Again

by Jon Fain

I was getting over one, being careful, but I’m a sucker for a woman who laughs at my jokes. When we ended up together in the kitchen, our conversation began with remarks about the other guests. Then we trolled out the occasional minor confession, had some hits here and there. The best part was that it had been free of the dull usual—nothing of kids, or houses, no talk about jobs.

Now a couple of days after the party we were having lunch. Ann told me I’d been in one of her dreams.

I’d heard the same thing from a guy in the men’s room at work, the week before. I knew his face—in that way who he was—but not his name. His cube is on the far side of the space, across the sea of dividers. Over there, their computers make the calls to customers, not take them in.

As I dried my hands under the machine, he turned from the sink where he was washing and told me he had dreamed about me. I misunderstood at first; I thought he was coming on to me, his line.

In his dream we had been in the company lunch room. Something he was working on was missing and he was sure I was responsible. But he knew I was a professional house watcher and he didn’t want to bother me while I was on duty.

As for Ann’s, in her dream that she told me about we were at my house. In this one I was a Catholic, one of many kids.

“Is that like your family?” she asked.

“Close,” I said, though it wasn’t.

“They didn’t like me,” Ann went on. “So you drove me home.”

“That’s it?”

The table was so small our hands almost touched. I gripped my wine glass as if now that it was empty it might fly away. Like the guy’s at work, it wasn’t much of a dream. And that was disappointing because except for rare circumstances I never remembered mine.

The food arrived. She looked at her watch. She was dressed much nicer than me. No doubt she had a nicer job too.

“So what do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked.

She laughed like I hoped she would. It was something from the party. In the kitchen, a man nearby had said it to a woman, his line. Maybe a half hour later, Ann and I still in the same spot, we heard him try it on another woman. We couldn’t help it; we’d both cracked up.

“Oh I don’t know,” she said. “What about you?”

I took my sunglasses off the table and put them on.

“A professional house watcher,” I said.

She kept smiling, didn’t get it, but nodded like she wanted to.

I didn’t need a watch to look at. I’d wait as long as I had to, for her laugh to come again.

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Jon Fain’s micro fiction has appeared in Blink-Ink, The Dribble Drabble Review, 50-Word Stories, Molecule, ScribesMICRO, Sudden Flash, The Woolf, and elsewhere. https://www.chillsubs.com/profile/jonfain