See You In My Dreams

“I’ve dreamt of King Kong since I was little. Only he was never the same dream to dream, just like he was never the same in the movies or on the merchandise. I was him for Halloween one year, even. I wore one of those plastic masks with the string on the back. Tacky orange face with eyebrows and my blue eyes looking out. Hardly able to see. I took one of my sister’s Barbies and carried her around like she was Faye Wray. I must have tripped and fallen and spilled my candy fifty times. But I never took off that mask.” 

“Why King Kong?” she asked inquisitively, rubbing her index finger along the porcelain rim of her mug.

“I don't know.”

She smiled staring at him. His mind was something between an amusement park and a wax museum. 

“King Kong deserved love more than anyone in the history of the world. He did more for the girl than anyone. Sacrificed absolutely everything. Took her places. To the top of the Empire State Building even. Smashed planes that sought to tear them apart. Gently held her in the palm of his hand though he could have accidentally crushed her like a worm if he had been careless. Then he let her go when need be. And for what? To fall ninety some stories to his death when those planes finally did him in. Imagine that fall, huh? Falling with a broken heart like that. Realizing he is plummeting to his death. Her perfume probably still in his nostrils. There’s no greater tragedy or love story if you ask me,” he raved.

“What about Romeo and Juliet?” she countered.

“What? Come on! They at least consummated their union,” he returned.

“Consummated their union?” she giggled sipping her hot coco. The café was open all night but it didn’t appear so. It was dead but for the waitress and a tired-looking thin man who cooked when orders were up and sat reading a newspaper when there wasn’t anything else to do.

“I was trying to be delicate.”

“You sound like my father.”

“All I’m saying is Romeo and Juliet could have just ran away and been together somewhere else if they were really in love. King Kong couldn’t have done that with the girl. He came all the way to New York to find her for chrissake. And he never gets the girl. No matter how many times they remake it!”

“Didn’t they force him to come to New York?”

“I don’t know. I guess it depends on which version you watch. I like to think that he came on his own to find her.”

“You’re a romantic,” she grinned. She had a beautiful smile.

“Maybe I am. Do you happen to like hairy apes?”

“Forty four feet tall that smell of bananas? I’ll pass.”

“Well, what about hairy humans, five feet eight that smell of french toast and coffee?”

“Getting warmer,” she laughed.

Then just like that she was gone. A bell rang from the diner door and everything went black like in a blackout, only there was no emergency lighting and no one said anything. Everyone was gone. When he opened his eyes, there was the old tile ceiling of his apartment with a stain in the shape of Florida on it from an accident with a champagne bottle one New Year’s Eve a few years before with a woman who was happily long gone. She disappeared like a magic trick in a box of two year’s regret and disappointment. But the woman in his dream, she came periodically. A reoccurring role at various places and times and they had good conversations. Only when he got to the part where he was about ready to tell her that he was dreaming of her, or that he loved her, she and the entire dream would disappear. Note to self, he said to himself. Don’t tell her it is a dream. It had happened seventeen times already.

Kitt’s apartment looked like King Kong slept there. A horrible mess. Papers, dirty clothes, beer cans, pizza boxes. Something from the aftermath of a tornado or a monsoon, unrivaled by the apartments of the messiest of his bachelor friends, that long lost race of people who he once used to spend time with outside of work, but who had slowly disintegrated from his life like winter leaves and were extinct like dodos. It was as though they had been struck down by some plague. Ate up by a monster of indifference. Lost his number and address and vanished into utter nothingness.

Kitt hadn’t worked in nearly a year due to an accident that left his back in such pain that two chiropractors referred him elsewhere for fear of “making things worse.” He would need surgery soon, but the thought of having his back cut open and things sliced, snipped and cauterized made him ill so he avoided it as long as possible. Thus far, for seven grueling months, most of which he spent in a drug-induced sleep. But the lady from workman’s compensation was calling and leaving annoyed-sounding voicemails that said he needed to have the surgery or they would classify it as “willful unemployment” and cut his benefits. Benefits was a strange word for it, he thought.

It was a nice apartment but mossed over with things left where they did not belong. Books off shelves, cups and dishes forlorn on various tables and opportune flat surfaces. Cabinet doors open. Dishes in the sink like partially sunken ships. Newspapers and magazines face down, left for dead on the hardwood floor like rugs. Kitt made quite a bit of money in his job working as a crane operator on the docks, but that money was slowly dwindling away and creditors called from Pakistan and angry letters stuffed his mailbox by an indifferent mailman who only got pissed when Kitt didn’t retrieve his mail for a week or more. He got emails from his credit card company letting him know that his credit score was suffering, plummeting like the Hindenburg they said in so many words. He had a goldfish in a small bowl in cloudy water and from his bed where he lied face down, where he slept and dreamed of the girl, he eyed that goldfish who swam lethargically and he felt like him. He often wondered if the goldfish looked out from the murkiness of the water and felt like him.

Pill bottles littered the piles of debris. The amber-orange vials with the white lids that sat like empty pain killing time capsules throughout his place, saying his name over and over. Kitt walked to the nearby Duane-Reedy and filled his prescriptions every other Friday, took them as prescribed, usually, chased them with cough syrup, Nyquil, or some beer and liquor he bought at the spirit store and happily went to sleep listening to old music on a satellite radio channel that streamed through his laptop and out a small round speaker that seemed like a portal to another time and place. A crowded ballroom in 1942. A last dance in a high school gymnasium before being shipped overseas. And it was very much like he dissipated into thin air with the rays of sunlit dust that vanished into the speaker. The music along with the drugs made him feel peaceful and soothed his soul, he would say if there was anyone to tell. But there wasn’t anyone, unless you counted the goldfish who didn’t even have a name.  

In his sleep he was in another world because whatever he took made him have very vivid dreams that were remarkably real. He knew they weren’t true because in them he felt no pain and he was conscious of his life in which he was practically an invalid at the mercy of his pain. But everything in the dream was as it was in real life, other than his injury which never happened. He lived in the same apartment, the same city, looked the same, had the same friends and family. Apart from living painlessly, the only difference was that the murky goldfish bowl was gone when he dreamed and his apartment was clean. Spotless. The laptop played the same old music and when he fell asleep watching that goldfish swirl lethargically in the water, he woke up in the dream and it was gone. And in the dream the girl came and went. He never got her name. When he was awake he reminded his conscious self to remind his sleeping self to ask. If she ever appeared again.

When he dreamed on weekdays he woke up, made coffee, ate a quick breakfast, grabbed his keys and went to work. When he dreamed on weekends he slept in, listened to music, read parts of a novel he never would finish, got up, got dressed and went to Central Park for a walk. Maybe she would appear, he hoped. Walking a pack of large dogs. Maybe one would get away and he would help her retrieve it. He could alter his dream, tailor it to his design, but he couldn’t make her appear. 

When he felt it was too warm, a chill blew through. When he felt he was cold, he was suddenly warmed by a jacket or the sun which appeared through a break in the clouds. When he was hungry there was a hot pretzel stand and three dollars in his pocket. When he was thirsty there was a pub. He was without nothing and he enjoyed every moment of his dreams but he couldn’t help to wonder how long it would last. And though lost in his pleasure at times, the pervasive expectation of waking up burrowed itself inside of him and the fear of it would not relent.

If that goldfish could talk he would describe a sleeping Kitt as a kid on Christmas Eve night. Smiling in his long hours of deep sleep and content in his expression, moving very little and waking reluctantly. When Kitt’s eyes opened and he saw again the goldfish he never named, a sorrowful look came upon his face and pain shot up through his back which made lying down next to impossible. He slept about fourteen hours a day and it continued for the better part of a month until he managed to sleep for nearly seventeen as winter began. He drank more and more cough syrup and empty packs of sleep aids and benadryl lied around his messy apartment which looked more and more like a cluttered cocoon as the time passed. His wish to sleep twenty four hours a day was never realized but with the help of some prescription sleep aids he got from the doctor after telling him he couldn’t sleep at all, he managed to sleep for about twenty hours, which he remembered from somewhere is the amount of time a koala bear sleeps a day on average. And much to his pleasure one day there were koala bears sleeping in trees in Central Park.

Some days in his dreams he was simply making dinner in his apartment for himself, watching a Mets game. Other times he went to a theater or to have dinner in a restaurant he had always admired but could never afford. Money was of no matter in his dreams though he spent very little, even after tip. He always got the ticket to the show he wanted, the cab was always waiting, the restroom was always empty, and the lights always turned green at the right moment. He never missed the subway, and perhaps stranger than anything, people were always kind to him and each other. When he watched the TV news reports of robberies and rapes and political upheaval and animus were replaced by stories of acts of kindness and selflessness and seemingly daily breakthroughs in medical research and technology that led to the discovery of cures for many diseases, particularly those that effected children. A world cooperative had solved climate change and Kitt ate ice cream and watched fat polar bears on solid glaciers of ice rather than those starved ones bereft on ice rafts lost at sea. 

In his dreams, absolutely anything was possible. He could hop aboard a train and go anywhere, past or present. A train like one from 1850, or 1932, or a futuristic bullet rail. And New York was ever-changing. If he wanted 1956 Manhattan, he had it. If he wanted New York from the seventies, he had that too. If he wanted to watch that sailor kiss the nurse in Times Square following World War II, there they were. He had Travis Bickle driving taxis. He walked past strip clubs grinning at the lurid signs to attract tourists like spider webs. That fat juicy spider of sex somewhere buried inside under hot burning neon lights, stinking like expensive perfume, sweat and wet dollars.

He could do anything or meet anyone. Marilyn Monroe over a subway grate. But he didn’t. Not for a lack of imagination, but only that his subconscious desire was to be simple and ordinary. He only did that which he could do in real life, if he hadn’t a bad back. He worked Monday through Friday in his normal thankless job and joined a summer and fall softball league where he made ordinary friends who did very ordinary things. He didn’t bring back an ex dramatically like in one of the love stories he had read from some writer who writes such impossible madness. Meeting her in the rain. At night. At a train station just before her train was to depart. After they both realized they were made for each other and no one else. There was none of that. Kitt’s romantic relations had never been so wonderful or tragic, truthfully, and he found everyone he had ever been with to be boring and usual, superficial and trite...dull on the account of overuse, by definition. Bitter and hollow like bad chocolate Easter rabbits that malted with time.

The reoccurring girl made no sense. In no fashion had he ever dreamed of meeting anyone in particular. Not even of meeting the love of his life after watching a movie that might inspire such fancy. Not even King Kong in black-and-white, again and again. He didn’t bring back his dead parents or his older brother who died in Iraq. He wasn’t six foot four and as handsome as Cary Grant. He wasn’t a karate master or a football star or a successful stock broker. Kitt Bainbridge was simply Kitt Bainbridge. He wasn’t even the best player on his co-ed softball team either. He played second base and booted some simple grounders and struck out now and then like everyone else. He was just as he was in reality.

But there was one simple thing he did while dreaming that he had never done in real life. A week before Christmas he went to Rockefeller Plaza where the tourists go and he rented a pair of black skates. He sat off the ice on a bench and laced them up nervously thinking of how he could break an ankle or a wrist and for the first time in his dreams, giving serious thought to the back that ailed him in conscious life. Thinking perhaps he should be careful not to aggravate it. Aggravate what, he asked himself. Nothing. He wouldn’t let fear deter him in this world and he took to the ice with that weird penguin-like walk of amateur skaters before gliding through tourists and kids as smooth as a schooner through skiffs and pontoons. And the Christmas tree was lit beautifully and glowed off the ice so that it seemed he cut the colors with his skates and he found that he could skate quite well for the first time. But he wondered if in his dreams he was cheating, giving himself the ability to skate well. But as soon as the thought occurred to him, he fell, and the girl appeared near him gliding with the grace of a swan, just in time to laugh.

He smiled at her and she went on as though she didn’t know him. She didn’t, he recalled. Despite their many previous meetings, every time they met she never recalled the last so it was the first time every time. Kitt got back up and after two steady laps around the ice he found himself behind a beautiful Japanese family of four. And just then the little girl fell and though Kitt did his best to avoid her, he stumbled into the unsuspecting wobbly girl who skated just behind him. The same girl who watched him fall moments earlier. And they both tumbled to the ground together, neither harmed but for their pride that was slightly bruised.

Kitt apologized profusely and explained that the little girl was to blame if blame was in order and the girl laughed and smiled, still embarrassed but amused by Kitt blaming a child in the joking manner that he did. Two left feet that clumsy kid, Kitt griped scornfully of her.

“Stop!” the girl cried with laughter.

“I’m Kitt,” he said taking off his glove to shake her hand. She returned the favor and took off hers and giggled again. Her hand was cold as much as his was warm.

“Kitt? That is unusual.”

“My mother was a fan of Knight Rider.”

“That old TV show...with the talking car?”

“Yeah. That was Kitt. The car. I couldn’t have been Michael because my dad would have been jealous”

“Well, this is going to sound funny but my name is Catherine. My friends call me Cat.”

Kitt smiled warily. “Oh, well this isn’t going to work.”

She laughed. “No. I’m joking. But my sister’s name is Catherine. I’m actually Amy.”

“Amy, I like that,” Kitt repeated satisfied that at last he finally knew her name. His smile endured as he regarded her in such a way she realized she was being regarded. There was something even better this time than when they were in the café talking about King Kong, the love story, or the sixteen times before that. Such a simple name for such a intensely beautiful woman. He had never seen a more naturally beautiful person in his life and he realized it, which is why he was stuck there on the ice staring at her like a kid at a Christmas tree. She was all the lights, the ornaments, the snow, the entire season in one soul. Even still, she wasn’t outlandish in any way. She was simple and somewhere in that simplicity there was the sparkle of the kind of beauty he had always longed for but thought not to exist in any single person, much less for him to see in real life. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth so that he could barely speak. But finally and mercifully he realized he could simply give himself the ability to speak in that it was all a beautiful dream, so it was.

It wasn’t long before they realized that by sitting on the ice they posed as obstacles to skating tourists that circled the rink. Kitt saw the cute Japanese girl coming around again who grinned at him exposing missing teeth.

“She is a cute little devil,” he mentioned to Amy.

“She is,” Amy agreed. “I don’t have a child. I’ve always wanted one though.”

“Me as well.”

“Never the right woman?” she asked impetuously.

“Never the right woman,” he repeated. “You?”

“My husband isn’t able to have children.”

“You’re married?” he asked as they glided on. Their skates made a repeated and soothing sloshing sound.

“Yes. I’ve been married for sixteen years. Since I was twenty.”

“Where is he?” Kitt asked looking around for men standing solo off the ice. There was no one standing there who seemed to be worthy of her so he looked back at her for an explanation.

“He’s not here. You could say, he’s estranged. Or that, I am estranged. We’re not together anymore.” She took Kitt’s hand in her own as though she needed him for balance as they glided along. But she didn’t need him, she wanted him for something more, which he understood instinctively. They glided along, careful not to get too far away from each other. When Kitt took back his hand, Amy pretended to wobble again and Kitt reached for her hand to stabilize her. But when she was stable again, this time he didn’t let go. Nor did he mention her husband again, sensing that talking of another man with a beautiful woman, particularly of her husband, is the definition of being a wet blanket.

“Where are you from?” Amy asked.

“The upper east side. You?”

“Ohio.”

“Ohio?” he repeated in amazement.

“Yes. Columbus. Have you been?”

“No. I can’t say that I have. So how long are you here for?”

“I don’t know,” Amy replied seeming confused. In truth, she didn’t know. She hadn’t bought a round-trip ticket or got on a bus to get here. She was just here and that was all that she knew, other than she was married to a husband who was never any good for her as much as she hoped that he would be.

“Well, where are you staying.”

“The Plaza. I’ve always wanted to stay there... since I used to watch Home Alone II as a little girl. I always wanted to be Kevin McAllister.”

“I am pretty thankful that you’re not Kevin McAllister. Or the pigeon lady.”

Amy giggled and squeezed Kitt’s hand. It didn’t feel to either of them that they had just met. It felt that they knew each other the way the Pan-Am Building knew the World Trade Towers in old New York. The way the Statue of Liberty knew the sound of the harbor boats and the Empire State Building knew King Kong.

“I have about ten minutes left on these skates. I only got the hour,” Kitt admitted. “Would you like to have a late dinner? I could show you some of my favorite places.”

“Can they be touristy places?”

“Yes. They can,” he smiled back. “But not all!”

They ate dinner in a small café and the busy night streets were lit with so many beautiful lights and were littered with people and noises outside of the glass window that Amy couldn’t help but to be distracted by all of it, just as Kitt couldn’t help but to be engrossed by her. They left and had drinks at a small authentic Irish bar in Manhattan, not one of those chain deals like Flannigan’s or anything with Molly in the name. One where the bartenders and barmaids spoke in such thick accents you had to often ask twice what they said and their hair was red by the grace of God and their freckles were like the blood of God splatter. They danced, they karaoked, they took pictures, and they took the subway aimlessly, much to her amusement.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Anywhere!” she cried excited as a kid. “As long as we can find our way back.”

“It’s always easy to find your way back,” he said not thinking of the weight of his words. She rested her head on his shoulder and burrowed into him. It didn’t feel like a first date, or that she was married. It felt like date seven or ten and he happily got her back to The Plaza and walked her inside. He stood at the elevator and asked if she would be okay to make it up or if she wanted him to go with her, unintentionally clumsy with his words. She smiled holding on to her “I love New York” coffee mug and t-shirt and her large stuffed gorilla he had won her on Coney Island, which appeared to be humping the Empire State Building.

“How about tomorrow?” she asked grinning wildly.

“Tomorrow,” he repeated thinking it wouldn’t come. He was savoring every last morsel of time he had now.

“Yes,” she smiled. “Tomorrow.”

She kissed him on the cheek just as the elevator doors opened and she turned and slipped inside. In a few seconds the doors closed and she was gone, almost as quickly as she had come. As he walked out of The Plaza with the corny wiener dog stuffed animal she had won for him tossing rings on canes at Coney Island, he opened his eyes to that goldfish bowl and the nameless fish of his misery staring back at him and to a hot flash of pain in his back that nearly crippled him. Worse, other parts of his back and body were sore from lying so long. His shoulder and backside were numb and he struggled to get out of bed.

Nonetheless he managed and he checked his messages. Made a few calls to loved ones to assure them he was alright. Wished his niece a very happy birthday. She thanked him for the present he sent, which he forgot he had. Figured he did so doped. He watched half a game until the Mets got blown out in the seventh. Ate something that didn’t have mold on it on bread that probably did. Brushed his teeth. Showered. Changed his clothes and was relieved to find another bottle of cough syrup and an unopened fifth of gin. And more eagerly than ever before, he went back to sleep hoping he would find her again.

He opened his eyes and the goldfish bowl and his back pain were gone. He smiled, hopped up, got dressed and took a cab to The Plaza and read a paper in the lobby. In his excitement he had forgotten to get her phone or room number. Then he thought to check the front desk and ask them to ring her room. To his relief she was found and they rang her room. When the concierge asked whom should she say is inquiring, Kitt smiled wryly and said “King Kong,” which didn’t amuse the concierge in the least, but she repeated it into the receiver anyway. He heard Amy laugh through the phone and she said she would be down in a few minutes.

She greeted him with that wide warm smile that melted his delusions for desperate want of the reality. He hugged her and they kissed hello and were off on another day of sight seeing and falling further in love, which was a forgone conclusion when they first met for them both, which they both knew well. They fell in love at a Yankees game, or in that small café, or at first sight on the colorful ice of Rockefeller Plaza. They were a Hallmark movie repeated a million times over. Amy was thrilled to take a cab to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to Penn Station. She looked out the back window at all the tall skyscrapers like a kid. And she stood there holding Kitt’s hand looking at all the fine art and watching in amazement all the trains come and go and the passengers board and disembark seemingly so indifferently to whatever voyage they were on or that which awaited them. She felt a little tinge of disappointment that there were no dramatic goodbyes or hellos happening. No one hanging out a window despairingly waving a handkerchief that they let go which would float upon a waft until it is caught by her lover running alongside the train. There was none of it, almost like that part of the world had died or had never really been at all. She didn’t know which. It was the only time she felt down in his presence.

But standing next to him she knew that world lived in abundance inside of him. With the carnivals, amusement parks and wax museums she felt before. She felt it through his hand and his occasional embrace and his gentle kisses upon her cheeks or forehead and when he dared, which was not often enough to her, her soft lips. She knew she couldn’t go back to Ohio and she knew she must tell him the truth of what it was with hopes that when she did he wouldn’t vanish into thin air. Standing atop the Empire State Building might have been the first moment they both consciously knew they were in love like neither had felt before, and they knew it with such aplomb that left no doubt. And for a long while neither of them said anything at all, they just watched the city beneath them as it was, as it went about on its own indifferent to them.

Kitt thought of the possibility that in this dream he could imagine King Kong climbing up the side of the building with a bouquet of large red roses to give to her and he knew it would be. Or he could imagine the biggest brightest diamond ring in his pocket and reach in and pull it out and it would be as well. But he wanted none of those things for he thought that they would lessen the reality of the moment and make everything seem like make believe. So he held her with contentment and enjoyed the view of the city he loved. Of tens of millions of people acting out their own lives in his drug-induced sleep.

The days and weeks passed and their dates were no less intoxicating than the first. Indeed, each brought a new element of excitement and euphoria the one before had not. Kitt relished seeing Amy’s beautiful face in different lights and times of day, her hair in different styles, and her mood even more amiable than on the date before. With or without magnetic eyelashes and always without a filter. And she stuck in his mind in a red floral dress and tan boots carelessly holding a wine glass and laughing. 

Amy was thrilled to see him waiting there for her after having the concierge call up and telling her King Kong was waiting for her in the lobby. On one afternoon he waited outside in a white limo with a cheese pizza and took her to a toy store that was pregnant with the festivity of Christmas. And from the back she watched The Grinch on a small TV and stretched out and said she never felt more like Kevin McAllister. And at the toy store they bought an ornament, a pair of turtle doves, and each kept one. They celebrated Thanksgiving at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan; Christmas in her hotel watching It’s a Wonderful Life and making love over and over in the warm glow of the black-and-white shadows of the room; and New Year’s in Times Square like happy sardines in neon and confetti. And every day that Kitt woke up to that goldfish bowl, he smiled contentedly and looked forward to sleeping again soon and dreaming again so much that the day passed painfully and laboriously and he knew that his time awake would never give him that which he had in sleep. And thus to sleep became an obsession and the tools to get their an addiction.
 
But giving so much to sleep, his conscious life grew much worse. The bliss of his dreaming was at the expense of his reality. He was late several months on his rent and the super rapped on his door at least once daily, barking threats of eviction. Even worse, his back was not helped at all by his lethargy and deteriorated rapidly. The pain was more excruciating than it ever had been and even worse, the doctor cut back his pain medication citing some new federal law to battle the opioid epidemic. He argued with the pharmacist at the Duane-Reedy and took a cab to the doctor’s office where he screamed at the receptionist through a glass widow which only made things worse and made him seem like an out-of-control violent junkie. There was not an argument that could be made that he wasn’t, for he could never prudently explain that he was simply frantic to sleep because in his sleep he had her. Amy. Anyone would have thought he was crazy if he had confessed it.

Hopelessly and in pain he stared at that goldfish bowl for hours trying to sleep, drunk on gin, watching that fish make endless circles. His apartment a haven of trash, worse than ever. Rats and roaches made their way in and he didn’t bother to rid the place of them for the time and effort it would take meant time and effort away from her. All he wanted was to sleep. And after several hours, he finally slept long enough to wake to a clean apartment, to make breakfast and to head to The Plaza, but before he could tell the concierge that King Kong wanted to see Amy Glenn in whatever room she was in, his eyes opened to the sound of the super beating down the door and dogs barking again. The neighbor’s pit bulls who don’t like knocking. It was 6 p.m. A baby wailed loudly beneath the threatening raps of the super’s relentless fat knuckles. He tried to smother himself with a pillow, but the pillow only slightly muffled the noise.

He couldn’t go back to sleep. Hours passed. Hours more. It was midnight. One. Two. He ran out of pills and the pain was unbearable. He didn’t have the money or desire for heroin or street drugs, so it was more alcohol and cough syrup. If the night clerk at the Duane-Reedy made commission on cough syrup, she would have enough to put her kids in college thanks to Kitt. And on top of the cough syrup, he bought benadryl and a few other over-the-counter sleep aids. The liquor store was two doors down and he switched from gin to whisky.

At last he fell asleep and shortly thereafter he woke to a clean apartment, made breakfast and took a cab to The Plaza. It was Saturday again. There had been seven straight Saturdays since he and Amy ice skated at Rockefeller Plaza. She waited for him in the lobby with a sad look on her face. She didn’t know how to say what she was about to say, nor did she know what he had gone through just to see her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked sensing her sadness. Nothing ever goes wrong in his dreams. But he feared that maybe he pushed it too far and the dream was about to become a nightmare. Maybe she would fall over dead or combust into a million angry hornets. Or even worse, maybe she would tell him that she didn’t feel the way he felt and she was going home. No dramatic departure. Just a tight and cold goodbye, the sting of which would never soften.

“I don’t want to go back to Ohio,” she said softly. “Or to my husband.”

He held her and told her she didn’t ever have to. But she said she did.

“Why?”

“Let’s take a walk,” she said with a burst of enthusiasm breaking through her tears. Kitt took her hand and they walked outside and down the street in modern day New York. A carriage pulled by two white horses stopped alongside them and the driver offered them a ride. Kitt looked at Amy and they hopped inside like a couple tourists with a quick twenty bucks to burn. The horse hooves clip-clopped along the street pacing their thoughts and making the silence less awkward between them as she thought of how she could say what she needed to say. As they rode along and towards Central Park, she finally explained.

“This has been the most incredible time of my life. It is too good to be true. All of it. From the way we met to the way we spend our days and time. It is...unreal.”

Kitt didn’t reply. He simply held her cold thin hand and listened. He feared though that she would stop and he would have to explain, but she went on.

“I have to tell you that it’s not real, and though what I am about to say is unbelievable, you must believe me. Love is honesty and being completely honest with the person you’re with. Right? So that is what I must now do. Kitt, this is all a dream. It’s my dream. I’ve realized it from the beginning, but it is so real and so beautiful I didn’t want to speak about it for fear that it would end if I did and end so abruptly that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye to you. Just now I imagined this horse and carriage and it was. I imagined you and you were. I don’t know how to say this, Kitt, but you’re not real. You’re a dream. My dream.”

Kitt sat back in the carriage seat and sighed. He watched giant snowflakes fall like paper parade confetti over them. The horses turned from white to blue to green and then to purple. Amy watched them and marveled at it, knowing she herself had not thought to dream it. And Kitt smiled and drew close to her and kissed her as the snow fell heavier and the large silver bells on the horses bridles jingled merrily.

“It’s I who has dreamt of you, silly girl,” he confessed.

But the driver turned from an ordinary meek older man in a black suit to David Hasselhoff dressed as Michael Knight in Knight Rider and Kitt smiled and looked at Amy who grinned back at her joke. Then her phone rang and the show’s theme song played. She laughed, but the joke couldn’t go on because of other unspoken things she could not control.

“So we both are dreaming?” Kitt resolved.

“It appears so,” she replied contentedly in his arms for a while longer. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

“It’s unbelievable.”

“Only...it cannot last,” she confessed sobering.

Kitt cringed thinking she knew of his addiction and his bad back. Maybe, somehow, of his apartment and dreadful living conditions.

“Back in Ohio,” she began nervously, “I’m not doing so well.”

“Well, I’m not doing so well in New York City, but in our dreams we are...”

“You don’t understand Kitt. My husband did something bad to me and I’m in a hospital and he, my parents and doctors are right now deciding whether to take me off life support or not. I dream because that is all that I do. Dream of how I wished my life had gone. I have dreamed such grand dreams and can dream of anything. Anytime or place. Anything at all. But I dream of you. Here. In New York City.”

“As I dream of you. What happened?”

“He pushed me off a cliff when we were hiking. Told everyone it was an accident. I have a policy for 250,000 dollars and my husband is a gambler. Bad combination. My parents are too old and sweet to fight him and he can do what he wants. But he is smart so he lets me linger in my sleep. I can hear him when the doctors are gone and my parents aren’t there. He talks to me. Cruelly. Telling me to let go and die. Or he talks to his girlfriend on his cellphone. One thing about Scott is that he always plays the odds. When the doctors tell him there is less than a fifty percent chance of me surviving, and he convinces my parents there is none at all, he will have them pull me off life support and I will not be able to dream anymore.”

“That is awful,” Kitt sighed.

“Not so much. To die would be a relief. To be rid of him. Only it would mean I wouldn’t be here with you, unless there are dreams in death.”

Kitt hugged her as the carriage looped around and headed back toward the hotel. “You could have dreamed of anything. Been anywhere, any time and place. Why here?”

Amy relaxed some. “Since I was a girl I dreamt of visiting the city and ice skating in Rockefeller Plaza. So when I was there and saw you, I thought, of course, I created you as well. Only I didn’t. Nor did you create me. We just happen to be passing through at the same time. I thought you were the love I have always desired.”

“Thought?” Kitt complained lightheartedly.

“Yes, I thought then. I know now.”

The carriage stopped back at The Plaza and the driver was an old man again in a boring and ordinary black suit. He gingerly descended the dickey box and opened the little door along the side that seemed like a formality rather than a practical door. Kitt took Amy’s arm and escorted her back to her room. She stood at the door and they both knew it was goodbye, so the dream for both was quickly becoming a nightmare and though perfectly aware of it, there was nothing they could do. To wake would not resolve it being that they would lose each other and it was better to have each other in a nightmare than not at all. They made love one last time but rather than to be so naturally swept up in a passion that seemed boundless, they seemed to be fighting to stay together as they did, clinging to each other desperately, knowing it was the final act of too short a romance.

Fate didn’t allow Kitt to get dressed and to say goodbye. Or to leave her a vase of white roses. After they made love he simply fell asleep in his sleep and woke up to that goldfish bowl, those dogs barking, and the super knocking. To the sound of rats scurrying across piles of trash and paper on the tile floor, and a baby crying three doors down. His back felt like it was made of broken glass and he stumbled to the door. When he opened it the super was gone but there was an eviction notice hanging on the door which he took down.

“Definitely not dreaming anymore,” he said grimacing looking at a defiant rat who stood on its hind legs on the kitchen counter. The rat didn’t seem to mind Kitt being there, nor had he any fear of the rightful human inhabitant. The rent-payer, as the rat thought of him. The rat could have made a fine legal argument for his lawful cohabitation by virtue of utter filthiness and clear neglect. But as sure as Kitt was evicted, the rat was too and despite the pain in his back, and his desperate want of a drug to make it go away, Kitt broomed off the rat who scurried to its underworld portal hole, and he began to clean. The old music streamed through his laptop and slowly but surely after about five hours and twenty bags of trash were drug to the garbage chute, the floors swept and mopped and the dishes done, the place was restored to its former splendor, that which as the ad once boasted, “charming, cozy upper east side historic one bedroom.” The clean gold walls, the fine woodwork, and the antique fixtures Kitt had collected made it look more like 1920 than 2020, which is how he favored it.

Despite the horrific pain in his back and the lack of drugs to quell it, he met with the super, a person the other tenants called “The Fat Man.” A big Hawaiian guy who always wore a gym suit though he never saw the inside of a gym in his life. A man with red knuckles and a flat forehead that resembled a grill because of the wrinkles across it. Kitt asked for an extension on the rent and The Fat Man sat back in his chair that let out a torturous groan and looked up at Kitt skeptically. “In 8 years you never once asked for an extension. I appreciate that,” he said waving a sausage finger. He was doing his best to imitate a Godfather, only he didn’t have a cat to stroke. “I give you another two months. But you got to leave for a week. Exterminators are coming in. People say they’ve seen rats. I see no rats. Do you see rats?”

“No. I don’t see rats,” Kitt lied feeling obligated to do so. “Thank you. I’ll make a reservation today.”

“Come back in a week!” The Fat Man said as Kitt hurried out the door. “The invisible rats will be gone! Along with their little invisible friends!” The Fat Man wished he had a table of coke, but all he had before him were blank rental agreements, pens, and an empty bag of Cheetos. 

Kitt went to The Plaza to make a reservation. He thought he might as well live it up for a week before he came back to reality. He called and made an appointment with the doctor who would operate on his back and he informed the worker’s compensation lady, who was surprised and pleased to get his call, saying she left him approximately thirty two voicemails and was just about to cancel his benefits. Kitt apologized and was determined to make life better for himself despite the pain of his back and the draw to addiction. 

He stood in the lobby of the Plaza and recalled his dreams of Amy. The same concierge was working at the desk which was weird being that Kitt had never stepped foot in The Plaza in reality and made him think that just maybe it wasn’t a dream after all. So he stepped up to the lady and asked if there was an Amy Glenn in the registry and, if so, could she ring her room. The lady said sure and looked down at the computer and hit a few keys. Kitt smiled in his excitement and was just about to tell her to inform Ms. Glenn that King Kong was in the lobby waiting for her.

“No. I’m afraid not. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” Reality hit him like gut punch. This was the moment he was either all in, or all out. Whether he called or folded. Pushed on or gave up.

“No, thank you,” he replied. “I was just wondering.” He took his bag and turned around and left. The curious concierge watched him leave and would all but forget him a few seconds later. He took a cab to JFK and got the first flight to Columbus. The Knight Rider theme playing all the while in his mind. Perhaps he was delusional and it was all really just a fantastic dream, he thought, but he would never know if he didn’t try. On the plane he Googled her name and found a hundred Amy Glenns all over social media. Several in Columbus, but not the right one he discovered when he clicked on their profiles. But then the agonizing thought suddenly occurred to him that she could look different in her dreams. Perhaps, he saw her differently than she was because what he saw was his ideal. The most beautiful woman in the universe, flawless but for the perfect flaws that made her exactly who she was. Those little things that made her all the more unique and divinely gorgeous. It is what love does. There is someone for everyone.

The plane landed and he disembarked and sat in John Glenn International Airport, wondering if he had wasted a trip, consoling himself that knowing the truth would at least be some kind of welcomed resolution when he knew that it wouldn’t be at all. He wondered if she was related to John Glenn, who he knew as an astronaut who walked on the moon or orbited Earth or something. Who eventually got an airport in Columbus named in his honor. And he thought of how strange it was that someone can be so famous for being shot into space, but the thought left him as he sat on his luggage case and looked up at flags from all over the world. Did Amy actually exist? Or was she a figment of his imagination?

He got up tenderly and dragged his suitcase following the signs to the taxi boarding area. The driver wore a purple turban which caught Kitt’s attention. He eagerly hopped out and helped Kitt put his suitcase in the trunk. The cabby had a marvelous black beard that was tinted with gray the way Bob Ross tinted banks of oil-brushed creakbeds with shades of ochre, Kitt thought. He sometimes as a kid dreamed that Bob Ross was his father and the cab driver reminded him of a Turkish Bob Ross, thereby, was his father by proxy, of sorts. Kitt asked him to take him to the nearest hospital. When they got there he asked Turkish Bob to let the meter run and he would be out in a minute. Bob gave Kitt his number and told him to text him if it would be longer than fifteen.

Between the third and fourth hospital, Kitt explained to Bob what had happened. And though he feared Bob would not believe him and think he was a nut, Bob looked at him in the rearview mirror and threw on the breaks and pulled over. He told Kitt to sit up front with him and he drove him to the next hospital.

“The story was in the newspaper the past month or two. She is in there,” he said pointing to the front of OSU Wexner Medical Center. “They said she fell off a cliff while hiking with her husband, but there was some doubt. She has been in a coma for a month and they feared that she would get worse, but she made significant progress this past week with brain functioning off the charts and she was taken off life support. But they don’t know if she will ever wake up. So if you ask me,” Bob advised in his thick accent, “she may need some help.”

He patted Kitt’s knee to encourage him. “If you would like me to come in with you, I will. I’m an old man but I love a love story as much as a little girl.” Kitt smiled at Bob who smiled back with a beautiful old grin. His teeth in stark contrast to his beard. There was a genuineness about him that made Kitt feel confident. Kitt slowly got out of the cab, a small Toyota Prius, and made his way as quickly as he could into the hospital. He asked the girl at the front desk where he could find Amy Glenn.

“I...um...I can’t give you that...that information, sir.” the high school-aged girl stammered nervously. She was a volunteer. A modern day candy striper in American Eagle.

“Why?”    

“Um. Well, with all the news coverage she is in protective custody and I am not allowed to give you that information, sir.” The girl fumbled with a binder and opened it and read official hospital policy with a number for Kitt to call. He knew he wasn’t getting anywhere with the girl and he grimaced at the mercy of another shooting pain in his back. So he texted Bob and told him it might be a few minutes and Bob replied that he turned the meter off and would happily wait. Kitt left the information desk and headed for the elevators. Imagining she would be on the critical care floor, he pressed the button and waited patiently for the doors to close. An instrumental version of a Rod Stewart song played, which he knew and liked very much.

There was a small gift shop on the floor and he overpaid for a vase of a dozen white roses. He walked into every room and down the hall looking for her. When there was another family in the room he invaded, or a patient alone looking back at him, or with tubes in and out of them sound asleep, he would say simply, “Sorry. Wrong room,” and no one would seem to mind. The family would smile and look away and the person in the bed would be none the wiser, no worse for wear because of the brief and harmless intrusion.

A nurse stopped him and asked if he could help him find someone and Kitt shook his head and said he was looking for his sister’s room and that he had just flown in from New York and wanted to surprise her, though she was in a coma and wouldn’t know any better. When the nurse asked who his sister was, he said Amy Glenn and the nurse hesitated, scrutinized Kitt briefly in a glance, then quietly said that she was down the hall in 1202 and Kitt made a beeline in that direction.

When he got there no one was in the room besides Amy who was lying in bed, her head haloed in the soft light from ensconced room lights which looked to Kitt like the bottom of a spaceship. A heavenly hue on her golden blonde hair. Kitt took a seat by her bed and stared at her beautiful face that was perfectly still and facing up to those lights. She was just as she was in his dreams. More beautiful even somehow. It looked to Kitt like she was in a state of suspended alien abduction, or that God held her in the palm of his golden hand. Kitt took her hand and massaged it for a moment and bit his lip as he did so, daringly to his credit, for at any moment someone could walk in the room and challenge his right to be there. And what would he say? I know her in her  dreams.

He sat there for a few minutes before he said anything. He expected to be interrupted by someone. A nurse, her husband, but no one came. And so he talked to her.

“I don’t know how or why what happened happened, only that it did. And I don’t even know that you had the same dream, or maybe I saw your story on the news and dreamed it all up for us both, but I have to believe that it means something greater than I can understand. That this is where I belong and that I needed to come see you and tell you that I love you in dreams and I love you awake and that it doesn’t matter about my back or my addiction or you being in a coma. It doesn’t change anything and if you should remain this way I will love you still and no other. Ever. But if you just wake up I can love you in this life just the same as in our dreams.”

Kitt put the vase of roses on the nightstand by her bed and let go of her hand. Then he dug into his satchel and pulled out a ukulele and began strumming it. It was something he hadn’t done in many, many years. He played an old song that always made him think of her. I’ll See You in My Dreams, in the style of Cliff Edwards.

He was a bit rusty on the ukulele and to a trained ear it was out of tune and his voice cracked a few times, but it hardly mattered between the two of them. Amy could hear it and she dreamed again that she was getting ready to see him in The Plaza in New York. Waiting for the hotel room phone to ring and for the concierge to say King Kong was in the lobby. She smiled thinking of it. But the phone didn’t ring and the song played from somewhere. She searched the room, thinking that he was somewhere hidden, but she couldn’t find him. But then the music stopped and she stopped smiling.

“Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?” Amy’s husband barged in. He was on his cellphone and told someone he would call them back. He was a large man with a thick forehead and Kitt figured it was going to get violent so he prepared for the outcome.

“I was singing a song.”

“To my wife?”

“She isn’t your wife. And this might sound strange to you, but I am in love with her and there is nothing you can do about it. You don’t own her and she doesn’t belong to you.”

“You’re in love with my wife?” he laughed incredulously. Kitt didn’t know his name and didn’t care to know it. It hardly mattered.

“Yes. I am. But, again, she is not yours. And I know what happened.”

“You know what?”

“She told me.”

“She told you?”

“Yes. In her dreams. She told me you are a gambler and she didn’t fall on her own. You pushed her. But unfortunately for you she survived.”

Her husband went after Kitt but just as he did Bob the cabby burst in and grabbed him from behind. Amy’s parents came in soon after to see their daughter, and so her husband settled down. Kitt told her parents what happened and they believed him. As strange as it was they believed the young man still holding the ukulele, perhaps because they wanted so badly to believe that there was hope and there was another chance for their daughter to live and love again. Amy’s father told her husband to leave and he did, fearing further scrutiny. That night he packed a bag and took a red-eye to Vegas. No one would see him again. Bob the cabby introduced himself to Amy's parents,vouched for Kitt, and left. He asked Kitt if he needed anything to call, figuring Kitt was staying.

Kitt stayed with Amy for several days and nights. He got to know her through her parents. Her mom, Karen, told wonderful stories and brought in several photo albums and she sat close to Kitt on the room’s sofa and flipped through them so they both could see. She pointed to her favorites of Amy. Her birth. Her baptism. Every school year’s photo. Every sport or band photo. Every dance. Every birthday and Christmas. Awkward braces years and bad glasses. When she had bangs. Acne. The year she tweezed her eyebrows a little too well and had red hair making herself look a little like a twelve-year old Queen Elizabeth. But in all the photos, through all the years, she was the same. The same beautiful person who simply just changed in appearance a little bit, who perfected into the woman she was now. Kitt thought about how he had wondered what she looked like when she was little. He was now satisfied that he knew about as well as he ever could and regardless if she woke up or slept forever, he would always love her.

Visiting hours ended at eleven, but Kitt stayed in the hospital lobby sleeping in a chair as best he could. His back worse than ever. But in his sleep he got no further than the lobby of The Plaza. There was no Amy Glenn in the registry. She was apparently no longer able to have the same dream, or she simply wished not to have it, he feared. To that outcome he said, feigning an accepted resolution, it was beautiful while it lasted.

Kitt sat with Amy’s father late on the fourth night, much later than normal. Her parents generally left around ten every night. He brought her dad coffee and they talked about the Yankees. Kitt hadn’t the heart to tell him he was a Mets fan, he just deferentially listened to Roger talk about seeing Mickey Mantle when he was 10. The Mick, he said reverently, hit two out that game. He had a card at home, he boasted. A gem rookie. Worth a fortune. Wife wanted to sell it and go to Cancun. You don’t sell a thing like that, he complained. Kitt agreed. It was good that you came, Roger said patting him on the knee as he got up to leave. It’s good that you’re here.

Sometimes the nurses didn’t wake Kitt up and tell him he needed to leave the room. It depended on how many years they worked there and how much they cared about an insipid hospital policy that shouldn’t have ever been enforced. Sometimes they even gave him a blanket. That night in his sleep by her bed he dreamed of The Plaza again. Well aware that he had the dream many times before, he again asked the concierge if they had an Amy Glenn booked and if so could she ring her room. King Kong was on the tip of his tongue. And once more the concierge said she was not in the hotel. But when he opened his eyes she was looking at him from the hospital bed. Despite his twisted back, he straightened up in the uncomfortable chair and prepared for what may come. At first there was only silence between them.

“Do you know who I am?” he finally asked her softly, hoping not to startle her. It was well past 2 a.m. and it was snowing out a cold dark window.

She looked at him, smiled, and said faintly, “Yeah. King Kong. And you were right. It’s a good love story after all.” 

When she was well enough, they moved to New York. They were married on top of the Empire State Building. Asleep or awake, they would never be apart again.