Spelling Dreams

Fiction

The way some want to wake to a new world, I’m asking at least the furniture be in the same place. The coffee mugs are in the dryer again, but it’s not running this time—thank God. It’s not like I’d make Cassie pay for them—she did the last time, even though I said I would. But she does buy me flannel pajamas.

What she loves about me, she says, is that I can sleep. “The way some people describe rackets that can wake the dead, you sleep through,” she says

One morning, after taking the philodendrons off the TV set, I found that the fridge magnets had been rearranged. Asparagus lemon tort, they say.

“I guess maybe I’m some sort of beatnik poet in my dreams,” Cassie says.

“Or maybe a prosecutor for vegetables.”

Something I love about Cassie is she’s proof that you don’t have to be funny for someone to laugh at your jokes. Another is she taught me that I only care about falling asleep alone. After I’m clocked out, you can do whatever.

She had dropped out of law school, and wanted to be a prosecutor for vehicular accidents, so this wouldn’t have been too far from the truth, in another world. “The problem,” she explained, “is that even for me, when I’m crossing the street and a pair of headlights come onto me really fast, all I see are dollar signs.”

Sometimes I stay up and watch her night parade through the house. The way that we watch dogs chase rabbits in their sleep, watching Cassie was watching the circus, or a detective show. Shortly after she’d fallen asleep, she’d get up and walk to the living room in her pajamas. Once she took a broom and held it in both hands, arms straight out, like a balancing pole. She put one foot in front of the other, in a straight line, toppling side to side, as though she were a wirewalker, and beneath her was Barnum and Bailey and their lions. Another time she’d gone through the house and remounted the pictures on the walls so they hung upside down. She drew spines off the bookshelf, and slid them back in place, as though by pulling out the right book, she would activate a secret mechanism, and cause the bookshelf to open on its side, where she would be able to find a villain’s secret lair.

I filmed this on my phone once, but haven’t shown anyone, not even her.

But the spelling was new, and I hadn’t seen Cassie do that before.

For dinner, I make mashed potatoes, chicken, grilled asparagus, and for dessert I serve a store bought lemon tart. Cassie eats the chicken and the mashed potatoes, but scrapes the tart and the asparagus back onto my plate, saying they aren’t her favorite things in the world.

Another morning, all the lightbulbs in the house lay siege on the sandwich meat. The fridge says, harvest, home, tackle.

Later, I ask a coworker what they thought it could mean, and she says, “I thought people can’t read in their dreams?”

I ask her how many sleepwalkers does it take to screw in a light bulb.

Before she can ask, “How many?” I say, “None, but instead of screwing in a lightbulb, she’ll unscrew every single light in the house and surround them around the ham on the counter overnight. And that’s why I’m eating a cucumber sandwich for lunch today.”

Tonight Cassie kisses my neck and reaches under my flannel shirt. A cool hand slides up my stomach and cradles my chest, and this time I hope she’s asleep; that even in her dreams she’s reaching for me, that this same Cassie is the tight-rope walker, the detective, the military strategist guiding the lightbulbs to victory against the ham in the fridge—that the slender feet of these secret selves walk the same common ground: me. I stay quiet, first from hope that she is reaching through the soft fabric of sleep, and second because waking her would cause her to panic.

You never wake a sleepwalker.

You never wake someone from their truest self.

She says “Hi,” and breaks the spell.

The fridge says Liv Mas, and I take it as a sign to get Taco Bell. I tell Cassie such.

“I must have been having a nightmare, because I would never.” She says, “I’m living on double-time.” She says.

Over coffee, she says, “Come here I want to show you something.” She leans down low over her phone, and I tuck her frizzy brown hair so it doesn't dip into the coffee, though if it did, I would lick the drops off the way lizards lick dew from leaves.

On the small screen plays our kitchen at night. A shadow stumbles in staggered, clumsy steps. A man in flannel walks to the fridge. You can’t see the fridge behind his head, but when he leaves, the magnets have all been rearranged. What used to our fun party trick, either for improvised poems when guests visit, or the occasional reminder to pick something up from the store, has become a practical joke for some intruder.

“We need to change the locks,” I say. “Have you called the police? We need security cameras.”

Cassie chokes on her coffee. Her shoulders shake, and she wipes at her mouth. What I mistake for crying is actually laughter.

“Yeah, call the police!” She says.

She says, “There’s a really hot guy who’s been sneaking in and out of my bed.”

Cassie holds the phone up to me again.

THE END.