A Vivid Dream
I was jogging in a desert neighbourhood. It was night and I didn’t know where I was nor where I was going, but, strangely enough, that didn’t seem to bother me that much. I would go as long as my feet kept going. The harsh sound my trainers produced on the iced pavement made me feel less alone. It was like I know there was someone there, in tat part of the world, a kindred soul.
As soon as this thought hit me, I realized where I was. The diner was still quite far from me but I could see it. I couldn’t tell whether the lights were on or off, though, so I sped up. As I got close enough, I noticed that someone had dimmed the lights and was moving inside the diner: I could see a shadow stretching on the pavement outside the window. I went inside.
Gwendolyn put a cup of hot tea on one of the tables and sit down with a magazine in her hand. She barely took notice of my presence and greeted me with affected coldness. It was obvious it was her and her arrogant behaviour proved the girl sitting in front of me was the same I had met the previous afternoon, yet she looked different. Her hair was much fairer than I could remember, almost albino. Every single hair of her body, her eyebrows and her eyelashes were almost white. And she was not trying to hide her beauty anymore, she didn’t seem to care about concealing her femininity, still in its unripe state, any longer. She was wearing a long black skirt and a purple red blouse. Le rouge et le noir, I couldn’t help thinking. Death and Passion, Order and Chaos.
I couldn’t explain how the idea came to me, or what gave me the certainty that it was correct, but all of a sudden I felt I was there to see right through Gwendolyn’s soul: an angel-haired child whose feelings could be dangerously deep. Absorbed as I was in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed Gwendolyn staring at me until she exclaimed You, as if she meant to say You, of all people! I instinctively looked down at my clothes and realized I was wearing an indigo shirt. Very strange. I never owned an indigo shirt, I’ve always thought grey, brown and black would be more appropriate in the academic world. And, if black and red represented Gwendolyn’s soul, what would indigo say about me? I couldn’t think of a possible answer, because the girl added I’ve never thought you could be… She sounded genuinely shocked and as I raised my eyes I saw her pointing at something above my left eye.
The phone rang and woke me up. According to the alarm clock it was six am. I lazily picked the phone up. It was Devi, she said Gwendolyn had contacted her to ask if she could meet us at the diner before she went to school. She had expressly asked to talk to me.
