the nightmare

 **(3:47 a.m.)**

Marisé has been writing for three hours. The beer is warm. The cursor blinks in front of a sentence that won't quite close.

She reads what she's just written:

*I've been coming here for five years, imagining that one day I'd have you in front of me. I don't know your name, or your face. I only know that I would recognize you.*
*Today the café is closing forever. So I'm writing this letter for you. I'll leave it in some book at the library. I know that if you're out there somewhere, you'll find it. And you'll look for me.*
*If someday you come…*

The young woman sighs and looks away from the letter she's writing. Around her, the café is almost empty. The dark wooden chairs, chipped from use, rest upside down on the tables. On the counter, a row of glass jars holds spoons and napkins that no one will ever ask for again. The brass lamps, once warm, now flicker as if they too are saying goodbye. On the walls of broken tiles, you can still make out posters of poetry readings and concerts from years ago. It smells of freshly brewed coffee, mixed with dust and damp wood. Outside, the gray November drizzle fogs the windows, and passersby walk past without knowing that inside here a woman is writing a letter to a stranger.

*If someday you come… find me in the folded pages.*

The cursor blinks. Then she writes, almost without thinking, a line that came to her while she was dozing off:

*"If someday you come, look for me in the folded pages."*

She stares at the screen. It seems silly to her. Too neat. Too fake. She deletes it. Writes it again. Deletes it.

"That's it," she says out loud. "It's no good."

She slams the laptop shut. Takes a gulp of beer — leaves the glass with a sip left at the bottom. Turns off the light. Gets into bed.

(Five minutes later, in bed)

Pillow — Are you really going to leave what you wrote like that?
Marisé — Shut up.
Pillow — That sentence is going to haunt you all night.
Marisé — The laptop is closed.
Pillow — And you're crazy. But it's still there.

Marisé covers her head. She falls asleep. And she dreams. The screen is on. Against the white background, the cursor blinks and types on its own, as if someone else were dictating.

*She arrives by train. Everything has been rebuilt, but not the same. She walks down the street where she used to live. The house is still there, but the garden no longer has the blue gate. She rings the bell. A voice answers through the intercom: "Yes?"*
*Marisé opens her mouth to speak, but doesn't know what to say. The voice repeats: "Who is it?" She wants to answer: "I'm the one who left the letter inside a book," but the words get stuck in her throat.*

The cursor keeps writing:

*She tries to delete it. The keys don't respond. The cursor goes off and on, blinking to the rhythm of her heartbeat.*

"Damn you," she whispers.

The cursor writes more slowly:

*She is in a white room, without windows, with a single door at the end. She knows that on the other side someone is waiting for her. She doesn't know how she knows, but she feels it in her bones. She walks toward the door. Her hand on the handle. She turns it. The door opens slowly and… Marisé feels the warm air coming from inside, from the new room.*
*But she doesn't cross. She can't. Instead of crossing the threshold, she suddenly finds herself on an unfamiliar sidewalk, in front of a house she's never seen before but recognizes as her own. She reaches her arm toward the doorbell, her fingertip millimeters from the button.*
*There she stands, her finger trying to reach the bell, wishing they knew she was there. That they would open the door so she could enter.*
*Then the house begins to move away. It's not that she steps back: the ground stretches, her legs fill with lead, her lungs with sand, while the doorbell and the house recede. She wants to run, but she falls further and further behind. In the end, the doorbell becomes a tiny dot. The facade, a gray smudge. And it disappears, dissolved into the distance like ink in water.*

Marisé wakes up with the sheets tangled around her feet and the echo of a name that was never spoken.

*She's sitting in front of the laptop.*
*…right there she has to say something important — the cursor continues —, but the only phrase that comes out is:*

The cursor blinks three times. Then it stops. It doesn't write anything else.

The screen goes black. But it keeps glowing.

**(6:12 a.m.)**

Marisé wakes with a start. An unbearable noise: someone left the alarm on her phone. It vibrates. It rings. Rings. Rings.

It's 6:12 a.m.

She hears footsteps above her. The phone stops ringing.

But now she can't get back to sleep. She sits up, stretching. Her head feels heavy. She sees the laptop on the table. It was on all night.

"Damn you," she repeats, like in the dream.

She slaps it. Closes the lid with a sharp bang. Picks up the glass she left half-finished the night before — the beer is already flat, almost watery and sickly sweet — but she still drinks the rest.

The screen, as it finally powers down, casts one last faint glow into the darkness of the black lid, as if it hadn't quite turned off. For an instant, Marisé thinks about sitting down again to write, one last line:

*"If someday you come… ring the bell. I'll be here, waiting."*

Marisé stares at the black lid.

She takes a deep breath.

"I just want to know your name," she whispers. That's all.

She goes to make coffee.

THE END

 

 mvf