Never Angeline Nørth
"The entire world is a very narrow bridge. The essential thing is to have no fear at all."
-Attributed to Reb Naḥman of Bratslav
I like to fall asleep to ocean sounds played from my phone. I close my eyes and imagine myself in a beach house. The salt smell. At some point my fantasy becomes a dream, but I can't tell when.
The salt. A body washes ashore covered in tattoos that tell me what will happen. All over its skin are forty, maybe fifty large-ish outline portraits of the same man with different facial expressions. They are done in a number of different colors. The magic is all in the eyes. The many eyes tell me so many things. The messages I get from the body aren't like a fortune. They are more like a map, like somebody's plans. Like God had been writing notes for his own use, and they showed up in the form of facial expressions tattooed in portraits across the skin of a lifeless corpse washed up on the beach. My beach.
My beach house has a beautiful porch that faces the water and I can hear the sounds of dolphins playing from my kitchen window while I cook. I keep the windows open and a breeze blows through the house, making the linen curtains dance. I imagine the linen curtains are coral, and that I have an old basset hound who I need to bathe frequently in order to keep the sand from getting up into his paws and getting infected. I never mind doing this, in the dream, and the dog likes the warm water of the tub. He doesn't squirm, like some dogs. He is too old to squirm, but not old enough to be dead or too close to dead.
God's map contains a delightful series of nothing-muches, small delights and surprises to fill my life with joy. It is primarily oriented around me and my immediate environs. There is an excellent bit about my dog's relationship with a cloud that will be coming up in the next ten years and so I make plans to make sure I am outside to watch it happen.
Nobody ever comes to ask about the body. It isn't that kind of fantasy.
When I wake up from my dream, I am at the coffee shop again. The barista had turned off my ocean sounds and so I look up and give him a scowl. He mewls at me. I am not too old to squirm, and I do so now, while holding eye contact with his whole face at once. They hate me at this coffee shop, but I love them. Even when they turn off my ocean sounds while I am sleeping, I love them. My love keeps this coffee shop open. People come to me here, in this coffee shop, for my love, which I give to them.
Sometimes they also buy coffee, either as an offering to me in exchange for my love (ill-advised: I do not drink coffee) or to drink themselves while I love them. I will love them no matter who they are. No matter how tall or bearfaced. No matter if they have coffee breath or anything.
Today I had a man come in and show me his hands. He showed me all the parts of his hands, the insides of his fingers and the backs and middles. I watched him make shapes with them: a heart, a flying bird, both the North American and UK "fuck you" gestures, two feet with extremely long toes and his arms as the legs, a rock, a church/steeple, etc. I told him I loved him, which I did. I don't love him now but he isn't here now, and if he was here I would love him once more. I have become extremely good at loving the people who sit in the chair across from me. I have loved groups of up to fifteen to twenty people at a time. Thirty-four once. They barely fit in my coffee shop. They were a tourist group from Prince Edward Island. I loved them so much. I don't any longer but in the moment, so very much. I don't think I would have any time to do anything if I continued to love everyone after they left.
I press my fingers to my temples and turn on my ocean sounds again, but to no avail. A woman comes from the bathroom and I ask her if she is here to be loved. "No," she says. "I am here to leave."
At this point the barista cuts in. He jumps over the coffee counter and flashes a badge on his jacket. It is yellow and star-shaped and says "badge" on it in all caps. BADGE. "Which outside did you come in from?" he asks.
"She came from the bathroom," I toss in, hoping to help. The barista mewls at me again.
"That outside," the bartender points to a row of doors on one side of the coffee shop, "is different from this outside," he points to the row of doors on the other side, "and bad things could happen if we start allowing people from one outside into the other outside. So what outside did you come in from?"
The woman seems to ponder his question. She opens her mouth and a single mother comes out. The barista holds up a finger to the woman and shows his BADGE badge to the single mother. The single mother points to the set of doors on the left side of the room, so the barista pulls a key on an extendable keychain attached to his belt and unlocks one of the doors on the left side of the room. The single mother shuffles out, turns into a moth and flies away, glowing with her own internal light. The barista locks the door again and returns to the woman.
"So which is it?" says the barista.
"What happens if I get it wrong?" says the woman.
"Do you plan to get it wrong?" The barista says, eyeing her suspiciously.
"The left side?" She floats the words into the air like she is worried she may never get them back.
"My left or your left?" the barista asks, still eyeing her.
"Her left." She points to me. I look to my left and realize she means the bathroom. The only thing to my left is the bathroom. The woman turns and runs into the bathroom. The barista stands still for a while, still eyeing, but now he is eyeing the bathroom door suspiciously and begins to feel a little bit silly. He looks at me and mewls, then hops the counter to resume his post as a barista. I am silently laughing, but it is stress laughter. All my laughter is stress laughter. I think about how the word "laughter" looks like "daughter" but doesn't sound like it. I imagine pronouncing them in reverse. Dafter. Lotter.
After some time passes, the door to the bathroom opens a crack and the woman peeks out.
"Psst," she says to me.
"Pssssst," I say back.
"Could you love me now?"
I nod and get up and enter the bathroom. When I enter the bathroom, I take her hands and I have sex with them. For some people love and sex are the same thing. For other people they are the opposite. Once I have had sex with her hands, I wash them gently in the sink. "Thank you," she whispers to me, even though we are all alone.
"For what?" I ask, even though I know.
"For helping."
"I didn't help, though. I made you feel better about being unhelpable. That's what love is. It doesn't solve anything. It is the opposite of solving, in that it is capable of allowing us to live while having no solutions. It makes the terrible bearable. Just enough for us to stay in it."
"I don't believe that," she tells me. "And I don't think you do either." At that, I eye her suspiciously, but she has caught on now, and begins eyeing me suspiciously right back. I mewl at her and leave the bathroom. When I re-enter the coffee shop, the sprinkler system is on, everything is drenched and the barista is standing behind the counter, his wet hair plastered to his head. I contemplate returning to my chair, but instead I come up to the counter. I open my mouth wide, and he leans forward and mewls deeply inside. I feel it echo through my whole being. He puts up wallpaper inside my mouth, and installs a fireplace there. He lays brick that creates a chimney emerging from my right cheek. He starts the fire, I blow it out. He starts the fire, I blow it out. I push him away. I close the flue. "Excuse you," I say to him. He grins at me like a maniac. I return to my chair in a huff. "Excuse you," I mumble to myself.
Tonight I am sleeping under the table in my coffee shop, curled like an animal. The barista sleeps spread out on the shop counter with his head on the register like a pillow. I used to tease him for the marks it left on his face when he woke up. But teasing is something you do as a type of play. I used to do a lot of things I don't do now. I used to sleep on that counter next to him.
I turn on the sounds of the ocean from my phone, plugged into an outlet near my head. Tonight it is more difficult to get into my beach house because of the chimney in my face. It is my fantasy, and so I try to take it apart, brick by brick, but the bricks keep flying back into place like magnets.
When I finally begin to drift off, I think briefly about the woman in the bathroom. I imagine her sleeping next to me, and as the ocean sounds begin to mix with my thoughts, I imagine her inside my beach house with me. "Sweet angel," I call her. "Sweet angel, will you make the coffee today? I did it yesterday."
I do not actually remember whether or not I made the coffee yesterday, because while in the world of this dream we have lived together for a long time, I do not possess a specific detailed memory of the entire time. I wonder briefly if it is manipulative for me to tell her I did it yesterday. Then I wonder if it is the kind of manipulative that is cute and playful and transparent or the kind that eats away at a person. That thought is followed by a sense of revulsion at myself for having the idea that any manipulation at all could be cute, playful or transparent. I can't tell whether or not I am judging myself too harshly. I table the thought for later and realize she is already making the coffee. I go to her.
The dolphins make their sounds which, as ever, float in on the breeze gently fluttering our coral-toned linen curtains. I take her in my arms. I tell her that the interpretive notes on God's tattooed man told me that "we were meant to always be together my sweet angel," which in this dream I am deciding is true. She rolls her eyes at me and returns to our coffee. When she leans over, I notice her hair falls to one side, revealing an eminently nibbleable ear. She glances up at me, blows a kiss in my direction, and follows it with a wink, which I return.
On the west side of the house is a pool of cum, from the middle of which emerges a very large penis, frequently spurting cum. Right now it is soft, flopped right over in its own little pool, so I take a break from my flirtations and step outside to cuddle it a little. It doesn't take long to get it fully stiff (I wouldn't call it hard, because the skin is so soft!) and so I fuck it some, and then go into the ocean to wash the cum from my hair and skin and asshole. Salt water is very good for the skin and hair. As is cum. When sweet angel calls my name, I return to her, wet and salty.
After coffee we go for a walk on the beach with the dog. When we get to the edge, where beach meets forest, she presses me against the tree, flips her hair to one side and offers me her ear to nibble, which I do. Giggles emit from both parties.
The next morning, I awake to the barista getting stabbed and my face still contains a chimney. He gets stabbed around once a week, by a man and a woman who come in and stab him for a few hours without saying much. He avoids eye contact with me while this happens, and I am deeply thankful. This stabbing thing has been going on for years. I used to comfort him, love him whenever he was stabbed, but there was a point where I had to stop. I like to think of myself as a kind woman, and I feel terrible for how frequently he is stabbed, but what am I supposed to do? Love him forever just because I feel bad and we're in the same room? That would only be fair if I was able to love everyone who is being stabbed, no matter their distance from me. And that I cannot do. Too much research! The cafe would close. What table would I sleep under then?
I think of my dream, of my sweet angel. I go to the bathroom door and open it. The door, in turn, opens me back. We both open widely, to flowers.
"I'm seeing someone," I tell the door. "I see so many people," I tell it.
"I can't see you," says the door. "I'm a door," it says.
I cry some and return to my seat. A man sits opposite me with a bee in each nostril. "I love you," I tell him. "I love you so deeply," I say. He cries and I cry with him.
"I can't love you back," he tells me.
"That's okay," I take his hand.
"I'm committed to someone," he says, gesturing to a choir that is currently ordering one Italian soda for each of its mouths.
"I understand," I tell him. "I still love you," I say.
At this point he leans over and whispers in my ear, "My choir wouldn't understand if they knew you loved me. Even if they knew absolutely without a doubt that I don't love you back, they wouldn't understand." At this point one of his bees stings my cheek.
I put my mouth to his ear and do some whispering of my own. "Fuck your choir." I let the words seep into his ear. "And fuck you." I pause and sit back in my chair. "I don't love you anymore," I say at full volume, vaguely hoping the choir overhears.
The man cries. I relax, because my job here is done. Unloving someone is incredibly important. As important as loving them. He made it easier by stinging me with his nose bee. Nothing could make me love him after that. Until he returns, of course.
More clients filter in and I love them each. I cry some. This is the first job I have had where crying helps. The other jobs I had discouraged crying at work. I would always spitefully cry at my bosses when they reminded me of this. I think about the concept of crying for awhile. How strange. How animal.
"I'm such a leaflet," I say to a client later, who pins me to a bulletin board and reads me before deciding he will not be able to attend after all.
"My daughter," he says apologetically while nodding his head towards his daughter, who cries as she works with tools to weave her hair into the side of his coat. "She has ballet."
I imagine her doing a whirling dance, her tears spiraling out around her, her hair loose and free. It is beautiful. "Don't worry about it," I want to say, but can't. I'm such a leaflet.
I let out a sigh, which blows me off the board and into a little loop-de-loop. I land in the trash. The man thanks me and leaves. The air in the coffee shop is strong today. It is a beautiful, strong air day.
The beach is perfect. The sea is orange, the sand is white and the sky is not full of knives. I hold my sweet angel and we sit on a blanket and watch the waves while our dog plays around us. I touch her hands. I kiss them. Our life together here is everything I could have wanted. I'm not thinking about manipulations anymore, subtle or otherwise. I kiss her hair and I feel like for the first time in my life I am not hiding anything at all.
"This is a dream," I say to her.
"God, I know," she says.
"No," I say, "I mean this is an actual dream. I am dreaming this."
"No, I know," she says. "I was calling you God."
"Why?" I ask her.
"That's what you are here," she tells me. "You are my God. The God of your dream. And I am part of that dream. I am your dream girl." She lays her head on my lap as our dog bites the waves rolling in.
I think about this as I stroke the small hairs on the back of her neck.
"Can I ask you something?"
"God, you can ask me anything."
"First, it is a little strange to be called God. I think I would like to not be called God anymore."
"Done. And second?"
"I have a confession."
"Confess, my love."
"I have always wanted to have a child."
Sweet angel sits up and looks at me seriously. She studies my face. She takes her hands and gently strokes both sides of my face with the backs of her knuckles.
"You will have a child. We will have a child. We will call it our child," she tells me.
I look into her eyes. "Really? In this place?"
"Yes. In this place. Our dream home. Our perfect child," she smiles at me.
I smile back.
The sky has no knives for us today, and our dog runs back to us excitedly, somehow younger than he used to be.
My chimney hurts all day at work today. It feels like someone lit the fire in my mouth's fireplace while I was sleeping. Smoke pours from my face and the wallpaper crinkles as I speak, but I have no time for pain or frustration. A child. Our child. I don't use the bathroom all day. Instead I take turns peeing out the doors. Pee is allowed to go out either door, but people are not. People can only go out one door. I can see the barista fingering his BADGE badge when I open them to pee. I can't tell if he really thinks I would leave or if he just wants an excuse to watch me pee. I have no idea if my sweet angel is in the bathroom still. I don't know when she would have gotten out. I almost don't care. I feel like I got what I needed from her, which feels like a cruel thing to say. But she can't hear my thoughts to be hurt by this. Finding her again here, in this broken place, would be terrifying.
The barista looks at me like I am a crime, and my pee turns into potatoes as it crosses the door's threshold. "Here I am no one's God and no one's dream girl," I say out loud, as my potatoes thud, one by one, onto the forbidden topsoil.