Aftermath of Dreaming by DeLaune Michel

Mississippi, a school friend of Suzanne’s, and I had found the apartment through her—a terrible three-bedroom on the Upper way-past-the-good-part West Side with rent cheap enough for me to afford. Another woman, Ruth, lived there, in fact had the lease and the biggest bedroom with the cheapest rent, I had a feeling. Ruth was amusical-comedy performer, as she described herself, and was constantly going off on cruise ships for months at a time, subletting her room to an endless line of performers she had met on the ships who wanted to try their luck on the Great White Way. It sounded exhausting. I had a tiny pantry-sized room in the back behind the kitchen that provided no space for my art—other than sitting on my bed and sketching—but it was a place to sleep.
    And since I was so new to New York, sleep was the only familiar landscape in my life—my dreams were a visual refuge for me. Though one night right after I moved in, as I was succumbing to slumber on the twin bed I had bought on Broadway at 108th—the salesman’s Puerto Rican accent more at home in the city than my Southern one, him waving off the delivery fee as a welcome gift to the city—I felt a small weight on my foot. I instinctively flicked my ankle, then heard a soft thud and the scamper of claws on linoleum floor. Immediately, I was up, running and screaming through the apartment to the living room couch where I hopped from cushion to cushion, still screaming. Carrie and Ruth came tearing out of their rooms in the front of the apartment, and Carrie bounded on to the sofa when she heard “Mouse!” But Ruth dismissed us with “I can’t believe you two are so afraid of that,” and went back to bed in her far-away-from-the-rodents room, though I noticed she didn’t protest when Carrie came home the next day with a cat.
    â€œHow was work?” Carrie asked that Saturday night when I walked in. She was sitting with her back to me on the uneven and pocked living room hardwood floor teasing her cat with a small doll on a string. She had decided to train it to dislike everyone else, though I wasn’t sure how the doll would accomplish that. The whole thing infuriated Ruth, but maybe that was the point. I liked the cat, liked having another living thing in the apartment that was smaller than me who needed care, feeling myself sometimes like a cat the city had taken in but wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping. A half-empty bottle of wine and a small carton of milk sat beside Carrie on the floor.
    Her question was perfunctory. She didn’t mind hearing, so was glad to ask, but I could tell it was said as an intro to “good night.” Carrieworked at an answering service for a psychiatry practice and had many tales to tell of Upper East Side traumas the patients called in crisis about.
    â€œIt was good.” I hadn’t crossed through the room yet, was still standing in the hall doorway watching her cat leap and flip through the air, a feline ballet. “I met Andrew Madden tonight.”
    â€œYou what?” Carrie’s short blond hair fanned out à la Dorothy Hamill as she snapped her head around to face me, pulling the doll too far away from the cat as she did. The cat jumped at it, but grandly missed, swiping at the air, as if a tree would miraculously appear that she could slide down to brace her fall.
    â€œI met Andrew Madden.” The cat banged to the floor, then got up and nonchalantly walked a few steps as if it that were part of her plan.
    â€œOh, my God.” Carrie was staring at me so oddly that I wondered if my hair had taken on some strange shape during my walk and bus ride home, but I decided to ignore it because I was finally with someone I could tell.
    â€œI know, it’s pretty wild, but he’s really sweet, and he wants me to call him tomorrow at his hotel, and oh, my God, he’s so incredibly gorgeous, and I’ve only seen one of his