by Frank Carellini
He was sure the banging outside his door was one of those dreams within a dream. He had planned too diligently to get a full night’s sleep: the last coffee of the day before two PM, a six PM dinner with low acids, an eight PM wine, a double dose of the sleeping medication at ten and, an hour before swallowing little pill after little pill, abstaining from any screens, even for telling time, which he substituted by getting up from bed to squint at the little green numbers ticking away on the microwave until it was ten-thirty, by which time the medication would move everything into a slow motion frame and put him to rest.
He resisted the urge to lay down at eight-thirty after the tipsiness of the large glass of barolo began to lull the room around him into one giant warm velvet curtain by reading a light novel that required little work and was in the category he regarded as entertaining but not informative. His eyes burned when they closed and opened in slower and slower intervals, but he resisted until he urinated at least twice more, not wanting to be woken up by the urge to pee until at least five AM, from which he could slowly start the day in the bronze, purple dawn of the morning and set the coffee maker to brew a bold, rich, perfectly opaque cup.
He settled under the covers, with the automatic temperature controls set to a perfect sixty-eight degrees of a hotel room. The coolness of the linen envelope him. He put on the satin eye mask from the luxury airline he used to fly back and forth to Paris, where in his second home, he drew the curtains at six AM with a strong dark tea, and would run along the Seine until the museums opened and he could be first in line to say hello to Monet in the l’Orangerie, accompanied, of course, with the complete Das wohltemperierte Klavier through his noise canceling headphones. Would listen to completion day after day, until his stomach called for a meal, until autumn called him back to New York, where by five PM or so the sun already set.
It would’ve hardly been possible that anything outside of an earthquake, which didn’t occur here, would wake him up. The noise continued for a few moments. Was that the trash compactor? What, he thought, could possibly be the significance of the trash compactor activating in his dream. A trash-like smell of leftover meals floated into his room. Dr. Stevenson had warned that vivid lucid dreams could be a side effect of the medication, which he welcomed as they occasionally inspired a small painting he could make while sitting on his window ledge, using the period of uninterrupted natural light between one and three PM in the afternoon, and kept him busy even if they would never be seen in a gallery, but could be given as unsolicited gifts to the doormen or the women he encountered in cafes who had not heard of his writing. The trash compactor continued to chew, now accompanied by the opening and closing of an apartment door, letting out a whirl of clanking champagne glasses and boisterous, inaudible bursts of conversations. A party? Which hardly would occur without him having known about it or at least being alerted to it on courtesy. Usually, he’d find a cream-colored envelope regrettably, but kindly, informing him of a soiree with a live musician from the Juilliard school hosted to play Chopin’s Nocturnes, all of them, on the baby grand piano that occupied its very own room in the four-bedroom penthouse that sat across from his studio. He was welcomed if he wanted, but they knew he preferred Schubert to Chopin when it came to nocturnes, an irreconcilable difference that had caused him to clamor with zest at the first party such that he spilled red wine onto the white coat of the mr. host, and since had received the cream-colored envelopes informing him of the parties, rather than the ultramarine ones inviting him. It continued to clap, the trash compactor, for what must have been half an hour, which of course in the dream could have been only a few minutes or several hours, he forgets which way it goes, and of course may not have been the trash compactor at all, but some nightmare of Chopin being chopped into clunks by a Juilliard student, which was a possible side effect of the double dose of medication.
In this part of the dream, he rose from the bed naked and watched his shadow splay on the ochre floor, fast like a demon, as he drifted across the room to get his computer, which according to Dr. Stevenson should sit on the opposite end of the room when it was time to sleep as the new studies showed that a ten foot radius from anything electronic was best for full REM recovery, a discovery by one of the billionaires investing in living forever. The night mode of his screen shed a mild yellow light around him in an abbreviated aura that lit the upper half of his body. He searched for a while about the significance of trash in dreams, coming to some conclusion or the other that it had to do with cleaning up, cleansing, resetting, a perfect premise for a perfect night’ sleep. Reassured, he went back to sleep in his dream, watching the shadows of fanciful animals cast by the WiFi router sprint across the ceiling, counting them one by one.
In the next dream, he woke around midnight.This time it was his door. What is the significance of that, he wondered. Squinting through the eyehole, a man in a short beanie cap and round glasses peered inward. He had seen this man before, a patient of Dr. Stevenson’s, buzzing into the apartment directly next to his. The man must have been having another late-night episode. Wrong door, he whispered from inside, as the door began to visibly shake with each knock, as if it was going to shatter. Hadn’t the resident manager received his note about Dr. Stevenson’s patients visiting outside business hours? It hardly felt appropriate. This was a home, after all. Perhaps in the dream, he hadn’t yet written the request to the resident manager. He found his phone, buried in the drawer and unlocked it through one squinting eye and a hand partially shading himself from the brightly lit background of his self-portrait on top of the white snowy mountain, a photo chock-full of symbolism. He drafted the email, sent around one AM, and received an immediate automatic reply that the request would be addressed within business hours starting Monday at nine AM, and if it was an emergency to please dial 9-1-1.
He laid back in bed, squarely into the four plump pillows, which again surrounded him in coolness. This was refreshing. Hadn’t Dr. Stevenson told him no scrolling? Oops, didn’t even realize he took his phone to bed. The medication had worn off, and a warm sweat began to displace the coolness around his body, which we refreshed in intervals by rolling side to side. Scrolled through the new videos that had been posted since yesterday evening. Oh wow, hadn’t seen that comedian in a long time, thought he was a goner. He propped the computer up on his knees and watched the old comedian’s new routine, letting out little laughs in bubble-like exhales. Through one of the three tall windows, a bright white light blared. That goddamn neighbor again, doing whatever he does on that big computer all hours of the night. Doesn’t this guy ever stop? Hardly a neighbor, as he didn’t live in this building, but the newer apartment one building over. It was one of those modern ones like a sideways shipping container. He stepped onto the window ledge, like a model in some sort of display window and banged against the glass naked, his body swinging in motion to get the attention of the neighbor who sat in a headset back in a chair with a video game controller. A woman in a bra and underwear came and went in the background, making eye contact with his fully naked body, dodging away and yelling to the man from behind the wall, directing his eye contact upward towards the window. Dr. Stevenson knocked at the door. He just got a call from the resident manager. You promised me no more nude flashes if I prescribed the sleeping meds, he called from right outside the room. His shadow dissipated as he walked away. He let out a little laugh. Dr. Stevenson said sometimes he would make an appearance in these dreams, but not to take it at face-value. Don’t forget to have some fun, it’s just a dream, right? A thump thundered from under him. What, had the floor below him been turned into a nightclub? It blurted out in bursts of bass-heavy thumping. He hadn’t danced in a while. Have some fun, he thought, feeling the house music thud on his spine. Dr. Stevenson had reminded him to now and again throw in a boogie or twist. Ah, that’s right, he mouthed, wiggling his body in bed to the ambiguous thump that seemed to shake the walls into a rhythm. This vibrated his body and its associated shadows against the wall cast by the WiFi router, and then subsided. The sheets became cool again. That was refreshing. A cream-colored envelope slid beneath the door. Tonight, he was informed, regrettably but kindly, of a reading by Flaubert. Well, that didn’t make any sense, he thought. He wasn’t in Paris until spring.
Frank Carellini was born in Connecticut in 1993.