“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you find?”
“Not much, except if you believe the Internet, we’re not alone. A lot of people say this has happened to them before—dreaming about someone and then meeting them.”
“Yeah, they just don’t say what it means.”
“Right.”
We sit in silence for a few more minutes. “I don’t know—maybe there is no answer, no explanation.”
“Maybe,” he says, and then after a beat, he mutters: “I just feel like there has to be.” Even though it’s more to himself than to me, I’m buoyed. In those words, I hear it—the hint of desperation, the bewilderment that has plagued me on different levels since first laying eyes on him. And it’s validation—that I’m not crazy. Or if I am crazy, at least I’m not alone in my craziness.
Oliver opens his mouth to say something and then stops. Hesitates.
“What?”
“I did find one thing. There’s this professor. At Columbia University.” He digs his cell out of his pocket and taps the screen a few times, then hands it to me. It’s a headshot of a stern-looking woman, her arms folded across her suit-jacketed chest. I skim the words beside it.
Carolyn Saltz, PhD, a professor of clinical psychology and director of the sleep lab at Columbia University, has coauthored more than twelve studies on sleep and dreams. She resides in New York with her wife, four birds and a shih tzu named Freud.
I look back up at Oliver.
“I read through some of her research,” he says. “And it was a lot of basic dream stuff, theories on why we dream, what they mean, but there was this one study where she delved into the idea of something called mutual dreaming, where two people share the same dream world.”
I cock my head. “Like Inception?”
“Yeah. Kind of. Minus the technology and stealing-corporate-secrets thing. Says it usually happens between people who know each other really well—siblings, best friends, husband and wife . . .” He clears his throat.
“And it’s the same dream—it sounds like our dreams are different, right?”
“Yeah,” he admits. He tugs his hair again, and that’s when I notice something I’ve never seen before—in my dreams or real life. A scar, a thin jagged line a few inches above his left ear, right at his hairline. “God, I just wish I could sit someone down and say, ‘This is what happened to us—what does it mean?’”
I glance back at the screen. “Well, why don’t we?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t we contact her?”
He cocks his head, considering. And I press on, a dog with a bone. “What do we have to lose?”
I scroll down the page and click on the contact link.
Due to the volume of inquiries, Dr. Saltz is unable to respond to individual emails. For interviews and media requests, please email: [email protected].
I turn the screen to Oliver. “Never mind. She probably gets a hundred emails a month, kooks asking her what their dreams mean. I guess it was a stupid idea.” I sigh and hand his phone back over.
“What if—” Oliver stops.
“What?”
“Well—what if we ask for an interview?”
“But we’re not media.”
“We could be,” he says, slowly. “I used to be a journalist—”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I still have some contacts at a few magazines. I could pitch an idea about dreams, see if someone bites.”
I stare at him, considering not just his plan but also this new crumb of information about who he is. Journalist. It’s not that it’s surprising, given his current career, but I find that each time I learn something about him it makes me want to know more. But instead of probing, I go with: “It’s not the worst idea.”
He shrugs. “What do we have to lose?”
Chapter 11
“Pop’s probably going to need knee surgery sometime in the next couple months,” Harrison tells me on Monday morning, when we’re sitting side by side in identical wooden armchairs waiting for Dr. Hobbes to grace us with his presence. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since yesterday morning, and I haven’t had a chance to tell him about going to see Oliver.
Well, I suppose I could have texted. Met up with him at his office for dinner. I could have not pretended to be asleep when he got home last night. The truth is, I don’t know how to explain what’s happening to myself, much less anyone else.
“Wait—what happened to physical therapy being enough?” Harrison’s dad tripped going up their front steps a few months earlier. A brick had come loose, causing him to come down the wrong way on his knee. He didn’t go see a doctor for five days, not until Harrison’s mom called, describing the swelling as grapefruit sized, and Harrison talked him into going in.
“Turns out, you actually have to do what the therapist says. Pop’s . . . struggling with that.”
“Ah.” Mr. Graydon is not known for his ability to take direction from others.
“If he does, I think I’ll go out there to help Mom. Just for a few days. She’s not strong enough to lift him.”
“Yeah, of course,” I say, staring at the files on Hobbes’s desk, as if I can glean the information in them telepathically. I don’t even know if they’re our results or somebody else’s. I glance down at my lucky yellow dress and pick imaginary lint off the shoulder. “Want me to come with you?”
Harrison’s head snaps toward me. “Do you want to?” He cocks an eyebrow. “Sleep on that ancient mattress and listen to Mom and Pop argue about whether the television is too loud over and over again?”
I consider this. Those parts are pretty awful. “We also get to eat your mom’s cooking, so—it’s not all bad.”
His mom’s picadillo has been known to cause tears of happiness. And tears of frustration the one time she tried to teach me how to make it and—after I added twice the amount of cumin (or cinnamon or some c spice) as needed—kicked me out of the kitchen with a string of Cuban swear words.
I glance at the clock on the wall and Harrison notices. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” he says. I rub my sweaty palms over the hard edges of the chair’s wooden arms and try to relax.
“So, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”