Wireless

“I never heard it called that before.” “We are a colourful people,” Ned had agreed.

Ned wanted to go home with her—to her and not his hotel, because he was sharing his room with the accordion player. But when that idea was vetoed by the unenticed Jane—he was too burly, too bearded for her sleek tastes—he recommended they at least keep in touch. So she took his phone and email.

“If you’re ever on the rock,” he’d offered with bourboned sincerity. The dream came after, months and months after, and had nothing to do with Ned, even if Ned was the first thing she thought of once she was able to think, that morning.

You have hangover dreams. They usually involve drinking. Not booze; water, because you’re so dehydrated it’s all your mind can think about. And on some level of sleep awareness, you know you are in tremendous pain, so you dream about relief. A cold compress administered to your head by an infinitely gentle nurse, an angel straight out of Hemingway. All white but for the roses in her cheeks. You dream of tender mercies and cool pale hands extending long drinks of water. A tumbler from the freezer—a delicate glaze of ice floating on top, frost fuzzing the sides. Wildly vivid—your mind’s so thirsty. It paints the most alluring picture it can.

That’s what Jane’s mind was engaged in this one morning. In all its desperation, it cobbled together the most beautiful dream she’s ever had. Floating on her back in the ocean, icebergs all around. Cool, clear water, a voice was singing distantly. It sounded like Tennessee Ernie Ford. Everything blue and white—crystalline. The icebergs loomed gigantically, sheltering her. The sun was somewhere, but hidden. It was bright, but not dazzling. She wasn’t cold, floating there in the frozen ocean. She was cool.

Cool, clear water, affirmed Tennessee Ernie. Then she woke up.

She lay flat on her back for twenty minutes, gauging the pain, the depth of her dehydration. The song in her ears. She sat up and a second later, her pickled brain slid sickly back into its cradle in the centre of her cranium. Time to throw up.

Afterward, fumbling nearly an entire tray of ice cubes into a martini shaker and dumping tap water up to the brim, she went to her computer. Brought up Google Images, and spent the next three hours with them.

This was on Sunday, the day of rest. Nonetheless, she allowed herself a quick bidness email. Dean, one of the Toronto silver foxes. Reformed. Now Dean is all about yoga— having developed one of those ropey, male yoga bodies, flexible to the point of the grotesque. Nicely recovered from the seventies bacchanals, when he had run a small poetry press out of his bedroom, getting sloppy punches thrown at him by Milton Acorn, sleeping with Leonard Cohen’s braless cast-offs. Dean now oversees an in-flight magazine.

Hiya Dean, she wrote. I’m thinking of doing a travel piece.