These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

She doesn’t forget the night she met him. She follows his career and speeches back in his own country, alert to any mention in the press of a return to London. In the fall of 1967 she applies for a visa and quits both her job and school, and flies to New York, remaining forty-eight hours before she catches a train to Washington, D.C.

As a low-level secretary and receptionist, she has worked on his staff for three months before he notices her. By then the Washington office has sent her back to the New York office, and over the course of those three months he brushes past her desk twice, even nodding at her routinely without recognizing her. Then the third time something he can’t place breaks his stride as he passes, before he keeps going. The fourth time, he stops and stares at her.

Almost puppyish he cocks his head, studying her. To her irritation, having been in his company a couple of hours in London and felt no intimidation, now she’s a bit terrified of him. “You’re new?” he says.

“About three months,” she says. “I was put on staff in September.”

Then he remembers: It’s her accent, she realizes. “London,” smiling the small smile as he walks away, “you were angry at me.” A week later Jasmine sits at her desk daydreaming about Christmas trees and spending her first holiday abroad when the woman who hired her calls her into a cubicle. “Just how settled are you here?” says the woman.

“What do you mean ‘here’?”

“New York.”

Jasmine shrugs. “Fancy getting a proper little Christmas tree.”

“Get a proper little Christmas tree in Washington. They want you back down there, maybe for a while.”