wake up at seven for his job. Brenna had thought maybe he’d get to bed earlier now that he was an editor and didn’t have articles due—especially since Faith was a morning show host who left for work at 6 A.M. But as it turned out, Jim still burned the midnight oil. Or so Brenna had learned.
She’d been instant messaging with her ex-husband, after his new wife went to sleep, nearly every night for the past ten months. Brenna didn’t know if that was healthy or not, but to be honest she didn’t care. Seeing Jim Rappaport in person brought on memories so vivid, she had to turn away from him, couldn’t look him in the eye or hear the timbre of his voice for fear of reliving a fight, or worse yet something tender and wonderful and still real under her skin. It was always Faith who brought Maya to her apartment, Faith she spoke to on the phone, all at Brenna’s request—and as a result, she’d gotten to missing Jim terribly.
But as words on a screen, Jim worked. They could be friends this way. They could talk, and talking with Jim soothed Brenna, the same way Maya’s breathing soothed her. It was proof he was alive, and it was something more than that.
Don’t you ever sleep???? she typed.
His response was immediate: Takes one to know one .
Yeah, well. I had a bad dream.
Tell me about it.
You had a bad dream, too?
No. E-mail is a pain in the ass—no inflection. I meant: Tell me about YOUR dream.
Brenna smiled. For the dozenth time, it occurred to her that if they’d forgotten about marriage counseling and tried IMing instead, she and Jim might still be together. That was a pipe dream of course. Jim was better off with Faith, and Brenna was better off with Lee the GPS.
He wrote: You there? Instant messenger says you stopped typing.
Yeah, just a sec.
She wrote out the dream and sent it. After about thirty seconds, Jim started to type.
The words appeared: Could mean a new beginning.
Huh?
The butterfly. Out of the cocoon. You know? A new life where Clea is concerned.
Possible, I guess, she typed. But I didn’t feel that way.
How did you feel?
Brenna thought for a long time. Finally, she tried: Suffocated. Scared. Confused . Like most people who had been through a lot of analysis, Brenna knew all about dreams. The subconscious, as it turned out, was a terrible punster. For instance, the night after Brenna signed her first big-paying client—a Wall Street trader who wanted to track down his slacker younger brother—she’d dreamed that Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island was chasing her around a haunted house.
When she’d told her then-shrink Sheila Shiner about it, Sheila had said, matter-of-factly, “Mr. Howell in a haunted house. You’re afraid of wealth.”
It was the same thing with this dream of Clea. Somewhere in that surreal scene lurked a bad pun, waiting to be groaned at. A missing woman in bandages, wrapped up in bandages . . .
Brenna recalled Nelson Wentz last night, sitting in his office with his face in his hands. “I was so wrapped up in my own life,” he says, his voice muffled by thick palms. “I was so wrapped up I didn’t pay enough attention.” The room smells of Purell, and Brenna thinks, Wrapped up in what? This? She is not watching Nelson, though. She’s looking at the computer screen, at Carol Wentz’s search history. She is staring at the name of the search engine Carol had visited twelve times in the past week, but had never used for a search. The name of the search engine is Chrysalis.org.
Butterfly wings. Brenna had been dreaming about the Chrysalis search engine.
Jim’s words appeared on-screen: Do you have a new client? Could the confusion have something to do with work?
Brenna smiled. How is it in my head? Comfortable in there? Can I get you a drink?
Great minds . . .
Brenna typed: Any reason why you would visit a search engine if you weren’t going to search for anything?
Your missing person visited Chrysalis?
Yep. How’d you guess?
If she’d
She’d been instant messaging with her ex-husband, after his new wife went to sleep, nearly every night for the past ten months. Brenna didn’t know if that was healthy or not, but to be honest she didn’t care. Seeing Jim Rappaport in person brought on memories so vivid, she had to turn away from him, couldn’t look him in the eye or hear the timbre of his voice for fear of reliving a fight, or worse yet something tender and wonderful and still real under her skin. It was always Faith who brought Maya to her apartment, Faith she spoke to on the phone, all at Brenna’s request—and as a result, she’d gotten to missing Jim terribly.
But as words on a screen, Jim worked. They could be friends this way. They could talk, and talking with Jim soothed Brenna, the same way Maya’s breathing soothed her. It was proof he was alive, and it was something more than that.
Don’t you ever sleep???? she typed.
His response was immediate: Takes one to know one .
Yeah, well. I had a bad dream.
Tell me about it.
You had a bad dream, too?
No. E-mail is a pain in the ass—no inflection. I meant: Tell me about YOUR dream.
Brenna smiled. For the dozenth time, it occurred to her that if they’d forgotten about marriage counseling and tried IMing instead, she and Jim might still be together. That was a pipe dream of course. Jim was better off with Faith, and Brenna was better off with Lee the GPS.
He wrote: You there? Instant messenger says you stopped typing.
Yeah, just a sec.
She wrote out the dream and sent it. After about thirty seconds, Jim started to type.
The words appeared: Could mean a new beginning.
Huh?
The butterfly. Out of the cocoon. You know? A new life where Clea is concerned.
Possible, I guess, she typed. But I didn’t feel that way.
How did you feel?
Brenna thought for a long time. Finally, she tried: Suffocated. Scared. Confused . Like most people who had been through a lot of analysis, Brenna knew all about dreams. The subconscious, as it turned out, was a terrible punster. For instance, the night after Brenna signed her first big-paying client—a Wall Street trader who wanted to track down his slacker younger brother—she’d dreamed that Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island was chasing her around a haunted house.
When she’d told her then-shrink Sheila Shiner about it, Sheila had said, matter-of-factly, “Mr. Howell in a haunted house. You’re afraid of wealth.”
It was the same thing with this dream of Clea. Somewhere in that surreal scene lurked a bad pun, waiting to be groaned at. A missing woman in bandages, wrapped up in bandages . . .
Brenna recalled Nelson Wentz last night, sitting in his office with his face in his hands. “I was so wrapped up in my own life,” he says, his voice muffled by thick palms. “I was so wrapped up I didn’t pay enough attention.” The room smells of Purell, and Brenna thinks, Wrapped up in what? This? She is not watching Nelson, though. She’s looking at the computer screen, at Carol Wentz’s search history. She is staring at the name of the search engine Carol had visited twelve times in the past week, but had never used for a search. The name of the search engine is Chrysalis.org.
Butterfly wings. Brenna had been dreaming about the Chrysalis search engine.
Jim’s words appeared on-screen: Do you have a new client? Could the confusion have something to do with work?
Brenna smiled. How is it in my head? Comfortable in there? Can I get you a drink?
Great minds . . .
Brenna typed: Any reason why you would visit a search engine if you weren’t going to search for anything?
Your missing person visited Chrysalis?
Yep. How’d you guess?
If she’d
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