Flash forward: I am returning to a nighttime beach, just following my completion of a round of police questioning. I pass my car-- a hatchback-- in the small parking lot bordering the beach, and tread out onto the sand, barefoot. My shoes are held in my left hand, pointer- and middle-fingers inserted into their interiors, holding them by the heels. They are black dress shoes: polished leather, rounded toes. I had also been wearing a suit, but my white button-down is now untucked, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. Hair blowing in the warm nighttime sea-breeze.
I have come here for my wife, who has been waiting for me. She, like my car, is a dark, blurred figure in the blue-green-black of the night, but I can just make out her form, sundress billowing in that same nighttime breeze, striding towards me in the wet sand.
As we near each other-- I, just barely on the edge of the beach-- the form changes. She is now a small, black-and-brown applehead chihuahua swimming in the surf, riding the swells-- which are now a yard or so from my feet. To my left, there is a drop-off, like the edge of an infinity pool. The dog avoids this drop, though I encourage it to keep swimming, keep playing in the water. The dog (my dog-- we have come here for a nighttime romp) swims towards me, shooting several apprehensive glances to its right as it swims around to the left of me. I glance to my immediate left and see a water snake, striped white and black, all six or seven feet of it lazily stretched between a jagged grey rock protruding from the water and a gnarled piece of driftwood.
As the serpent slides fully into the water, I corral my dog and take a step back-- and it is now daytime, mid-morning, and the serpent fades away. There are many people and many dogs, and I am in an alcove of sorts, with an archway of rock. I am still submerged, shin-deep, in the blue-green water, and I see a Yorkie-Maltese mix swim up onto a submerged shelf not more than a few yards from me.
I am with my brother, and I recognize this dog to be Fig-- Marnie's companion and familiar. My brother realizes this too, but it's unclear to me now whether this is because I exclaimed these things aloud (rather than merely thinking them), or because he has osmotically absorbed so much information through my lasting infatuation with Marnie. In this dream, however, we are all friends, familiars, acquaintances.
I blink and my orientation changes again. Marnie and her boyfriend (tan, scruffy, muscled but lanky; buzz cut, facial hair only on his chin) are in front of us, and she's smiling, and the familiar, overwhelming feeling of déjà vu hits me.
I am with my brother, and I recognize this dog to be Fig-- Marnie's companion and familiar. My brother realizes this too, but it's unclear to me now whether this is because I exclaimed these things aloud (rather than merely thinking them), or because he has osmotically absorbed so much information through my lasting infatuation with Marnie. In this dream, however, we are all friends, familiars, acquaintances.
I blink and my orientation changes again. Marnie and her boyfriend (tan, scruffy, muscled but lanky; buzz cut, facial hair only on his chin) are in front of us, and she's smiling, and the familiar, overwhelming feeling of déjà vu hits me.
We're all conversing, happy to have so fortuitously met one another here, happy to see the dogs playing and enjoying themselves.
Weed is brought up in the course of the conversation, and my brother offers some, and he and the boyfriend chat unintelligibly as Marnie produces from her beach bag what looks like an etched, silver cigarette case, though narrower. It has arabesque floral designs of recessed, oxidized silver. She opens it and hands it to me-- all words muted to my ears, as my heart throbs with some knowledge of having beat this way before, every singular moment a reiteration, every tick having already been ticked both behind and in front of me, infinitely-- and I see inside that it's a makeup case, hinged, with a rectangular mirror covering the entirety of the inside of the hinged top (I am reminded now, as I write this-- and with some portent-- of Lirael's Dark Mirror).
There are three or four cells of makeup cakes-- eyeshadow, blush; aubergine, peach, burgundy-- on the far right of the inner compartment, with a singular, large open cell in the center and left, comprising the rest of the lower half of the case. I am reminded of an artist's palette; this would be the space used for blending shades. There is a residue here, and I touch it: grainy, dusty, with tiny orange filaments-- and as I realize that this is where Marnie keeps her weed, my brother's hand reaches over from the left on my vision's edge (his nails painted a bluish, pearlescent silver, some raggedy bracelet tied around his wrist), and places there a single joint, fat in the middle.
Marnie is looking at me, smiling with her eyes, mouth shut, a slight smile. Clearly, we are all going to get stoned on the beach and have a good time. As I close the makeup/weed case, I notice another compartment on the top. The lid of this compartment is either clear plastic, or else it is partially pierced out so that the contents are visible. The beveled edge of the compartment-- which hinges as well-- does not meet with the rest of the case, but instead leaves a small gap. The join (or lack thereof) makes me think of a slit in a vent for a forced-air house heating system.
The compartment is filled completely with bitten-off nubs of eraser heads from the ends of pencils. This is bizarre to me, and is of some importance-- not just to me, but to her boyfriend too, who asks her what they're for, and why she won't tell him. This is clearly a conversation they've had before, outside of this time loop, and as Marnie grins through her silence, refusing to give in to his begging, she and the boyfriend-- still pleading-- make their departure, Marnie coyly waving goodbye to me and my brother.
I feel paralyzed, because I know that I am supposed to warn her, warn her about something, and the time loop is closing, and I know that this is one of the last few times she was happy, and I am stuck, rooted to this one spot and to my dumbfounded silence as the loop and the dream both fade from me.
Perhaps I am to warn her that her boyfriend is going to kill himself-- but I'm losing the moment of clarity, I'm losing my clarity, the moment is gone, and I am left on the beach, my unseen brother now gone too, and all I can do is talk to an old, sage Black woman: a beachgoer, shaded by the stone arch, and yet still sitting beneath a beach umbrella she'd stuck in the sand.
As the dream disintegrates and I rise to wakefulness, the woman tries to tell me that I am powerless to save her, that perhaps I just need to enjoy myself, here on this beach. Our conversation fades, and is largely unremembered.
