The City of Dreams -- Part 2

[I've been in my post-book-completion depression.  I apologize, and I sincerely hope I'm working out of it--especially since I haven't really finished Fat Tony.  It needs a couple more chapters and an epilogue.

[All that aside, here's the next section of City of Dreams.  I am enjoying writing this.  I wish I knew more of where the story is going.]



If you’ve seen any late-twentieth-century American high school, you’ve seen mine.  They built them with different colored cement on the outside to make them seem less like a prison and more like a place where lots of teenagers just happen to show up and hang out.
“Do you think it works?” I asked.
Mike raised his eyebrows.  “I don’t know.  I’d rather hang out in the choir room than at home.  It’s quieter here.”
I looked around.  “Seriously?”  Five girls over by the cubbyholes for our music started shouting something in rhythm.  I thought it was a song I’d heard on the radio, but I don’t listen to radio much, and they didn’t shout very clearly.
“Seriously,” said Mike, taking a bite of his sandwich and talking with his mouth full.  “Screaming together is much nicer than screaming at each other.”
Mike’s the oldest of seven, and his house isn’t that bad.  Usually.  But you don’t camp in his living room with a book.
“I’m thinking about a new hair style,” said Mike.
“Why?”
“I’ve done the same thing every morning since middle school.  It’s time for something new.”
I looked at his black hair skeptically.  “Really?  I’m not sure your hair will let you.  It might revolt.”
“I’ve got to do something, though,” said Mike.  “Spiked straight up isn’t cool anymore.”
“Was it cool in middle school?”
Mike smiled.  “I thought so.”
“Aaaaah!” I said in a squeaky voice.  “My hair is revolting!”
“It’s not that bad,” said Sook, sitting down next to Mike and pulling out her lunch.
“Not my hair,” I said.  “Mike’s.”
“What’s wrong with Mike’s hair?  I think it’s cool.”
Mike cocked one eyebrow at me.
“Aaaaah!” I said.  “Help me!  My hair!”
“You’re nuts, Perry,” said Sook.
“Only most of the time,” I said.  I wanted a nap.  I hadn’t slept well the night before.  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to dream about the City again or not.  When I finally did fall asleep, it wasn’t for long, and my dreams were empty.
“So, changing the subject,” said Sook, pushing her long black hair behind her ears, “who’s asking me to the dance?”
I raised my hand.  “I have this elaborate way I’m going to do it, too,” I said.  “Imagine this: colored fireworks in your lawn, all in the shape of the flag of your native South Korea.”
“How are you going to do the black parts?” asked Mike.
“And then,” I said, ignoring Mike, “I leap through the sparks wearing a tuxedo and carrying roses.  Your parents will totally go for this.”
“So,” said Sook, “who’s asking me to the dance?”
“I already bought the tickets,” said Mike.
“Nice.  You going to actually ask me?”
“Want to go?”
“Yes.”
“Sweet.”  Mike looked at me.  “You going to ask someone?”
I shrugged.  “Don’t have anyone I’m interested in right now.”
Sook rolled her eyes.  “You don’t have to be interested in someone to go to the dance.  Just ask someone fun.  Besides, you’re funny at dances.  Good funny,” she added.
“Did that have to be clarified?” I asked.
“I did just call you nuts,” she said.  “I wanted to make sure you knew this one was a compliment.”
“Thanks,” I said.  “The ‘nuts’ comment wasn’t?”
“This lunch is so good,” said Sook, her mouth full as she dodged my question.
“Gotta love school burritos,” said Mike.  “But, Perry, there must be someone you want to ask.”
“Like who?”
“Amy whatsername.”
“Clark?  I had a crush on her as a freshman.  Then I found out we had nothing in common.  She’d never even heard of Ray Bradbury.”
“Ouch,” said Mike.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
Sook looked at us like we were both a little nuts, but only a little, since she knows science-fiction about as well as anybody.  We ate in quiet for a while—at least, none of the three of us were making noise—and the bell rang, sending us to two-and-a-half more hours of classes.  Mike rushed on ahead with a quick ‘see ya’ since he had to make it across the school for his next period.  Sook waited for me and we walked to biology together.
“Perry,” she said, her voice hesitant, like she’d been working up her courage to say whatever she was about to say, “do you do anything?”
“Actually, I’m a potted rubber tree in disguise.  I stand still and photosynthesize.”
“That’s not what I meant, though the rhyme was cool,” said Sook.  “I meant, do you do anything outside of school?”
“Homework,” I said.
“Whatever.  You finish most of that in class.”
“I read books.”
“You do that in class, too.”
“I’m also a big fan of food.”
“Right,” said Sook.  “You eat, you sleep, but you don’t hang out with us anymore.”
I looked at her sideways.  “You two are dating now, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“You could still hang out with us sometimes.  It’s not like our faces are glued to each other.  Or you could play piano again, or learn martial arts, or join cross country with your sister.”
“Now you sound like my sister,” I said, pushing through the classroom door and holding it open for her.
“Why don’t you?” asked Sook, stopping and looking at me.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“Mike’s worried.  He says you used to do more stuff.”
How could I explain it to her?  It didn’t make sense to me either, and I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped.  It had just happened.
“I’m too busy being funny,” I said finally.  “It wears me out, so I’m tired all the time.”  The tired part was true, at least.
“You’re not that funny,” said Sook, and she went to sit down.
I wanted to disagree—I am too funny—but part of me knew she was right.  Something was wrong with me.


That evening after dinner I helped my dad with the dishes.  I washed, since he hates when his fingers get wrinkly, and he dried and told me about the linguistic conventions of massively multiplayer online games.  Yeah, that’s my dad’s job.  He gets paid to play MMO’s and document how people chat with each other.  I keep telling him that linguistic anthropology is a scam, and one day they’ll take him away in chains, but he always smiles and tells me something else he thinks is cool about his work.  Problem is, his work actually is cool.
I didn’t hear much of what he was saying, though.  Not that night.  I kept seeing Not.  Well, I kept only kind of seeing Not, even my memories of him trying to slip away and become something else: memories of the moon spanning the sky, of the breeze through my fingers.  I could still feel the wood of the bench under my legs as it walked us to a better view.  The smell of the flowers as they came out of the trees tickled at my nose.
“Do you ever dream, Dad?”
He stuck his toweled hand into a glass, drying it, and looked at me.  “Speaking metaphorically or literally?”
“Literally.  Though now I’m curious about your other dreams, too.”
“I dream of visiting Bangalore, because it has a cool name, but let’s talk about literal dreams.  Yes, I dream.  Was that it?”
“Yeah, that was all I wanted to know.  Thanks.”
“Absolutely.”
I washed two more plates before I gave in.  Usually I’d last longer, but that day it didn’t feel worth it.  “Do your dreams ever seem real?” I asked.
“Real how?”
I splashed at some bubbles left in the sink.  “Like you can feel stuff.  Smell stuff.  Like you’re actually awake.”
Dad leaned against the counter and raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.  “I did dream once that my right arm had been amputated.  It seemed pretty real—and very disturbing—but it turned out I had just fallen asleep on it and cut off the circulation.”
“But did it still seem like a dream to you?” I asked.  “I mean after, when you were awake.”
“Yes,” he nodded.  “It did.  Thank goodness.  Even now it gives me the willies.”  He caught my eye.  “Is this where I pretend that you’re asking for no reason at all, or do I pry?”
I grabbed another stack of plates and dropped them into the dishwater.  They sucked the bubbles around them like a sinking ship.  If a ship were sinking in my sink.  I smiled at that—I don’t say half the jokes I think of, mostly because they’re dumb—and answered Dad’s question.
“You can pry.”
“Good,” he said.  “Why do you ask?”
“Weird dream last night,” I said.
“And it seemed real?”
“Completely.  I mean, not like everything was the same as in real life.  But if park benches could actually walk, then yes, it seemed real.”
“Was it a good dream?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Anything bad happen?”
“Some flowers may or may not have been about to eat me when I woke up, but other than that it was just…strange.”
“Why do you think you had the dream?”  Dad was looking at me, concerned.  “Is anything in particular bothering you?”  Based on the creases around his eyes, I don’t think that was the question he wanted to ask me.  What’s wrong with you? was probably a contender.  Or maybe, Are you okay?
Maybe I would have answered one of those.  But he didn’t ask them, so I answered the question he did ask.
“Nothing in particular,” I said.

Two things told me I was in the City of Dreams.  The first was the waxing crescent moon stretched across the sky, growing its way towards first quarter.  The stars did their acrobatics under the immense craters, all of it a photographer’s dream.
The second was the lightness in my shoulders.  I smiled.  I laughed.  Something was missing from my life, and I loved it.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but it was a toothache that suddenly went away, it was the end of a painful run.  I might not have had the right words to describe it, but I wasn’t going to complain.
I looked around.  I was sitting on a bench again, but this time at a bus stop it seemed.  The street was lined with closed shops and what looked like apartment buildings.  The sidewalks were empty, but I didn’t take that as much of a sign of anything.  I’d gone to bed early because, I admit, I hoped to see the City again.  I wanted to feel this way.  Did other people feel this way all the time?  I sang a few bars of It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing, then I forgot the words and kept singing anyway.  A streetlight above me flickered awake and bent down its long neck to sniff at me.  I patted the top of its metal casing and it buzzed a contented electrical buzz at me.
The bus stop sign twisted to show me its face.  THEY LIKE MUSIC was printed in white letters on a blue background.
“That’s good to know,” I said, smiling.  “What do signs like?” I asked the sign.
“Graffiti,” said a girl as she sat next to me on the bench.  She patted the streetlight as well then shoved it away.  “Go play someplace else, Bessie.”  The light buzzed a grumpy buzz at her then surged away, swimming through the cement of the sidewalk, leaving a gouged and pitted track behind it and leaving us with only moonlight to see with—which, actually, was plenty.
“That streetlight is named ‘Bessie?’” I asked.
“Probably not,” she said, fluffing out her curly hair that might have been brown.  “I just call all the mellow streetlights ‘Bessie.’  They’re so much like cows.”
“Cows that like music,” I said.
“Meh,” she said dismissively.  “So it’s not a perfect match.  I’m still calling them ‘Bessie.’  And now I’m calling you ‘Anal-Retentive Boy.’”
“There you go again,” I said.  “My name doesn’t sound like that at all.  You’re wrong all over the place tonight.”
She looked at me.  I think she was trying to figure out if I were seriously this idiotic or not.  I kept my face perfectly serious, doing my best not to help her out.  I was having too much fun.
I couldn’t tell her eye color in the moonlight, but her face was nice enough.  Not so pretty that the primal part of my brain would want to club her over the head and drag her back to my cave, but still on the round and cute side.  Her face was familiar, too, but I couldn’t place her, and the nondescript hoodie-and-jeans she was wearing didn’t help.
“I think you’re making a joke,” she said.
“It’s very possible,” I said.
She leaned back on the bench and looked up at the moon.  “You seem different than in school,” she said.
“I know you from school?”
“Apparently not.”
“Ouch,” I said.  “I feel like I should be apologizing.”
She shrugged.  “No big deal.  I only moved here last year.”
“To the City of Dreams?”
She looked at me sideways.
“Not to the City of Dreams,” I said.
“Duh.”
“But you’ve been going to my high school?  Our high school?  The same high school?”
“I thought that would be obvious by now.”
“I was just expressing my surprise.  At redundant and unnecessary length.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling.  “Definitely different than at school.”
“Do I talk less?”
“No.”
“More?”
“No.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“Let’s go,” said the girl, picking up a shoulder bag I hadn’t noticed before.
“Go where?”
“The market, of course.  Haven’t you been to the market?”
I shook my head.  “This is only my second time here.”
“Wow,” she said.  “I assumed you’d been here before.  You seem really comfortable.”
“I feel comfortable,” I said, smiling, “but I only came here last night, and I met Not and watched the skyset.”
“You met who?”  She seemed puzzled.
“Not.  You know, the guy who welcomes you to the City of Dreams?  His eyes might be green?  Hard to look at?”
Her face was blank and she shook her head.  “Never heard of Not,” she said.
“Weird,” I said, then shrugged.  “I’ll figure it out later.  Let’s go to the market.”  I stood up, the girl pointed the way, and we headed down the sidewalk, avoiding the gash left by the streetlight.  A sign with NO PARKING in bold letters was squealing at a parked car, a high pitched, metallic squeak, but the car looked old and tired, so I wasn’t surprised that it kept on snoring.
“You don’t ask any of the usual questions,” said the girl.
“Gosh.  Now I feel bad.  Okay, so…what’s your sign?  Are you seeing anyone?  Do those jeans make you look fat?  Wait.  That last question was yours, I think.”
“Not that kind of question,” she said.  “Though, if you were going that way, you could start by asking my name.”
“You are so right,” I said.  “But I know your name.”
“You do?”
“Of course.  It’s—”  I broke into a fit of coughing.  “See?  Sorry about the cough.  Think I’m coming down with something.”
“Nobody gets sick in the City,” she said.
“You really are an expert.  I’m so glad I found you.”
“Fine!” she said, exasperated (but maybe laughing just a tiny bit).  “My name’s Brie.”
“I’m Perry,” I said.
She looked at me sideways again as we turned to cut across the street.  “I know your name,” she said.
I felt an actually twinge of embarrassment.  It was my first feeling that even bordered on unhappy since I had woken up in the City that night—unless it counted as falling asleep in the City.  Either way, it was certainly a twinge.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you,” I said.  “I don’t pay great attention when I’m awake.”
“Which is why you get such good grades,” said Brie.
“To people,” I added.  “I don’t pay good attention to people.  I think your name might be the first one I’ve learned since the school year started.”
“And my name is?”
“Brie,” I said confidently.  “Like the cheese.”
“Not like the cheese,” she corrected me.  “It’s short for something that definitely isn’t the cheese.”
We came around the corner and there were more people.  One man stepped down out of a townhouse, tossing a cardboard apple box back through the door and affectionately patting the railing down the short flight of stairs.  The house creaked and contented chewing noises came from inside.  One very large woman was standing by an equally large sedan—not any brand of car I could recognize, though that wasn’t saying much.  She was looming over and shouting down at a trio of parking meters that were bravely holding their ground, two more bouncing their way closer, change rattling in their stomachs as they punched holes in the cement.  We gave them wide berth and kept on down the street.
“I hate to disagree with you, Brie,” I said, once we were far enough away to hear each other, “but your name very much is like the cheese.  Also, very similar, though not identical, to the name of a fictional village in the fantasy masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, written by the esteemed—”
She interrupted me.  “I’m named after my parents, okay?  My dad is Brian and my mom is Ana, so I’m Briana, and I’m not enthusiastic about having a name that sounds like ‘Brian,’ but because I don’t like telling this story every time I meet someone new, I go by Brie, and most people—thank goodness!—don’t think of the cheese.  Happy now?”
I thought about it for a second.  “Yes, actually.  Surprisingly enough.”
She stopped and turned to face me, so I turned to face her.  It seemed like a reasonable courtesy.
“What is up with you?” she asked.  “Did you eat anything since you got here?  Any buildings shed glowing plaster on you?  A vending machine try to sell you something?”
I shook my head and smiled.
“Then how can you be so calm?  Most people who wake up in the City freak out at least a little.  They want to know if it’s real, how we can be in each other’s dreams, why the newspaper machines keep trying to give them the entertainment section.  Go away, little thing,” she said, smacking the short mettle box on its top.  The newspaper dispenser walked away, a disappointed sag to its metallic corners.
“Oh,” I said, finally understanding.  “Those were the questions you were talking about.  Now I get it.”
“Aren’t you curious at all?” she asked.
“A little, I guess, but for all I know this could still be my dream.  My subconscious might have pulled you up from the back-right side of advanced English and put you in my dream.  Along with the rest of this madness.  I’m not trying to be self centered, but I’m just saying, I haven’t reached any firm conclusions about this whole thing.”
She looked at me incredulously.  “You really don’t think this is real?”
“I’m pretty sure this is real,” I answered, “but I’m hanging on to a little bit of healthy skepticism—never having had another real person show up in my dreams before.”
“What would convince you then?”
“Tomorrow I’ll wake up, go to school, and look over my shoulder in English.  If you give me the secret wave, I’ll know we were in the City together.”
“And what would the secret wave look like?” she asked.
I swirled my fingers in a little ripple of a wave.  “Like that,” I said.
She pulled back.  “I’m not doing that.  That’ll look like I’m flirting with you.”
“If you do a normal wave, I’ll know it was all a dream.”  I sighed, staring off into the distance with a somber look on my face.  “A strange and marvelous dream.”
“Can’t I just come up and talk to you?” asked Brie.  Her face might have been a little flushed, and I wondered if I was teasing a bit too much.
Nah.  I made a click in my cheek.  “I’d be careful about talking to me.  It might look like you’re flirting.”
Brie stared at me.  Her face was serious.  On further observation, certainly cute, but definitely serious.  I started to think that maybe I really had pushed things too far.  Assuming she actually was a girl from my high school, she was being nice to me, she was the closest thing I had to a native guide, and it wasn’t like I knew a whole lot about the City and could start looking gift horses in mouths.  Her mouth was cute, too.  How had I not noticed her?
Brie stopped staring and started walking again.  “I really don’t get you,” she said.
“That reminds me,” I said.  “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“Do I want to know?” asked Brie.
“To read the Chinese newspaper.  Do you get it?”
“I think I’ve heard this joke,” she said.  “Here’s the market.”
It didn’t seem like she was going to let me finish my joke, which was disappointing at the time, but not for very long, because we walked around the corner.
“Wow,” I said.
“Finally,” said Brie, sounding relieved.  “Something surprises you.”
I had heard the market before I could see it—the kind of noise-tumble that only comes from lots of people in once place, all talking about different things—so I was expecting the crowd.  People in every mix of clothing from business suits to pajamas filled an open-air market that was spread to every corner of an immense, paved plaza, booths and boxes and bodies.  Shopping carts rolled themselves between bargain hunters, kids played hopscotch with a sign that said ‘Children at Play,’ and chairs followed a group of elderly shoppers as they waited to be of service.  Cell phones fluttered around the square, and glowing flowers hummed in raised boxes, all wrapped in the shouts of ‘Coming through!’ and ‘Bargains tonight, right here, right now!’
None of that surprised me.  That’s not to say that it wasn’t all surprising, but it wasn’t any stranger than anything else I’d encountered in the City.
“Wow,” I said again.
“Yup,” said Brie.  “That’s Big Ben.”
In the center of the market was a clock tower.  It looked like it had been lifted straight out of London—which, I suppose, was the reason for the name—with carvings and crenellations and all those other architectural terms I didn’t know that are fancy ways of saying ‘fancy.’  The clock faces were lit from the inside with a warm yellow glow and silvered from above by the massive slice of the moon.  Again, having a clock tower there wasn’t—on its own—especially surprising.
The part that was surprising was when the tower turned slightly, focusing one clock face on me.  Then it blinked.
It wasn’t an eye; it was a clock.  But I could feel something from the tower, a weight of age and calm and contentment.  I had the feeling that if that clock was ever slow, time wouldn’t dare get too far ahead.  It wouldn’t want to.
“Isn’t Big Ben the bell?” I asked.
“Yes, Anal-Retentive Boy, in London the name ‘Big Ben’ refers to the bell in the clock tower.  But here, in the City, that is Big Ben.”
“What is he?”
“He’s a clock,” said Brie.
“I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.”
“I might have been teasing you.”
“I caught it.”  I had caught it.  It was a little funny, the way most of my jokes are just a little funny, which somehow made me more comfortable.  And it helped distract me from the stare of a several-story-tall, ancient-of-days clock tower.
“He’s the reason for the market,” said Brie.  “He keeps the plaza safe, so the story goes that the market grew up around him.”
“How does he keep the place safe?”  I had visions of Big Ben arching his long neck down to bonk miscreants on their misbehaving noggins.
“Really?” asked Brie.
“Really what?”
“You can’t tell?”
I thought about it, and I understood what she meant.  I was already inclined to be happy in the City, but when we had stepped into Big Ben’s square, I’d felt a calm settle on me, one that took any kind of violence right out of me—not that I’m a naturally violent person.  I’m not.  But a new situation always brings a mix of feelings with it, the fight-or-flight response, either choice of which has violence at its heart.  I didn’t feel any of that.  In fact, even my mental picture of Big Ben bonking bad-guys seemed silly and pointless.  Clearly, we could just sit down and talk things out.
“Nobody’s arguing,” I said, looking across the plaza.  They weren’t.  There was no pushing, no shouting—at least not the angry kind—no violence of any sort.
“Nope,” agreed Brie.  “They bargain, and if you’re not careful you’ll get cheated, but no one fights at Big Ben’s market.  Ever.”
“I’m trying to decide if that’s creepy or not.”
“Don’t worry,” said Brie.  “It’s not.  Come on.  I want you to meet Mr. Punctilious.”