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“You’re totally gonna marry that guy,” she teased. “Next thing I know, you’ll be answering the door in high heels and pearls, a little apron on. Cooking him a heart-shaped meat loaf.”

It wasn’t such a bad idea. Not the heels and pearls, not even the meat loaf, though I thought it sounded cute. Just the idea of being domestic like that.

“I never thought…” I began, and stopped myself, dismayed to discover I was suddenly close to tears.

Jen, like the good friend she was, didn’t tease. “Didn’t think what?”

“That I’d ever have it. Any of it. I thought I would have to live at home forever.” I drew in a shaky breath, fighting tears. “Sorry.”

“Hell, no, girl, don’t you dare apologize. How’s it been lately, anyway?” She made a whirling gesture by her temple.

“The insanity?” I asked, just to give her a hard time because I knew she didn’t meant it that way. “I haven’t had a fugue since the day we tried it. I keep waiting, though. I’m always waiting.”

“Probably always will, don’t you think?”

She’d hit that right. “Yeah. I guess so. Though when I was clear for that couple of years before I moved here, I was hoping… Well, I guess I was always waiting then, too. Just more hopefully.”

Jen nodded. “I bet. But maybe they’re gone for a while now.”

“Yeah. I think so, maybe.” There was no way for me to tell, of course.

“Do me a favor, though.”

“What’s that?”

She laughed a little, looking sheepish. “Don’t try to make yourself, okay? I thought Johnny was going to slaughter me.”

“He was just worried. He’s not mad at you.”

Jen shook her head. “Girl, you should’ve seen him. He was scared out of his fucking mind. Not like the night of the dinner party. I mean, then he was anxious, I could tell. It was very sweet, very cute. But that day when you put yourself under, I really thought he was going to bust something. Probably my face.”

I laughed uncomfortably. “It was a pretty stupid thing to do.”

“Was it?” She eyed me curiously. “I don’t know. If you could make yourself go into one, don’t you think you could learn to bring yourself out? Forget it. Johnny was right—it was dangerous, and I’m a shitty friend for even suggesting it.”

“No, you’re not. I think you have a point. It’s just that I promised him I wouldn’t try to do it on purpose again, and…” The truth was, I was afraid to.

“I get it. I do. And I’m not a doctor or anything. Jesus, girl, I don’t even watch any of those doctor shows on TV. I shouldn’t be suggesting you mess around inside your head. Johnny’s right.”

“The thing is, most seizure disorders can’t be mind-controlled. If they could, people wouldn’t need meds, you know? But I’ve always had success with the meditation, with acupuncture, alternative medicine and stuff. More than the traditional drugs. And it’s not a seizure disorder anyone has ever been able to really diagnose, so I’ve had different doctors saying different things all along. There’s a shadow on the CAT scan but it doesn’t get bigger, and it doesn’t go away.” I sighed. “Lame.”

“Totally,” Jen agreed. “The fuck were you thinking, breaking your brain like that?”

I was glad to laugh with her about something that anyone else would’ve made utterly humorless. “I don’t know. Stupid little kid, I guess.”

“Well, hell, weren’t we all? I once jumped off a two-story landing with a Superman sheet tied around my neck. Thought I could fly.”

“When did you figure out you couldn’t?”

She snorted. “As soon as I jumped.”

We laughed again at that, shaking our heads at our stupid, youthful selves. I looked again at my watch. “Okay, I really have to run. I think I might need to get some ground beef for that meat loaf.”

“Don’t forget the apron and the pearls,” Jen advised as we both got up. “And the heels.”

I thought of what we’d talked about while I went to the grocery store, pushing my cart up and down aisles and buying food not just for myself but for Johnny, too. Making sure to get the kind of olive oil he preferred. Toilet paper in the brand he liked better, though it was more expensive. His favorite salt-and-vinegar potato chips.

It didn’t feel wrong, making these choices that were different than if I’d made them for myself. I didn’t feel compromised, or pushed aside. It was a bigger part of something, this simple trip to the store. It wasn’t about which brand of butter or how many boxes of rice I bought. This wasn’t about a single dinner, or even a month of dinners.

This was about making a life with him.

This stopped me cold in the middle of the candy aisle, my fingers tight on the handle of the shopping cart. The floor slipped under me in a familiar way. I thought I detected the faint, drifting scent of oranges. I waited for the fugue to come and take me away, make me dark, before I realized it wasn’t that. I wasn’t slipping and sliding at my broken brain’s whim, but from emotion.

I couldn’t be sure I’d fended off a fugue or if I’d simply assumed this topsy-turvy sensation was the precursor of one, since I’d never had such an uprush of emotion that knocked me so unsteady without also going dark. At any rate, the world didn’t fade out in front of me. I didn’t end up in a field of flowers, or riding a canoe over Niagara Falls.

“Excuse me,” said a young mother with a cart full of groceries and a happy-faced baby in the seat.

I stepped aside to give her access to the candy bars, and I pushed my cart off down the aisle. I felt it again at the checkout counter as the cashier weighed my organic tomatoes and chatted over her shoulder with the bag boy. As I paid and slipped the backpack containing my purchase over my shoulder so I could walk home. The world, slip-sliding and swirling. It was like the twitch of a curtain on a stage. Like a hand knocking on a door.

The question was, would I answer?

Chapter 29

M
y mind made up itself. I spent my days with Johnny without going dark. When it came time for bed, tucked up close beside him in the dark, beneath the weight of blankets we usually kicked off as the nights got warmer, I slept. And dreamed.

Of Johnny.

It wasn’t like those times I stumbled into a lust-wrought fantasy of slick, hot flesh, long hair, summer heat. It was still Johnny-then in my dreams, still that house. Still that summer. But there was something else there, too.

It seemed useless in a dream to pay attention to a clock or a calendar, but I tried, when I remembered, to look. It was a couple weeks before that fateful party that tore them all apart, and I was glad my unconscious mind had sent me here. They were all happy. Getting high, having sex, arguing over politics and art. Eating, always eating the delicious food Candy provided.

And there was Johnny in the middle of it, holding my hand. Kissing me casually. Capturing my hair at the base of my neck and lifting it off my skin to give the air a chance to reach it. Letting me drink from his bottle of beer, eat from his fork, taking my head into his lap and tracing every line of my face as we lay in the grass of the backyard and looked up at the blue summer sky.

“Wish you’d stay over,” Johnny said to me as he drew deep on a joint and passed it to me.

I declined; he shook his head and tucked it back in his mouth. “Can’t. You know that.”

“I know you say it,” Johnny said.

I was content, just now, the dream sugar-sweet. I laughed, just because it felt good to laugh. I shifted in the green grass, looked at blue sky. Looked at the face of the man I loved.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’m just…happy.”

He leaned to kiss me, breath fragrant with pot but not gross. “I’m glad you’re happy, Emm.”

“Aren’t you?”

He put on an exaggerated frown. “Sometimes.”

I sat up, playing along. “Awww. Poor Johnny. What’s wrong?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, wish you’d stay.”

“Oh…you wouldn’t like it half as much if I did,” I told him, giddy with my own sense of joy and with the freedom of dreams.

“Yeah, I would.”

“No. You’d get tired of me like you get tired of all your women.”

Johnny laughed. “I never get tired of women, baby. I love them all too much. That’s my problem.”

“See? I don’t want to be just another woman!”

He shook his head slowly, looking into my eyes. “You’re not, Emm. Not even close.”

I settled back onto his lap, feeling his bare flesh against my cheek. He wore truly horrible red short shorts lined with white piping, further proof this was a dream. My Johnny would never be caught dead in something so yuck—well, not now. Back in 1978 they were probably superhot.

“Trust me, you should be glad I don’t hang around all the time,” I said.

“Well, I ain’t.” He put the joint away and rested his hands behind him in the grass to look up at the sky.

I sobered a little. “We’d have a fight.”

“About what?” he asked, like he didn’t at all care.

“Something. I don’t know. People always have fights eventually. I mean…I’m a raging bitch sometimes.”

He laughed at that. “You think I can’t handle that?”

“Well, you shouldn’t have to, that’s all.” Not here. Not in a dream.

“Maybe I want to,” Johnny said in the same nonchalant tone I didn’t believe for a second. “Didja ever think of that?”

Everything was topsy-turvy, all switched up. I could remember the fugues, our conversations, the lovemaking, but where they fit into this time, this dream, I couldn’t quite figure out. Everything had gotten chopped up into pieces.

I sat up and looked at him. “I love you, you know.”

He looked pleased. “Yeah?”

I poked his bare chest—short shorts aside, he was naked. “You’re supposed to say it back, you ass.”

Johnny leaned in to kiss me. “I love you, Emm.”

From the pool in front of us came a giant splash, and Ed surfaced, blowing out a spray of water. The others weren’t around. We’d been alone until now. I wished we still were.

“Even if I am a bitch,” I said, “it doesn’t last long.”

“No?” He kissed me again, and his hand found the spot on the back of my neck he liked so well to cradle.

“No,” I said against his mouth.

“Good to know,” Johnny said.

Someone called his name. He looked toward the house with a frown. Bellina stood at the back door, holding the phone stretched tight on its long, curly cord. She said a name.

“My agent,” Johnny explained, and looked apologetic. “Gotta take that, babe.”

“You go.” I stretched in the sun, lazy and sated.

He got up, looking down at me, silhouetted by the sun. “Will you be here when you get back?”

“I hope so.”

But I wasn’t.

Another night I was back again. Same place. Slightly different time. Johnny walked out of the kitchen and found me standing in the front hallway. He looked me up and down.

“Hey. That was Freddy. Says he got a gig for me set up in Italy. Horror flick.” He took me in his arms. “Wanna go to Italy with me?”

Why not? “Sure.”

He grinned. Kissed me. Then a little harder. “Wanna go upstairs with me?”

“Sure to that, too,” I said with both my hands on his ass and squeezed.

A clatter of something in the hall made us both turn. It was Ed. Annoyed, I frowned. Was he following us, or what?

“Sorry,” Ed muttered, weaving a little. “I thought…you’d gone, Emm. You were there and then I thought you… Never mind.”

“I’m right here,” I said, annoyed.

Johnny laughed. “Go sleep it off, man. That guy,” he said when Ed stumbled into the living room and collapsed on the couch, “should cut back on the booze.”

Upstairs in Johnny’s bedroom, he stripped out of those godawful shorts and stood naked, his erection already thick and gorgeous, begging for me to get down in front of it and take it in my mouth. Which I did, gladly, the hem of my lightweight nightgown crushing under my knees. His fingers ran along the spaghetti straps, pushing them off my shoulders so my breasts pushed up and out of the material.

I stroked my hand down his cock and took the head in my mouth. I sucked. He moaned. He thrust. I licked and nibbled gently, and Johnny tugged on my hair until I looked up.

“Stand up,” he said. “Turn around.”

I did. I put my hands on his dresser, my fingers flat on the polished wood. Behind me, he slipped up my gown, found me bare beneath. His fingers toyed with the crack of my ass, then slid between my legs to stroke my clit. I shivered, head bent, legs spread. I was already wet.

“You always go without panties?” he murmured, not like he expected an answer. Appreciative.

I slept in this gown without panties, yes, and would never have gone out in public this way if it hadn’t been a dream. But that was too long an explanation. “Just for you.”

He grunted. His fingers slid into me, then out. He used his thumb and forefinger to tug gently at my clit, and a low noise eased from my throat.

“You want me to fuck you, Emm?”

“Yes.”

“Just like this?”

“Definitely,” I answered.

Above Johnny’s dresser was a mirror. When he pushed inside me, he also gathered my hair at the back of my neck and pulled until I looked up. I gazed at both of us, captured there in glass, a frame around us like a painting. Making us art.