Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

I awoke spontaneously to find the sun shining through a narrow opening in the blackout curtains.  My husband was asleep beside me, so deep in slumber from the time change and the luxurious feel of hotel linens.  I tried once, twice, to nudge him from his deep sleep but he was completely non-responsive.  Good, I thought.  He needs the sleep.

I rolled out of bed and was instantly dressed.  I sensed that I had completed my ablutions but had no memory of having done so.  I took a few steps and realized I was no longer in my hotel room.  I was cruising the shops in a busy mall.  The people moved past me at such speeds that they were all a blur.  Only the area immediately in front of me was in focus. 

The location was not obvious.  It was not Burlington or Natick—the places I frequent near home.  Nor was it The Water Tower in Chicago or The Mall of America outside Minneapolis.  There was no Nordstrom or Bloomingdales or Macy’s anchoring the major entrances.  But there was a seemingly endless wall of interesting shops.  Instead of Forever 21, or Gap for Kids, or PacSun—stores that held no interest for me at this stage of my life—there were stores that featured handmade crafts, gallery-worthy objets d’art, home accessories, and beautiful art jewelry confections spun from colorful jewels and threads of silver and gold. 

However I got there, I did so without bringing my purse.  Placing my hands on my hips, I discovered my American Express Platinum Card deep in the pocket of my jeans.  I wondered if my husband would ever find me in this place.  Was it attached to the hotel?  Was I still in the same city as he?  I looked at my hand and there was my iphone.  Without stopping, I texted him that I couldn’t sleep and went shopping.  For some reason, that message seemed a sufficient explanation.

The first shop that caught my eye had a collection of architectural elements and old grillwork reminiscent of things I picked through at the Clignancourt flea markets in Paris.  Old wood pieces betrayed remnants of old paint, the hints of color clinging on as a reminder that these were once shiny and new.   The crusty, rusty metal pieces—a fleur de lys here, an old letter there—showed a period elegance that survived despite the weathering of the surface.   How much more I preferred the character forged of age and experience to the newer reproductions.   I thought of my own children who, in adulthood, are so interesting now that the wrinkles and folds of their personalities have settled into their permanent forms.

With a turn I was in another store that featured hand crafts—baskets, small sculptures, functional items.   I picked up a small basket and examined its imperfect shape.  I ran my fingertip along the woven stitches, instantly visualizing each one as the manual labor of a faceless woman in a far off land.  The patterns of alternating colors revealed by the weave made me wonder what she was trying to express.  Was this symbolic of her culture, or of her struggle for life?   Did it reflect a competitiveness to create an object that would attract enough attention to be bought and sold?  Or was it simply the embodiment of the work itself, the pattern conveying the rhythm of the maker's skillful hand?

Before I could reflect, I was blinded by color from every direction.  There was a shiny object in my hand.  I squinted until glasses were in place on my face, bringing the small beads and intricate silverwork of a fragile necklace into focus before me.  It was then I realized that my cell phone was missing from my hands.  Looking up, I saw the strange man retreating into the crowd, my iphone’s distinctive aqua case clearly visible in his hand.  I cried out for him to stop, shouting that he had my phone.  Instantly, the crowds parted, revealing an open aisle between me and this man.  The crowd pushed him back into the store, where he surrendered a phone in the same greenish case.  But when I looked at this object it lacked my phone's normal integrity.  The shiny, rigid face was in place, but it squished from side to side in the hard-backed case when the buttons were depressed.  Peeling the face forward, I found the phone to be missing its guts, filled instead with some substance midway between Jell-o and clay. 

It was then I became aware of the need to contact my husband, whose location—and mine, for that matter—were a mystery to me.  I started to run from store to store, but then wondered about the strange man who had taken my phone.  I looked back at the jewelry store only to see him perched on a stool leaning over the display cabinet, chuckling at me through the glass storefront. 

Coffee shops!  That’s where I would find my husband, I reasoned.  Turning up my senses, I fought to find the smell of roasting beans, or fresh brewed espresso.  The first shop I passed was empty, except for the creepy phone-snatching man, again poised on a stool—this time sipping a coffee leisurely.  He looked up at me and raised his cup, as if in a toast.  I turned and ran again, this time finding an establishment with a long line stretching out into the mall.  People definitely vote with their feet.  At the end of the line was my husband, standing and reading the newspaper as he waited patiently.  I showed him the remnants of my phone.  Without verbal communication, he took off running with me, suddenly abreast of the entire saga and sharing my indignation at the assault of my iphone.

We passed a store that sold beautiful leather shoes and handbags.  I stopped to point out a purse with the longer straps that I prefer, its beauty and utility somehow eclipsing the urgency of the pursuit.  I looked up and saw our man-target through the window, standing at the cash register inside.  He put his hand to his ear, his finger and thumb extended in pantomime, his message clearing mocking, “Call me!”  My husband dove at the shop door and found it locked.  We pulled and pounded, but the customers and salespeople did not react, apparently blind to our demonstration  of urgency and deaf to the racket we were making.

Discouraged, we headed back to the original jewelry shop for no particular reason.  There we began telling anyone who would listen about the strange man and the purloined iphone.  Did he still have my phone intact, or did he remove some essential elements of the phone and return the unnecessary remains to me?  It never occurred to us to consider why he was still hanging around or why he was fixated on me.  Then the store manager came up and admonished us for harassing the man who took the phone.  I did not understand.  Couldn’t he see that I was the victim here?  He pulled my husband aside to talk “man-to-man” beyond the range of “the little woman.”  My outrage made me heady; the bright jewels in the shop added an otherworldly quality as the room spun in circles.

Suddenly everything came to a stop:  the moving shop, the noise, the customers who crowded and clamored.  My husband approached me in a scene oddly reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby.  “We are going to leave him alone,” my husband said, as if there was nothing more to say.  I looked up at him, not speaking but clearly communicating with my facial expression, “But why?”

At that moment, the store manager lifted his hand.  All of the people mulling around the shop became flattened and were now just scenery painted on a wall.  With one movement, the manager pushed the wall and a rectangular space opened to nowhere, rotating around like a secret compartment.  We were looking at a flat-screen monitor.  An unknown camera in an unknown place was following the creepy villain as he ran through the depths of some very dark place.  He began to limp.  His clothes, which had once been crisp and fashionable, were now filthy and tattered.  He looked over his shoulder suspiciously, as if aware that he was being watched.  His ramp descended until soon there was water splashing up in his path.  Then there was some metal-worked architecture flanking the downward sloping ramp.  Were they lockers?  Gates?  Railings?  Was there something splashing beyond?  Beneath?  It was too dark and too distant to see clearly.

Suddenly, the man stopped, glancing once again in the direction of the camera, and by extension, at us.  He dug through his pockets until he found what he was looking for.  As a beam of light reflected upon it, we could see clearly my iphone, pristine in its aqua hard case.  He leaned over and held out the iphone, extending his arm through the metalwork and toward the splashing.  In an instant, there was an ungodly crash and a scream.  Then the strange man began running as fast as he could, yelling all the way, “I’m free.  I’m free.”  In the remaining light, we could just see that his arm had been severed above the wrist—the same arm with which he had offered out the iphone.  Despite what must have been unbearable pain, the sound in his voice was one of jubilation.  He ran away, but his scream got louder and louder and louder.

It was the alarm clock, waking me for the day.

(Note to self:  do not get on the phone with Verizon Wireless before bed and especially not the night before the release of a new iphone.)