These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

He’s out of place. In the dark of the club, Jasmine still can’t place him; he looks like a fifty-year-old teenager but in fact has just turned forty, aging a decade in the last few years. With his rabbit’s teeth and long brown hair already turning gray, all of his features are too big for his head. He’s still growing into himself, still in the process of becoming who he’ll be, and he has a perpetually distracted quality that seems interrupted only by concentrated doses of discomfort, self-amusement, a secret. He takes everything personally.

There’s a calm about him but it’s not the calm of sanguinity. It’s the calm of something too damaged to be grace, let alone peace; Jasmine already has decided he’s the most intense person she’s ever met. She says, “What are you in London for, then?”

“Passing through,” Bob answers, voice dropping back to his nasal whisper, “here tonight, then leave tomorrow,” and adds, “I never sleep well so I. . thought I would go out, not wake my wife. . ”

“Get a bit of time for yourself,” observes Reg.

“Sometimes,” he says, “you’re most alone when you’re not.” Reg nods uncomprehendingly. “Where’s home, then?” asks Jasmine, and the man smiles his little-kid smile. “New York,” he says, “sometimes. Boston. Washington. . no,” he shakes his head, “not Washington. Never Washington.”