I was visiting a town in the Northeast for work.
When I was driving on a cobbled stone part of town, I decided to detour to the well known pier. I headed towards the entrance and recognized a woman from the hotel, saw her park outside, instead of driving onto the pier. Then she walked away from her car, a beige dress. She was middle aged, my age.
Read moreI too stopped in front of the pier, and fortuitously found a space opposite her car, a few yards from the entrance. Then I followed her to the kiosk to buy my ticket and stepped in to look at the exhibits.
“The Lord of the Admiralty was forced to decide to be promoted as part of the nascent US fleet or stick with the British. He resigned his post instead.” I read on the plaque of a tired display of personal belongings, next to a dummy showing his uniform and cap.
The woman had moved on from the display, and I too walked further along.
The pier was covered. In fact it resembled the hull of a boat. You could peer out of the sides, through portholes at the water down below. And from one porthole I saw a freshly dead deer, the back of its body, it’s tawny fur still glistening against the lap of the water.
How did it get down there? I wondered.
But when I stepped out from the covered part of the pier, I saw that the deer was actually alive, was standing on a sliver of rock and craning its neck out to catch chunks of bread that a group of tourists were throwing at it.
I sat down on a bench back in the covered side of the pier.
And a young woman with pale white skin and short cropped black punk hair, a black choker around her neck sat with me. We kissed briefly. I was conscious of my breath and pulled away reluctant to continue. Besides we had little in common.
It seemed that if you sat around long enough you would always meet someone.
After the young woman left I fell into a deep sleep against a setting sun and when I woke up I exclaimed, ”Wow! I have been asleep for hours!”
At first I calculated 8 hours and it felt great to have slept so long. But then I recalculated it at maybe 4; it was still great to have rested even that much.
I reopened my disheveled Sherlock Holmes book; or was this now my dream within my dream?
A woman next to me. Is she the same woman with the beige dress, who sits with her husband? She, also is reading Sherlock Holmes and is further along in her book than I am in mine.
“Which was the most difficult case to solve?” she challenged.
The story I was on was not so hard, but I couldn’t recall the most difficult. Truthfully I could not remember any of the tales well enough.
I brushed my teeth but was aware of having to hurry. The pier was already closing, my visit had been very worthwhile but now I needed to leave. There was no water to rinse my toothbrush. I looked at the toilet roll but there were only a few sheets left; plus I was concerned for its primary use right next to the toilet bowl! And on the sink I saw a fuller roll sitting there. I took a couple of sheets and wiped the brush with them carefully, making sure to clean the residue off the bristles.
Then I left for the hotel.
As I walked back and through the lobby, I saw the woman in the beige dress again. Maybe we could have a drink or some dinner.
Photo by Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr
Portrait by Charles Dana Gibson 1891 via Wikimedia Commons
