These Dreams of You

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Jasmine isn’t sure whether he answered when she knocked and she didn’t hear, or he just didn’t answer. She feels like she’s been standing in the doorway several minutes — though she knows it can’t have been that long — before his gaze wanders from whatever he’s fixed on in the air before him.

Except for the swirl of papers on his desk and the children’s drawings tacked to a cork bulletin board over his shoulder, his office is no more settled than her apartment in New York, though he’s been here not three months but three years. In any event it’s not the space of someone planning to stay long. He swivels back and forth a bit manically, brooding at nothing she can discern; his hand holding the ice cream spoon, with his sleeve he brushes the forelock of his hair from his face. “I hear you’re, uh, still upset with me,” he finally says. He points at a chair on the other side of the desk from him and she takes it.

“Just trying to sort out where I’m supposed to be,” she says.

“You’re supposed to be here,” he says.

“Good to know.” She adds, “I’m not always upset.”

“I remember,” he nods, “you did have a sense of humor. Mostly at my expense.”

“Well, sir, as I recall, you don’t know Elvis Presley from Paul McCartney.”

“Yes, I’m sure anyone would find that uproarious. I know who Frank Sinatra is,” he points out with the ice cream spoon. “It’s queer after that night,” he says, “for you to call me sir.”

“Doesn’t feel proper calling you anything else.”

“Probably not,” he agrees, “not around here anyway. So I’ve, uh, been asking everyone the same question — practically, you know, stopping people in the street. . ” He looks out the window toward the street.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what the question is?”

“Yes.”