Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) (3 page)

If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget the way she looked that day. I know a person is more than their epidermis and bone structure, but, man-oh-man! Dirty blonde hair with auburn hues buried here and there. A cute nose and succulent lips. Not a trace of make-up… why cover up something like her face? That would be like trying to touch up a Rembrandt with a can of spray paint. Her body was perfect… at least for me. Maybe 5’9”, a hundred and thirty-five pounds, or so. She had an athletic look about her, and moved with the grace of someone who had taken dance lessons from a very young age. Melody’s appearance was elegant, and yet, wholesome, at the same time.

Like I said… perfect.

I don’t know why she was attracted to me. Nothing special, here. I’m in decent shape, but fairly non-descript. No glaring deformities… however, I’m most definitely not in her league. Maybe she’s so beautiful that nobody ever approached her… lucky for me that I worked up the nerve.

We instantly seemed to understand each other. You know how people talk about how when they met their ‘soul-mate’ it’s like they’d known each other, before? How they say they just seemed to fit together like pieces of a puzzle? It was like that, except that the puzzle pieces were vibrating in harmony and a backdrop of celestial, symphonic music was playing at the same time. When I touched her hand, it was as if a transfusion of possibilities, endless summers and purpose invaded my basic being.

Like the future began to glow

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I had the feeling that with her I could become so much more than the bumbling, drifting excuse for a person that I had been… and, I suspected that even if I didn’t become more, it wouldn’t really make a difference.
I was almost certain that no matter what, she would have accepted me for who I was, and would have been totally satisfied just knowing all of those possibilities were somewhere in there.

Apparently, she felt something, too.

We were actually completing each other’s sentences after talking for five minutes. After ten minutes, it was like we had grown old together… we could have simply sat on a park bench, fed the pigeons, and been totally happy just watching them waddle around and peck at crumbs. When lunch arrived, it was as if we had died in each other’s arms and gone on to our reward. And, there, our reward was… the delicious food and the
San Diego
sky. The beautiful setting all around us like a three-dimensional frame on a piece of
Southern California
. We were young again and just meeting for the first time. What a perfect reward. What a perfect day.

What a perfect woman.

I told all of this to Giddeon, and all about our little conversation as she and I walked beside the bay, holding hands. I remembered practically every word and gesture… and even though it was about nothing, it was about everything.

Giddeon listened attentively, almost raptly, until at length, I was finished.

“Wow… you have quite a way with words. The pictures you painted are almost as clear as this ‘dream’ of yours. Most people go their whole lives and never have a day like that. You’re a lucky man.”

“Who’s in a coma,” I added.

I considered what he said.

When I finally did emerge from my coma, I was much too overwhelmed to attempt something like that, at first… I was simply elated that I was fully alive and able to have the opportunity to walk and talk and interact. I was so grateful that all I really wanted to do was to have actual human contact and participate in the world all around me. It was just incredible to once again share in the magic of everyday life and the wonder of living.

As real as my dream world was, I found that it just wasn’t the same without ‘real’ people.

Giddeon and cats make for pretty good company, but even with all of the amazing things I could see and do and experience over there, all in all, I’d rather be over here. This is where she is. Whether I’m with her or not, I’d rather be where our fields of probabilities are collapsed into the same reality. I’d rather be under the same sun and the same stars.

I want to be where I know it’s possible to actually talk to her, and touch her, and hold her hand… even if it has to end.

Life is about love, or, at least, the possibility of love. All of the other emotions can be interesting distractions, but love is a tsunami of feeling that sweeps the rest of them away… leaving them pale, washed out and scattered on the sands of time.

After being in a coma for four years, I’ve learned that life without love isn’t really life at all.

Boris stood up to where I could see most of him, sans legs, turned around a couple of times and lay back down on his side, facing me. I ‘scratched’ him under his chin and he began to purr, again.

“You hungry?” asked Giddeon, finishing the last of his beer.

“I could eat.”

“Brigantine?”

“Sounds good… I think happy hour for the bar food is still going on.”

“Time doesn’t really matter so much over here, but, yeah… we can still catch it.”

Giddeon set his bottle on the table, and looked back around the interior of the boat. “This is pretty cool. How come you never take it out?”

“Don’t know the first thing about sailing. I just like being on the water.”

He nodded. “If you’re unconscious long enough, I’ll teach you. It’s not that hard.”

“We’ll see…” I stood up through Boris. He meowed, but showed no inclination to roust himself from the couch. “We’d better get going.”

Giddeon followed me to the cabin exit. We made our way outside, and I heard him close the door behind us.

“Just leave it open for Boris. He likes to come and go,” I said.

“Oh, right.” I saw Giddeon reach back, and for a moment, I could see two doors… one open and one closed. There was a flicker, and then, there was just the one open door.

We stepped onto the dock under the full,
Coronado
moon.

__________

The Brigantine wasn’t very crowded. We made our way to the tables near the bar and had a seat strategically by one of the televisions. As luck would have it, a re-broadcast of a golf tournament from earlier during the day was on. We checked out the menus; none of the waitresses acknowledged us.

Without looking up, Giddeon said, “They can’t see us. What do you have a taste for?”

“The baked chicken sandwich… and, fries.”

“Iced tea to drink?”

“Sure.”

I saw a shimmering. My plate of food and glass of tea, along with silverware wrapped in a napkin, appeared before me.

“I’m going for the fish tacos,” said Giddeon.

Before he had fully finished the sentence, there they were. I began unwrapping my fork and knife.

“What do we do if someone wants this table?” I asked.

“Won’t happen for another 53 minutes.”

“You can see the future?”

“There is no future.”

“No future?”

“Not really… the future, the past, the present… they’re all part of the same thing.”

“Which is…?”

“You,” said Giddeon.

“Me?”

“Or, them.” He motioned to the people in the room.

“I’m not really following,” I remarked.

“That’s because there’s no such thing as following… or, leading.” He took a bite of taco, and then continued on with his mouth full. “Or, even being in step with… all of that’s an illusion. It’s all happening at the same ‘time’.” He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, and swallowed.

“So in 53 minutes, someone’s going to come and sit at this table?”

“52… in their frame of reference, which we’re observing,” he motioned to the people, again. “But, there’s an infinity of other frames in this universe. And, there’s also an infinity of other universes… each with their own endless frames. A multi-verse if you will. We could skip over to one of those, and it would be different. That someone could be sitting here, then. Or, just leaving… or, just arriving. Whatever you can imagine, it’s happening. Which leads to the question, would we be ‘choosing’ a frame of reference that matches what we wanted, or would we be ‘creating’ that frame of reference?”

More air quotes punctuated his last sentence.

“I really shouldn’t have taken off my hard-hat.”

Giddeon broke into a grin. A beer appeared in his hand. He poured it into an empty mug that had come along with it.

“Hind-sight is 20/20.” He raised his glass to me, and took a drink.

__________

We watched the tournament as we ate our food. As always, I found the process of how the pros worked their way around the golf course fascinating. The chicken sandwich was just right… not too hot and not too cold, not too juicy and not too dry. Seasoned perfectly. Just the way I would have wanted the sandwich to taste if I had… created it. One of my favorite golfers almost chipped in from the fringe beside the green.

“Oh man, that was close,” I said.

“It went in somewhere else.”

“In another ‘frame’?” I used my fingers to make quotation marks, then.

“Yep. That’s what makes golf so much fun. The ball has this field of probabilities all around it, and you try to choose the frame it goes into.”

“Like the double-slit experiment?”

“Exactly! Except there are billions of slits for the ball to fly through,” he said, looking pleased with my correlation.

“I thought it was all about practice and dedication.”

Giddeon nodded enthusiastically. “It is! It is! That’s what’s so cool… it’s both. Have you ever seen someone with a really funky swing, yet, they were a great golfer?”

“Oh, yes… all the time. However, I don’t really know anybody that uses the word ‘funky’, anymore.”

“You use it, in your head.”

“How do you know?”

He pointed at his temple. “It’s the same head.”

“Humph,” I grunted, and let his curious comment pass. “Anyway, I don’t use the word ‘funky’ out loud… that’s from the 1970’s.”

“You watched a lot of sitcom reruns when you were a kid… it kind of stuck.”

I rolled my eyes. “Back to golf… I have a pretty good swing, but sometimes I struggle to break 90, especially on a strange course.”

“Ninety’s a decent score, actually, from the blues… if you play by all of the rules.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

“That’s because you know what’s possible,” he said. “You have a taste of picking the frames the universe contains. So do those golfers with the funky swings. They’re just better at choosing the realities than you are, most of the time. But, you do it quite often.”

“Like when I chip in?”

“Or, when you made that eagle with the 2 iron.”

“That was awesome,” I said, remembering back. Apparently, he remembered it, too.

Giddeon took another drink of his Fat Tire beer. “But, not as awesome as Melody,” he said.

“Not even close,” I agreed.

He smiled, seemingly happy with my answer. “Inanimate objects pale in comparison to those with their own conscious, living fields.”

“Anything pales compared to that field.”

“No argument, here.”

I picked at my fries with my fork. Finally, I said, “I hope I come out of this coma, soon. She doesn’t even know my phone number… she’ll be expecting me to call.”

“Yeah, I know… bummer… but, whatever will be, will be.”

“Now you’re quoting Doris Day lyrics? Those are from the 1950’s, you know? That doesn’t really help a lot.”

I glanced back at the television. A golfer had almost drained a forty-footer, but, it stopped right there on the edge of the cup… as if defying physics.

He sank to his knees, and looked up to the heavens.

__________

After eating, we went back to the marina. Boris was gone, and even though it was early, I was feeling rather tired. Giddeon told me to get some rest; that he would be back, tomorrow. He said good night, and closed the cabin door.

I went to the fridge, thought about getting another beer, but decided against it. I took off my clothes and collapsed in the forward bunk. The last thing I remembered before drifting off to sleep was walking beside the bay and holding Melody’s hand.