It’s not one of those dreams that take place sequentially. It’s not logical like the soft-focused one about my surgery, where I’m in the operating room. This one has no beginning, middle, or end. I wake up and remember I was dreaming, but when I think back, it’s more of a jumble, as if thoughts and feeling and images were bombarding my brain and I couldn’t process everything coming at me fast enough to make order and sense out of it.
I’m sure some of it has to do with looking at the family picture album because I see pictures, lots of them, in a deep field that crosses time—my mom, my relatives, myself, even people I don’t know—and they’re all raining down on me. Some are David’s pictures. Those are always on my mind because they’re all of me.
The one he took in the pizza parlor after we went to the park stands out in particular. I’m smiling at him. It’s kind of dreamy. Maybe that’s why he likes it so much. As soon as he got home, he emailed it to me. I didn’t have to ask if he printed it out. It’s actually the best picture anyone has ever taken of me. I didn’t tell him that, though. I was embarrassed to.
Something else I didn’t tell him about is the surgery.
Just one week away.
And not his business. I don’t need him to weigh in. It’s not his face; it’s mine. So why do I feel guilty? I ask Katrina what she thinks.
“Hmmm, that’s a hard one. How would you feel if he didn’t tell you something important?”
I don’t have to think too long. “Betrayed?”
“I guess that’s your answer.”
The next day after school when we’re walking out of the building and no one’s nearby to hear, I turn to David. “I’m going to look different in a week.”
He shakes his head, not understanding. “What?”
“I’m having my nose done.”
He narrows his eyes and looks at me curiously. Then nothing. No comment. No grunts, no anything. He’s thinking about it, though. I can tell from the way he’s looking off. He shakes his head slightly.
“You wanna get something to eat?”
I’m not the least bit hungry. “Sure.”
We take the subway to a Greek coffee shop in the Village and order stuffed grape leaves and hummus. We’re sitting opposite each other in a banquette with fake leather seats and a table that’s supposed to look like wood. While we wait for our order, I busy my hands and head by examining the sugar on the table, then the pepper and salt, wondering why someone decided that the tiny holes in the metal covers had to be in the shape of P and S when the bottles were clear and there was no way you could confuse them.
Then again, a lot of things don’t make much sense, like the way two friends are suddenly acting like two strangers, sitting next to each other but barely talking. I stare at the posters on the walls, especially one of Santorini, a Greek island with houses that look like they’re carved out of blocks of white chalk and crowned with sea-blue roofs that match the water and the sky. I imagine being there with David. We’d walk everywhere taking pictures. He looks at the poster too. If he’s thinking the same thing, he doesn’t let on.
A waiter with a thick head of curly gray hair and dark shining eyes that look like they know everything about the people he’s serving puts our food on the table and smiles. I look at his eyes and glance away, embarrassed. As soon as he turns, we tear at the pita bread and finish everything except the olive pits.
David’s quiet, staring off, his eyes taking in everyone in the restaurant except me. It bothers me. We talk briefly about speech, about Amber’s talk.
“I bet she’s not used to reaching into herself,” he says. “She probably surprised herself when she wrote a decent speech.” Something about that relates to me, his eyes seem to say.
Randomly I start talking about a new movie that we both want to see and an upcoming concert downtown. Then I run out of things to say. More dead silence. A wall is up and I don’t know how to break it down. After we pay the bill and walk out to the street, he takes out his camera and snaps my picture.
“To remember you,” David says. “The beautiful Allie. The real one.”
I look at him and shake my head. It’s not your face; it’s mine. I didn’t expect him to understand.