Chloe Benjamin - The Anatomy of Dreams

But before he could pick up the receiver, the ringing stopped, and there was a sharp rapping noise at the door.

“Jesus,” I said. “Can’t leave us alone for one morning, can he?”

I salted my last egg as Gabe strode to the door. I was already sick of the fleshy whites, their Jell-O texture.

“Thom,” said Gabe.

The sound of his name made me want to run. I was ashamed of myself; I had done harder things than this. But I waited at the kitchen table while Gabe and Thom conferred outside, hoping that Thom had only come with a quick question about road closures.

There was a jagged peak of a laugh — Janna’s.

“Sounds like fun,” said Gabe.

He let the door swing open. Thom and Janna stood in their winter regalia: Thom in a long houndstooth peacoat, Janna in a satiny turquoise jacket. Its exaggerated, stand-up collar rose as high as her nose.

“Bocce,” said Gabe. “Want to play?”

His voice was bright, seemingly transparent, but sharp-edged — a tone that reminded me of Janna. It seemed like a dare.

“I’m not dressed,” I said. This was not exactly true; I was wearing a drab combination of sweats, but the sight of Janna made me feel as though I might as well have been in my pajamas.

“It’s such a lovely day,” Janna said. “Warm in the sun.”

“Warmish,” said Thom.

“Warmish,” Janna repeated.

“Come as you are,” Thom said.

He was looking at me in a peculiar way — questioning, hesitant, as though I’d hurt him. His nose was pink with cold, his eyes searching my face. It would be a victory of my dream life over my real one if I said no, I thought — so I stepped into my boots and met them on the porch, where Janna was swinging a blue and red bag, the lumpy shapes inside shifting like an irritable cat.

We walked down a strip of land beside the Yahara River and set up camp near a clump of picnic tables. It was the first day in the forties we’d had in weeks. Small, slushy puddles pooled in the grass.

“I don’t know anything about bocce,” I said, holding a hand over my eyes as Janna opened the large bag. I was keeping close to Gabe, my fingers wound with his; I felt desperate as a schoolgirl with a first boyfriend.

“It belongs to the boules sports family,” she said. “Closely related to pétanque and bowls, with a common ancestry that dates back to ancient games played during the Roman Empire.”

She turned the bag upside down and a group of heavy-looking, brightly colored balls fell out in a heap. I stared at her dumbly.

“All you really need to know,” said Thom, picking one of them up, “is how to throw a ball.”

Thom suggested ladies and gents teams, not couples, so I found myself standing with Janna as Gabe threw the jack across the field. I was relieved I hadn’t been paired with Thom, but I was nervous around Janna, the way some people are with big dogs; if she were in a toothy mood, it seemed, she could drag me around by the hair. The boys were blue and we red. We took turns heaving our bocce balls toward the jack. I thought I’d struggle to throw mine more than a few feet, but as it turned out, Janna and I were evenly matched. By noon, each team had bowled five times, and we were one point ahead of the boys. If they’d been more focused, they might have played better, but Thom and Gabe were horsing around in a way that reminded me of the boys at Mills. It was part play, part viciousness: Gabe cutting Thom off with a swift kick to the shins or racing him to the farthest tree, their pants splattering with sludge.

Janna leaned against one hip as we waited for them to return. Her thin legs were encased in thick brown tights and dwarfed by a pair of quilted snow boots.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I think Thomas has homosexual tendencies.”

Thom and Gabe careened toward us. They seemed to be racing, but then Gabe dropped behind Thom. In a swift, subtle movement that only I saw, he hooked his ankle beneath Thom’s right leg. Thom skidded forward, his legs splayed, before tumbling to the ground like a calf.

“Fucking hell,” said Thom, unharmed but irritated. He clambered up to a standing position, a clump of mud on his chin, as Gabe ran ahead. “What was that for?”

“Well,” said Janna. “Not so much anymore.”

Why was it impossible for me to see her as she was? Whenever I came close to Janna, she seemed to change form with the ease of an optical illusion. Even now, I see her in the girls who attend the private school near my apartment — in the Cheshire flash of their smiles or the legs that begin at their waists. Janna had once been a girl, and what kind of girl had she been? I assumed she’d been the kind I’d always feared: slippery, shrewd, one who would tie your shoelaces together if you weren’t looking or poke you with tweezers and hairpins. But what if she had been a girl who sat pressed up against the whir of the laundry machine in her parents’ basement reading books about plants? If I’d known her as that girl, perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did. The more I made Janna a hologram, the more she seemed to haunt me, and the less it seemed possible that things could be the other way around.

As we walked home, Janna asked Gabe about the state of the dogwood trees they’d planted. The trunks had become withered and stunted, and neither of us knew whether they would survive the winter. Thom slowed, falling in step with me. There were ten feet or so between us and the others.

“Good game,” he said, looking ahead.

I nodded. Something fluttered in my chest with the crazed helplessness of a brochure caught in a car window. He swayed closer to me, and our arms brushed. I wondered if he had been drinking: his breath had the metallic tang of alcohol.

“I finished the next section of my book,” said Thom. “The second chapter. I’ll tell you, it feels good to be getting some traction. Like I’m wearing cleats now, and not slippers. The big questions start to quiet down, and the difficulties are more procedural. Where to insert this piece of evidence, that citation. What will convince you. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be so confident. I’m only halfway there.”

He chuckled, a tinny sound. His little monologue had taken up most of the block, and I was both grateful and flabbergasted. The abrupt lead-in, his assumption of my interest, seemed to suggest we had talked about this before.

“So we aren’t speaking?” he asked.

I froze. What he said had jogged my memory of our phone conversation on Christmas. How he had rung late in the night, and I had told him not to call again.

Janna and Gabe had reached the driveway between our houses. They turned and waited — Janna leaning on the skinny pole of one leg, Gabe watching us with feigned disinterest.

“Fine,” said Thom. He edged ahead of me, limping slightly from his fall. I was panicked, lockjawed. Thom’s face was injured, but his back was bent with a weary, almost feminine nobility, like that of an old horse.

That night, I startled awake after another dream of him. This time, though, I hadn’t been able to catch it; I remembered only Thom’s face, golden and disembodied, his forehead drawn with the same wounded uncertainty I’d seen that morning. I swung my legs around the side of the bed and walked to the bathroom. The light above the sink wavered as I splashed cold water on my chest and dried off with a towel. When I went back to bed, Gabe was propped up on one side, waiting for me.

“What was that?” he asked.

“What do you think?” I was overheated and irritable. “Bad dream. Why? Did I wake you?”

Gabe didn’t answer. He was staring at me with a queer expression, his head cocked to one side.

“Did you see your hand?” he asked.