To Sleep, To Dream

To Sleep, To Dream

“Do you remember when we first came here?”
  The Taj Mahal glittered in the early afternoon sun, reflected in the waters at its base.  It was brilliantly pure in its whiteness, and almost blinding with it.  Hordes of tourists flocked around the Taj and its temples, often followed by children begging for scraps and rupees or dollars.  Dave knew though, that the children wouldn’t be allowed to keep whatever they were given, if anything, as he wryly noted the white Mercedes sitting round a nearby corner.  But that, he supposed, was business, and none of his for that matter.  His was staring at him.
  He looked ahead again to the lady standing in front of him, blonde hair tied back, casually dressed in pale blue, squinting into the sun despite the sunglasses.  The look on her face suggested she wasn’t too happy to be here. This was Emma, and she was Dave’s wife – no, his ex-wife – he sometimes struggled to cope with the term.  And she was waiting for an answer to her question.  She hadn’t come all this way to be ignored.
  Dave laughed.  “Of course I remember,” he said, trying his hardest to appear nonchalant.  “We met here. Eleven years ago.”
  Emma snorted in return, an attempt at a laugh.  “Its been a few years more than that…” she began, but trailed off.
  Dave frowned, but then turned his face away impatiently.  “Look, Emma, why are we here?”
  For a moment Dave thought he caught a look of uncertainty on Emma’s face, almost like she didn’t know the answer.  But he knew he was probably imagining it.  Emma was never uncertain about anything, she was nothing short of meticulous in everything she did.  Her words, her actions, even her clothes half the time!  It was her way of keeping control.
  “I thought it would help you,” she said, finally.  “I thought it would be a good place to end.  I know that just thinking of this place would always make you happy.”  She smiled, sadly.  “Though it wasn’t only because of meeting me.”
  Dave looked around again, a small cloud was threatening to cover the sun, but seemed to think better of it and dissipated, almost like it would be a crime to ruin the picture postcard moment.  There was certainly something about this place, something purely spiritual.  He felt like he belonged here, but he’d never been able to pin down why.
  “I always wanted to come back,” he said slowly, deliberately.  He didn’t want to start yet another argument about it.  “But it’s too late for that.  And besides,” he said, turning back to look Emma straight in the eye, “this isn’t real, is it?”
  Emma held his look with an air of steely determination, so typical of her.  “I just had to see you, one last time, even if it is within this virtual cage,” she spat the words, almost as if she resented having had to resort to such a thing.  “I thought it would only be right.”
  “Right?” Dave could feel anger boiling up inside him.  “Right? Surely ‘right’ would have been letting us have a life when we still could, rather than insisting on your career.  Surely ‘right’…” Dave stopped and took a breath in an attempt to calm himself down. “Surely ‘right’ would have been starting the family we both wanted, and not waiting until it was convenient for your schedule of meetings, by which time it was too late.”
  Dave looked straight into her eyes; he could see tears forming, definitely unusual for Emma.  He seized the moment.  “Surely ‘right’ would have been not letting me go so easily…”
  With that, he turned and began walking away.  His head swam with thoughts and memories, and he was becoming very aware of the weight of his legs, like they’d been filled with mercury.  His eyes began to shut, almost of their own free will.
  Through a haze, he thought he heard a voice, faint like a whisper of a thought carried on a breeze.  He thought he heard the words “I’m sorry…” but before he could turn, he shut his eyes and he fell to the floor.
  There was pure silence now, no sound touched his ears, not even the sound of his own heartbeat.  He was lying on his back, and in front of both his eyes – no, within his eyes – he could see one final image.  The Taj Mahal, dazzlingly bright, reflected on water, and the image of Emma, his wife – yes, his wife, that was it – no longer squinting and angry, but smiling, and looking as she did when they first met eleven years before.
  For an instant, he thought he felt a hand softly touch his cheek, but then it passed just as quick.
  He smiled and, finally, Dave went to sleep.
  Somewhere in reality, Emma wept.