S.B. Revisited.
13:10 | 
Posted by
Tony Foster
This dream is from a few years ago, probably around 2006, and formed the basis for an opening in a short story, 'Road Rage' from which it was eventually cut. It appears below in prose form, but is essentially intact and untampered with in terms of specifics and is based on a real person and a real affair, meeting them again in a dream environment.
He is in some outdoor place, where coffee can be drank under grey skies. He is a salesman carrying his tools; mobile phone, leather-bound order book; slim notebook computer. He sets them down on a stool near the base of a spreading tree and begins talking animatedly to a client. An old flame materialises and sits at the wooden table nearby, observing him.
He knows he is being watched and by whom. He is glad he wore black today. Black shirt and trousers. Black leather shoes; square-toed and polished. He knows the importance of shoes. He aggrandizes himself for the benefit of his observer, even though he is secretly flustered because the customer is an idiot. He becomes over-familiar, almost aggressive on the phone, aware that it is bad salesmanship, but wanting to look evolved and important. He wants her to know that the time in between hasn't been wasted.
He hasn't seen the flame in a dozen years. They shored up unhappy marriages together one summer. It was mutually unserious, but she cried once or twice, usually when they drank together illicitly, after work or at lunchtime.
When he met her, he was twenty-seven and she was thirty-six. He never really liked her, but needed the outlet. So, apparently, did she. He remembers that he left under a cloud, the firm that she was also an employee of. Ironically, she later took the job he didn't care about. At the time, he felt bitter and suspicious. Whispered conspiracies led him to sever ties with her in a way that he couldn't otherwise have done. Perhaps he only wanted to believe the rumours. Maybe they represented the way out he had been unable to quite engineer. He had, in the course of their affair, been promoted and, despite her seniority, she became his underling. She displaced him, almost certainly, with nods and whispers, exacerbated by his erratic ability and timekeeping as he displaced the weight of unhappiness at home with work-night drinking and unlikely liaisons. She knew that he had slept with her niece, amongst others in the office, and for this reason, could not righteously condemn her own messy vengeance.
He is conscious of her, waiting patiently while he finishes the call, and wonders how he will tackle this chance meeting while continuing to bark down the cradled phone. He makes a show of leafing busily all the while through the thick book, whose pages are all blank. They haven't spoken in a long time. He had avoided her, not daring to confront her outright about the dismissal, but taking her non-defence as an admission of guilt. As he curtails the call with a series of unfriendly, staccato assurances, he realises none of it matters any more. He has moved on from there. Bettered himself, financially at least.
When he finally sits down opposite her at the picnic table, he notices how little she has changed. He is forty-three now, which makes her fifty-two. He remembers her saying, when their thing was blooming, how she would age horribly, and that one day he would hate waking up next to her. There were complex undertones to that statement, since they had always maintained - she more vehemently - that the relationship could never go anywhere.
He gathers his salesman paraphernalia before him like a summary of his life. He knows he is wiser now. His features have matured well in the manner of all men. He is wearing Ralph Lauren spectacles with narrow silver frames. He wants her to see how well he has done and hopes for her to yearn a little too. He needs the validation, even from this closed chapter in his history. Perhaps especially so.
He tells her he was thinking of her just the other day, and suddenly there she is - after all those years. What a surprise! She smiles and becomes ambiguous again - saying that she would love to see him more often, and maybe her husband would let her, twice a week, for an hour. That was unexpected, and he wonders about the mechanics of it, how her marriage had evolved to a point where she could openly discuss meeting a younger lover - in contrast to the past, where she had small children, and took pains to conceal it; harbouring his number guiltily in her filofax under 'Maxine'.
At some point, other women - presumably her friends - gather, and he is handed a baby. He immediately scoops it up, relishing its untroubled compactness and milky aroma, underpinned by the organic, not-exactly-unpleasant smell of shit. There is no awkwardness of holding. He cradles the infant expertly and is conscious of a mute approval from the women. Then he does the same thing he does with all babies, immediately smoothing his cheek along the line of its full, wobbly cranium. Savouring the imparted warmth, the feeling of industry beneath. A foundry being fashioned from unformed thoughts.
It is a lovely, if disquieting sensation, but the child begins to squirm, at first gently, then more aggressively until he is straining to keep it from squirting out of his arms and into the sky like a toy balloon. He ends up squeezing it tightly across his chest, its chubby, thrashing limbs restrained by clamped elbows, until he can finally feel its weak spot, the small mass of unknitted bone beneath his chin, and the risen plateau of its crown against his throat, pulsing hotly. He remembers the correct word: fontanelle, and resists an urge to bite down, onto it and into it.
In spite of this, he is still able to hold up his end of a multi-sided conversation. At the end of it, he realises he was being tested, like a rodeo driver, perhaps, with an unbroken colt. The shadowy figures recede without ever showing their faces, but the memory of the lover and the warm baby with its innate strength are slow to fade. He wakes up half-smiling, depressed.
He is in some outdoor place, where coffee can be drank under grey skies. He is a salesman carrying his tools; mobile phone, leather-bound order book; slim notebook computer. He sets them down on a stool near the base of a spreading tree and begins talking animatedly to a client. An old flame materialises and sits at the wooden table nearby, observing him.
He knows he is being watched and by whom. He is glad he wore black today. Black shirt and trousers. Black leather shoes; square-toed and polished. He knows the importance of shoes. He aggrandizes himself for the benefit of his observer, even though he is secretly flustered because the customer is an idiot. He becomes over-familiar, almost aggressive on the phone, aware that it is bad salesmanship, but wanting to look evolved and important. He wants her to know that the time in between hasn't been wasted.
He hasn't seen the flame in a dozen years. They shored up unhappy marriages together one summer. It was mutually unserious, but she cried once or twice, usually when they drank together illicitly, after work or at lunchtime.
When he met her, he was twenty-seven and she was thirty-six. He never really liked her, but needed the outlet. So, apparently, did she. He remembers that he left under a cloud, the firm that she was also an employee of. Ironically, she later took the job he didn't care about. At the time, he felt bitter and suspicious. Whispered conspiracies led him to sever ties with her in a way that he couldn't otherwise have done. Perhaps he only wanted to believe the rumours. Maybe they represented the way out he had been unable to quite engineer. He had, in the course of their affair, been promoted and, despite her seniority, she became his underling. She displaced him, almost certainly, with nods and whispers, exacerbated by his erratic ability and timekeeping as he displaced the weight of unhappiness at home with work-night drinking and unlikely liaisons. She knew that he had slept with her niece, amongst others in the office, and for this reason, could not righteously condemn her own messy vengeance.
He is conscious of her, waiting patiently while he finishes the call, and wonders how he will tackle this chance meeting while continuing to bark down the cradled phone. He makes a show of leafing busily all the while through the thick book, whose pages are all blank. They haven't spoken in a long time. He had avoided her, not daring to confront her outright about the dismissal, but taking her non-defence as an admission of guilt. As he curtails the call with a series of unfriendly, staccato assurances, he realises none of it matters any more. He has moved on from there. Bettered himself, financially at least.
When he finally sits down opposite her at the picnic table, he notices how little she has changed. He is forty-three now, which makes her fifty-two. He remembers her saying, when their thing was blooming, how she would age horribly, and that one day he would hate waking up next to her. There were complex undertones to that statement, since they had always maintained - she more vehemently - that the relationship could never go anywhere.
He gathers his salesman paraphernalia before him like a summary of his life. He knows he is wiser now. His features have matured well in the manner of all men. He is wearing Ralph Lauren spectacles with narrow silver frames. He wants her to see how well he has done and hopes for her to yearn a little too. He needs the validation, even from this closed chapter in his history. Perhaps especially so.
He tells her he was thinking of her just the other day, and suddenly there she is - after all those years. What a surprise! She smiles and becomes ambiguous again - saying that she would love to see him more often, and maybe her husband would let her, twice a week, for an hour. That was unexpected, and he wonders about the mechanics of it, how her marriage had evolved to a point where she could openly discuss meeting a younger lover - in contrast to the past, where she had small children, and took pains to conceal it; harbouring his number guiltily in her filofax under 'Maxine'.
At some point, other women - presumably her friends - gather, and he is handed a baby. He immediately scoops it up, relishing its untroubled compactness and milky aroma, underpinned by the organic, not-exactly-unpleasant smell of shit. There is no awkwardness of holding. He cradles the infant expertly and is conscious of a mute approval from the women. Then he does the same thing he does with all babies, immediately smoothing his cheek along the line of its full, wobbly cranium. Savouring the imparted warmth, the feeling of industry beneath. A foundry being fashioned from unformed thoughts.
It is a lovely, if disquieting sensation, but the child begins to squirm, at first gently, then more aggressively until he is straining to keep it from squirting out of his arms and into the sky like a toy balloon. He ends up squeezing it tightly across his chest, its chubby, thrashing limbs restrained by clamped elbows, until he can finally feel its weak spot, the small mass of unknitted bone beneath his chin, and the risen plateau of its crown against his throat, pulsing hotly. He remembers the correct word: fontanelle, and resists an urge to bite down, onto it and into it.
In spite of this, he is still able to hold up his end of a multi-sided conversation. At the end of it, he realises he was being tested, like a rodeo driver, perhaps, with an unbroken colt. The shadowy figures recede without ever showing their faces, but the memory of the lover and the warm baby with its innate strength are slow to fade. He wakes up half-smiling, depressed.
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