I’ve heard those stories before, and they do not end well, or they never end. Moreover, they never started, and everything that seemed to happen later was an illusion formed by each of the protagonists of those stories.
She would’ve said that it was just something I said to protect myself, that it was just elegant excuses. And maybe she was right, for my own senses were falling apart, and I no longer knew whether I was thinking clearly or really thinking at all.
She slept, but I still heard her voice. In my head, there was only her. But not her, who slept in my bed and shared my sheets. But another like her, totally equal to her, but more real. She, but made of flesh and blood and pleasure and pain. It was not long before I realized that I was in another dream, in which the rain falls violently, but makes no noise, and where she sleeps and never wakes up, and I watch her by hours and hours and that is my happiness and my misery.
I soon woke up. And my soul was still soaked with hers. It was something of her that was inside me, but it never really belonged to her. It was never real to her.
It was raining outside the building.
Only she was missing from me to complete my dream so that everything was perfect and at the same time chaos.
But that would never happen. Now everything was static. The cigarette was wet which was lit by her and thunder hurt my ears. The smoke was slow to appear and sadly adorned my loneliness.
I wanted to go get her. But I didn’t make up my mind because I knew I was going to find her. And that would kill my illusion. But I would find her. I would see her eyes again and seek to go beyond them so that she would go further into me. I would be vulnerable, almost on my knees. But that couldn’t happen. Because I would not see that sparkle in her eyes, and she would not want to see beyond mine. It was absurd.
However, I was increasingly considering going out into the street, in the middle of that downpour, and meet her once more, at the mere whim of wanting to see her and nothing more. Whims, whims. I’m a first-class egoist, and a cynic, because I want to be close to what hurts me the most in the world. But only in the midst of all that pain, I found some happiness. Only at times.
At times I was one.
At other times I was another.
And from time to time everything was made up: our little hours, our little moments, which seemed so eternal when they were shared.
But it was only from time to time.
No dreams. But no matter how much I wished, as I looked at my bed, it would be empty and no trace of anyone else. Just simply real and really simple: she was gone. And maybe she never was here. Not in her own way. Not as I wished.
So much thinking about her, and maybe she would be asleep already. Or maybe the rain had awakened her, and she would go to the kitchen to make a cup of hot coffee, which, she said, would help her fall asleep. It was just one of her peculiarities. But on those occasions she never slept. She just lay in the bed and dream awake. Many of those rainy nights we had made love and shared our sleepless dreams. We laughed silently as we realized that many times we had dreamed the same thing, or at least one thing in common, with the same house or with the same dog, or that we dreamed of each other, and that in those dreams we also loved each other. And so we spent those lonely nights: loving and dreaming and so on until the sun came and ruined everything.
I got up and started getting dressed.
I don’t know what I was thinking at the moment. The rain was getting stronger and it was too late already.
I put on my jacket and my shoes. I took an umbrella that was broken and looked for my keys.
Everything I was going to do was stupid. Go out in the rain, to look for someone who wouldn’t be there. Someone who had forgotten me long ago. Someone for whom I meant nothing and nothing would mean afterward.
But I still…
I turned the knob and opened the door. The umbrella fell out of my hands.
With her clothes and hair soaked, she looked at me with those eyes that always seemed to see through me. I just stared at her, thinking I was dreaming again. And so we stayed like that for the necessary time, until she came up to me and drew me a kiss with her lips.