost, love, you will come back exactly here and wait for at least an hour. Though in the dream they had not made any arrangements. He did not know in the dream that they had been at that hotel near the seaside in France, he did not even know in what country they were or that the train was heading for New York, at least in her dream it was heading for New York, or maybe it was Paris, in his it was just rushing into the darkness, because it was night. He felt unbearably useless. There was no way to contact her, and even stopping at the next station and getting off would not help because she would never think of finding him except on the train she had last seen him board, and he had no idea what the station she was stranded at was called. He was cut off from her and from the world and did not know what to do. Whenever he was in trouble in his daily life, at least for their 40 years of marriage, she had been there to give him advice and protect him, he had been there to defend her if she was in need, and now, and now. But there was one piece of information that had seeped through from his wife’s dream, one item that swam into his mind like a coffin floating on a lake, her story had affected his in one particular way: He knew that on this train there was a man who had been paid to kill him. In the dream he did not know that his wife knew this and that she knew who it was, had seen the man’s photograph, nor that he had one eye and the other was a hollow. But he did know that if he did not find his wife before the man found him, he would be dead, he would never see her alive again.

“And then I woke up.”

She said nothing for a while, toyed with the rye bread that he had toasted that morning, toasted it to just the right temperature and with just the right amount of butter and orange preserves and served on the special blue plates that they both loved so much.

“So, do you think this is going to go on?” she asked. “I mean, night after night?”

He didn’t know, he couldn’t tell, all he could think of was to stay up all night while she slept, be vigilant, and if he saw that she was having a nightmare, he would wake her up and if she was still stranded in that station or on another train or headed to New York or who knows where, if she could remember the identity of the murderer, well then, he would make suggestions, he would tell her what to do, who to contact, where to go, how to find him, offer a phone number she could use in the dream, he’d think of something depending on what she told him and where she was, and then, when she went back to sleep, maybe something deep inside her would have listened and she could end this craziness, they could join their two dreams and make it one.

She shook her head and said it was an absurd plan and that dreams were mysterious things, so it might be better not to interfere, let whatever was working under the surface of their minds take over and work itself out, trust that each of them would find a way to save the other. He answered that she spent her life interfering with other people’s plans and what they bought and consumed and threw away, all that stuff that was bad for them and for the ocean and the air supply, she wanted to change people’s dreams, right, for their own good, so what was wrong with his doing it to her for her own good? As for the plan being absurd, granted, but what they were living was absurd, after all, and demanded drastic solutions, she was always saying that people had to take control of their lives. Well then, she said, if he insisted, why not let her stay awake and he should sleep so she could help him, she had always been the practical one and in real life the only one with a job that put her even remotely in peril, though the truth was that the plastics industry probably saw her—if they even noticed her at all—more like a bothersome mosquito than somebody to really be reckoned with, so she at least knew how to deal with potential assassins and thugs, at least in theory. He countered with an irrefutable argument: She was the one who had seen the photo in her dreams, not him, she could identify the killer, and if he slept that night then the one-eyed man might murder him before she could arrive on the scene.

She nodded reluctantly. It made some sort of insane sense.

“And anyway, it’s my turn to dream, right?” she said.

And her smile was enough to reassure him that nothing could happen to anyone with a wife who could smile like that, with those lips and that mouth and the promise they offered and the promise they kept that very night.

It was all he could do to fight the drowsiness, force himself not to drift along with her into the languid aftermath of their lovemaking, that reconciliation with the world that comes when two bodies have forgotten the word two and even the word body, have forgotten any and all words, he made himself remember the word train and the word danger and the words photo and killer and loneliness, enough words hammering in his brain to keep him awake and attentive.

Once her breathing became regular and peaceful and he was sure that she had indeed dozed off and was not trying to fool him as she often did, trick him into falling asleep because she had beat him to it, he switched on the lamp next to his bed, adjusted it to the softest position possible. Insufficient light to read—he didn’t want to get distracted—but if a nightmare came he would catch it, he would nip it in the bud.

It came, the nightmare, the change in the rhythm of her sleep, the fluttering of her eyelids, the tossing and turning. He waited a bit more, wanted her to settle into it, bring back some information that might be useful, and only when a small cry of distress scratched out of her lovely mouth did he relent and shake her, once, twice.

“What? What is it?”

“You were having a nightmare. Where were you? Back on the train?”

She could barely keep her eyes open, but they were not happy, those eyes of hers, they seemed to resent being disturbed like this.

“No, no, I have to go back.”

“What happened?”

She propped herself up on an elbow, looked at him as if he were a ghost. “Ah, it’s you,” she said. “So glad it’s you and that you’re—but no need, no need to worry, love. I’m on a fast train, an express train, I’ll get to our destination before you can, just let me go back to sleep and I’ll take care of everything.”

“All right, all right, great.”

She plowed her head into the pillow and fell asleep immediately and then abruptly lifted herself up, looked him straight in the eyes. “There’s something you should know. That man is on my train.”

“What man? The man in the photo?”

“The man who wanted to steal my handbag. He’s disguised, he’s pretending to be someone else, but I’d know him anywhere. So we have to be careful, right? We have to be very careful.”

He soothed her, yes, they’d be extra careful, she should go back to sleep and in the morning everything would be fine.

He watched her sleep.

There was a lot of dreaming that long night but no more nightmares, no cries, no sign that she was anguished, maybe she had reached his train and had managed to board it and they were next to each other facing one man and maybe the other man as well, vanquishing death and solitude, hand in hand forever.

No such luck.

“You shouldn’t have woken me up,” she said. “I told you it was best not to interfere, didn’t I? I didn’t go back to that dream, love, so I’m still on that express train I told you about when you woke me and stopped me from overtaking you, I’m still there hoping to await you at a station that you haven’t arrived at yet so I can climb onboard when your train arrives, that was what my unconscious cooked up to get us out of this mess, and it was working out, but you interrupted it, you silly. So let’s stop this nonsense and let the dreams take care of themselves and take care of us, and either tonight in your dream or tomorrow in mine, we’ll figure it all out, what do you say?”

He couldn’t argue with her. His plan, after all, had failed.

That night, he asked her if she had any more information she could give him, to help his own unconscious mind meet hers.

“Just make sure that at every station you look out for me.”

“But what if you’re not there? I mean, I interrupted your trip on your train, you said it yourself, you’re still back there and may never catch up.”

“In your dreams, you don’t know that. You need to tell yourself that your wife will find a way, she’ll reach you somehow. I’ve always done it, haven’t I? No reason why this time should be an exception.”

He sighed. “See you in my dreams, then.”

“See me in your dreams. You must be dead tired.”

Before he knew what had hit him, he was back on the train, roaming up and down it, searching for his enemy, the man who wanted to kill him. Over and over, he would see the back of a head and say that’s him, that must be the one-eyed man in the photo he had not seen but knew existed. And his hand would tap on the shoulder and the person would turn around and there was no face where a face should be. Just a flat oval paste, flesh the color of sour cream gone bad, no mouth, no nostrils, no eyes, not even one, not even a hollow, only yellowing skin peeling like burnt plastic and then the train would lurch to one side and he would continue on to the next passenger and again, the same terror, the same faceless face.

Until he came to the last wagon. There was only one man in it, his head tilted forward as if he were sleeping or dead. But he was not sleeping, he was not dead. Only the back of him, his dirty hair and neck could be seen, but he was not like the others, there was something different about this man, there was something more substantial and treacherous.

The man stood up and turned. His movements were deliberate and meticulous and yet somehow messy, sprawling. He seemed helpless, vulnerable, and yet in his hand there was a knife, it had sprung out of nowhere, just like the man himself.

Wait, wait.

Wasn’t that man supposed to be on the other train?

How had he gotten here?

Maybe his wife was also onboard. Maybe she was looking for him.

But no, he could see her—it was not clear how he could do this from the moving train, but he could see her ahead on the platform at the next station, the station that was coming up. She was waving her arms, as if signaling the train to stop, in a few more minutes she would climb into this very compartment, he would soon have her in his arms, she had made it, she had found a way to reach him, save him.

Without warning a second man joined the first one, a man with a broken bottle in his hand.

It was the man in the photo, the photo he had not seen. There could be no mistake, that hollow where an eye should be and the other one flickering like a stagnant pond: the man she said wanted to kill him.

Except she was wrong.

I’m not the target, he said to himself. They’re not interested in me. I’m just the bait. She’s the one. She’s the one they want so badly to ambush. How else to get her onto that train but to make her believe that the love of her life was threatened? How else to trap her?

Wasn’t that why he had left her behind at the station so long ago, so many nights and dreams ago? So that she wouldn’t come with him on this trip where death was lying in wait?

But she had followed him into his dreams and soon would be on this train, she was waving her arms on the platform, feeling triumphant, feeling immortal, and there was no way he could warn her. He had managed to eliminate her from his trip on this train the first time and the second time, but now she was going to correct his dream, get herself killed out of love for him.

He didn’t hesitate.

He rushed the men, began to brawl with them, grabbed one by the arm, the other by the neck. He felt something in his ribs, a crack, a blow, a knife, he felt something like ooze or blood, something gushing, but he ignored it, he didn’t let go of the first man with his deliberate and meticulous hands or the second man with his one eye glinting like a sick moon, dragged them toward the back of the wagon, began howling at them, howled at himself for having told her his dream over breakfast and forced her to come and rescue him, howled into space and time and eternity in the hope that she would hear him and run.

This pain, this pain in his side, it was what they wanted to do to her, it gave him strength, and he kept on moving to the back of the train, it didn’t seem to be slowing down as it reached the station, and he caught a glimpse of her, smiling and exultant on the platform, but he willed the train to continue its frenzied escape into the night, he held on to the arm of the one man and the neck of the other and managed to kick open the door and it swung wildly and the tracks were there receding and advancing under them, the three struggling men, the tracks flashing with the eyes of a madman.

In his mind he anticipated how the bottle gashed into his wife’s eye, deep into her face, that’s what they were preparing for her. If she came onboard, one would grab her as if she were a handbag and the other would plunge the edge of the bottle into her face, down and down and around and then a knife would follow the same path, that’s what they were planning.

With one last effort, he hurled himself onto the tracks, he hurled himself and the two killers onto the crisscross of deadly, disappearing tracks.

He was falling and as he fell he could only pray that she would be there the next day, the love of his life would be there, alive and by his side and smiling, he could only pray she would be there when he woke up, if he woke up, if he woke up, that is.