To Dream a Touch and Touch a Dream

She was piercing like a winter wind, patient like a summer night. When I met her, I told her that we simply had to meet again. She cast her face towards the sky, her eyes alight with cheer.

“Oh we must, must we?”

She returned her gaze to me, teasing me with her dancing eyes and lilting smile. Then, perhaps noticing my flushed face, she quickly offered an answer to her own question:

“I think I would like that.”

“How does Friday work? 7 o’clock.”

“It’s a date. I’ll meet you here.”

Preparing to leave, I averted my eyes, unable to stare at the star that spun and burned and shone in front of me. I grazed the ground with my foot.

“Right here,” I repeated, and then I left.

For the next three days, I took to fashioning fantasies of our impending date. In some dreams, she and I laughed until early morning, each playful statement imbued with a delicately concealed insight into morality and philosophy, her head resting against my shoulder.

In other dreams, we occupied the kitchen.

“Stop, no!” she would demand as I tried to increase the stovetop’s heat. “It will come to a simmer eventually,” she’d declare. Then, when she turned her back to weigh the pasta, sleight of hand and a quick clockwise movement cut our cooking time in half.

In yet other worlds, the ones I inhabited most, we examined each other’s playlists, subjecting them to slight and scrutiny. She would refuse to believe my sincere fondness for funk; I would marvel at her ability to evoke nostalgia.

“Do you remember this one?” she’d inquire before selecting a track. “I remember hearing this for the first time when carpet cleaners came to our home. It blaring from their van speakers, and my mom told me to cover my ears.”

I would reach my hand towards hers, and she would take it.

“It’s almost better than funk,” I would retort, and her laugh was like a wind chime on a gentle summer day.

By the time Friday finally came to pass, and when I had dreamt many worlds into solitary existence within my mind, I prepared myself to meet with her again. A crisp shirt was a necessity, as were my glasses. With my heart leaping relentlessly in my chest, I navigated to the location of our first meeting. Technically, I suppose we saw each other every few days in our online anthropology class, but the location where we first met was a matter of mere circumstance.

In a virtual world, fumbling fingers make for onerous interaction. I submit assignments mistakenly, I’m slow to chat, and I’m even slower to navigate.

Tuesday, with a host of links plastered to my homepage and only a few moments before my night class commenced, I hurriedly clicked on the class link, but instead found myself welcomed into her personal meeting room.

“Hey! Do you have an anthro question or something?” She asked.

“Um, no, sorry. I was on my way to class but clicked on the wrong link,” I responded.

“Oh, a twist!” She laughed gently. “Well, I’ll let you go then. Have fun in class!”

“Wait, wait. I’d, I think I’d like to meet you again. We must.”

She grinned, her eyes and hair glimmering wildly in the subsiding light. A few moments later, the date was set, and I even managed to attend class on time.

Now, three days later, my fingers succeeded in bringing me to her meeting room again. She had to let me in; I hastily fixed my collar. A quick flicker of my screen jolted me into poise, and there she was: resplendent in the evening light and jubilant in the length of the day, and I hoped that I was contributing to her joy.

“Hi,” she crooned.

“Hi,” I said. Her lips drew away from her teeth in a smile.

“Tell me,” she bid, “what the plans are for tonight.”

Hearing these words, I burned to traverse the worlds of my dreams, to withdraw them from the solitude of my mind and populate them with her presence. But these worlds, though only a few days old, were a year gone, for sickness had stripped me and my fumbling fingers from sensory worlds and tangible realities.

In the virtual world, silence was forceful; she pierced it with a suggestion.

“Well, I thought we could play chess or cribbage online. I’ll send you the link if that sounds good to you!” She reached off-screen then retracted her arm, a stemless glass of wine appearing in her hand. “I also brought merlot, but I don’t want to drink alone,” she laughed.

I nodded. “That sounds good. You send me the link and I’ll fetch some wine.”

I rushed to the fridge, scanning the interior for an open bottle. Finding none, I surveyed the pantry. There were two unopened bottles in the pantry, but I had been gone for a few minutes, leaving her in silence, and I couldn’t gamble with a corkscrew. I reached for an opaque mug; it would do.

Returning to my desk, I told her that I couldn’t find a wine glass, and she laughed along with me, relieving some of the guilt I felt for abandoning her. I clicked the chess link, flexing my fingers in preparation. I pretended to sip from my mug as we started the game. This is what we would laugh about in fifty years, when we would be weary like senescing summer days.

“Want to know something?” I would say, my neck slowly swiveling towards her. “I didn’t even have wine in my mug that day!” And we would cackle, and she would put her hand on my arm to stabilize herself amid the hysterics.

At that point, I was doing everything possible to forestall her victory, but it quickly approached. I hoped that my misdirected chess pieces would not haunt me.

“Well, that's checkmate, that's the game. Not bad,” she offered as consolation.

“Yeah, I’m kind of bad at board games,” I replied, though if my movements had acquiesced to my will, our duel might have endured a tad longer.

“No, it was fun!” she exclaimed. “I mean, I won’t complain about winning, but I feel like you went easy on me or something!” An hour had passed since we first met, and her wine was gone. Fear welled up within me, and I retreated to an emerging dream.

Shining a flashlight to illumine my workspace, I would tenderly remove a swelling splinter from her heel. She would be elated, and I would tell her that my shaky hands were good for something after all, even if it wasn't chess.

"Oh no, is that true? Did you go easy on me?" She interrogated me.

“No, no, I wouldn’t do that. I just overthink it,” I said with a smile. She smiled too, glancing at the lower portion of her screen, where the clock typically resides. She reached for her wine glass.

“I guess I forgot to propose a toast, and now it seems I’ve drunk all my wine!” Her laugh was so delicate, so clear.

“No worries, I’m out as well.”

“Well then, we can toast empties to one another,” she asserted. “To our first date. May we fill each other’s cups.” I smiled, and she did too. “I think we should meet at the same time next week. Same place, too.”

“You mean you want to do this again?” I quickly regretted my words. But for all the marvelous dreams I had summoned and the sensory worlds I established, I had to weigh the options.

With her, I had a chess partner and drinking companion, perhaps more of a dream than I would have liked to admit, even if it entailed frustration with my fingers and unrealized tangibility. And without her, I had completely unoccupied worlds and uncharted dreams. She was right; it was good to meet.

“You mean you don’t want to?” she asked. Her eyes looked mournful, but she had little sadness in her voice.

“No, no. I’m so happy that you do. Yes, that will work for me.”

Her teeth shone brightly in the darkened room. “Amazing. I’ll see you then.”

I gingerly moved my cursor over the button that would end the date.

“Bye,” I said, then tapped the mousepad perpendicularly. That was the bittersweet end of our date, and I relapsed into my silent struggles and solitary dreams. Perhaps one day, our dates would touch the magnificence of these dreams, but until then, I was glad to have a virtual companion.