Fantastic Metropolis

Susan saw him coming from a long way off. He wore a red checkered shirt, blue jeans and boots; his long dark hair was tied in a ponytail. About to go in what looked like a hotel, he stopped, tilting his head to one side. A man stopping on his way through her dream, staring just a little as if there was something odd about her, as if he’d grown up playing a different game than she, but thought he might still like to teach her his rules. The man stared and stared, as if through layers of dream, or of glass. Like stop-motion photography, she thought inexplicably.

Wind turbines mounted high on tall poles lined this, what appeared to be the main street, powering, Susan guessed, gear-work mechanicals inside the compact wood-frame buildings. She peered through the heavy, uneven glass windows of storefronts and read signs; there was a smith, a tailor, a bakery, a pottery, a shoemaker, a sail-maker, and a furniture store, but of all these establishments the hotel was by far the biggest, and the man still stood there, his hand on the door as if he might go in, but not yet. Still looking at her look.

A stream tumbled down from hills that climbed behind the town, turned a huge wheel beside the hotel, ran under a bridge across the main, unpaved road, and down water carved steps to the sea, hidden behind a breakwater. She could hear the stream join the surf there, crashing against the water wall. The young man let the hotel door swing shut, was approaching her as she’d somehow known he would.

“Are you Susan?”

“Yes,” she said, pleased but somehow not surprised he knew her name, not here, not now.

“Care for a cold beer?” he asked. “I’m Stiv, by the way.”

“Hi Stiv,” she said, and “Cold beer sounds good.” Didn’t tell him she didn’t go for beer with strange men. But if a dreamboat invited you for a beer you had to go, didn’t you? Besides, he was beautiful. And he might be someone important. In the dream. In her painting. For Marina. In all three together; in her life. If she turned him down, explored the town alone, or tried to wake up, she’d never know if any of it was true. Of course he might yet turn out to be an evil astral murderer, and not a cute guy in handmade boots, smelling of sea spray and linseed oil.

He showed her to a table, pulling out a chair for her with a courtliness that seemed either European or otherworldly. He went to the bar and came back with beer as he’d promised; two hand-blown green glass bottles, like all the windows she’d seen here, slightly uneven and more memorable because of it, with pretty hand-screened labels that read “Green Turtle Ale.” The beer tasted so good and was so cold she laughed out loud, forgetting one can’t taste in dreams. He raised his eyebrows, questioning.

“It’s excellent. The bottles are so beautiful. And the labels—who drew these turtles? Everything here seems made with such care, such attention to detail, love even.” Susan had never talked so much in a dream before; so many words felt odd, clunky, in spite of having spilled out as easily as life. She expected this pretty, cosy world to shatter before her eyes as if she’d broken a glass vase by singing too high a note, but it didn’t and she was grateful. Smoothed the table with her hands; it felt wooden, hefty, dense, mostly comforting. The speedy vertiginous sensation receded, a little.

“Have you got a lot of breweries in the hills?” Stiv asked.

“The hills?” Back outside she’d seen them, climbing behind the town, densely forested, white runnels of waterfalls marking them here and there. He thought that was where she was from and she didn’t know how to answer. Afraid to lose him, the moment, a room full of excruciatingly beautiful handmade things, from a world so long lost she’d never find it again, or perhaps it never existed, ever, in her world. “It’s cool in here,” she deflected, “which is nice, but couldn’t we sit outside somewhere? You don’t think I’m being rude, do you?”

“Of course we’ll go outside if you prefer,” Stiv said, and pulled her chair out for her again. As they walked she stopped to look at framed drawings on the walls. There was a toaster, a hair-dryer, a lawn-mower and a four door family sedan. Each was done in what appeared to be felt pen, in red and blue and green.

“Who did these?” she asked. Exploded diagrams of electric motors from the gods.