The Fitted Sheet

The dreams seemed innocent at first. They were always the same, and they happened when I had been really bored or frustrated during the day. They were "a consolation."

That's how they would put it, around here.

They were the same for a long time. Like, months--but the routine around here makes every day seem like a Monday in the rain.

I'd fall asleep, and wake up in a garden. The air smelled like lilacs. I was always comfortably seated at a very tasteful, black iron table with a pane of red glass as its surface. Across from me was always the same charming, handsome man. He looked like I have often wished my father looked, but with kinder eyes and better cheekbones. We would talk and laugh about the world. When I seemed happy, he would reach for my hand across the table and give it a gentle squeeze. I would wake up in an embarrassing state of excitement. Some solitary sins followed, but that goes on a lot here, given the routine.

You know, lots of the people here are extremely gay. I have no problem with that, although everybody else here can't even talk about it. I think they like pretending to be very serious about the rules in public, and then passionately breaking them when they're alone together.

"A spa for hypocrites," I said to him in a dream one night. That was the first time he laughed like he couldn't help it. I loved it, even though I felt bad for saying it. It was only a dream, right?

About six weeks ago, the dreams changed. He became wickedly handsome. I mean, DILF. I think that happened because the conversations changed, but I know you'll think I'm disturbed or something. They changed because we stopped talking about the world and the people in it in general--we weren't nice to the general population, by the way--and, in a way that seemed very gradual and safe, we started talking about me.

Authenticity is very important to me. I mean, I ended up in this place because I'm that way, you know? But he started persuading me that I didn't know what authenticity means. He didn't offend me at all, though. Not once. He didn't insult my intelligence. He just asked me questions and found all of my answers totally mind blowing. No one around here seems to realize that I am anything but my uniform. As long as I stay meek and obedient and do my chores, I could be anyone. I could be no one.

What impresses me most is passion. When someone passionately defends their beliefs, I get excited. There are so many fakes in the world, you know?

In fact, most of the people who run this place are totally faking it like, half the time. He seemed to understand exactly why that makes me mental. If the whole point is to live by this old, beautiful story, and then you don't, what's the point?

I like making sandwiches for the unhoused. I never actually get to talk to any of them, though. They are polite when they can be. All interactions are humiliating for some of them, so they keep them brief and efficient. But why are so many people unhoused? Why are so many people hungry, or wandering mad through the streets? Isn't the whole point that people in need deserve our compassion, our assistance, and most of all, that they need to be treated with the respect you would treat anyone with? I mean, the protagonist of the story liked to hang with thieves and sex workers, you know?

The protagonist of the story also has a special fondness for poor, desperate people, in every version. We are supposed to be treating the story like a guide book, right? He healed some of their minds with magic. Doesn't that show you actually care?

But we don't really care what they think or how they feel. We just want to get them out of the way so we can go on shopping and enjoying our lattes. We don't seem to care that wealthy idiots with strange hang ups are running the world. They are doing it badly.

We don't get much news here, and we don't go out a lot, but still. It's all crazy. He was seriously interested in my thoughts about culture and politics. I thought what goes on around here was just about the only way out of the mess out there. Since the pandemic, especially. But this is fake, too. Just in a different way.

"Screaming zealots will always drown out the mild mannered relativists," he said in my dream, just last night. I think he's right. Actually, I think I knew that already and he just put it properly. He also said that passion shouldn't be mistaken for courage or wisdom. I'm pretty sure I agree with that, too. Those words (courage and wisdom) made me weirdly uncomfortable, though. It was the first time that had happened in one of the dreams. I didn't like it. He kissed me at the end, too. Just on the cheek, but he did.

I'm trying to clean my room. I mean, the routine is strict, and I can't ever leave a real mess, but there are ways to make it look good without working too hard. I think that's what we were really talking about when we talked about actors and politicians and people like that, you know? You can have a clean room and a guilty conscience.

Anyway, I'm cleaning my room in a serious way because he told me last night that we have to meet in person. I laughed pretty hard at him when he said that. I was really howling, and breathing hard through my nose made me smell him in a way I hadn't before. It would have been gross, if it wasn't so good. He smelled like he had just showered and shaved with a gel made of the tears of people in the middle of an orgasm.

"I'm dreaming," I said. "You're not real."

"I am exactly as real as you wish me to be, Maria," he said. No one has ever talked to me like that before. The people around here sometimes use old, strange words in normal moments, but they're just reciting something they've memorized, to intimidate people who don't think much but learned their lines by heart as kids.

He comes up with this stuff on the fly. It's all original and authentic. He means everything he says. He seems to understand me, too. Not because he has to, but because he wants to, you know?

"How can you come here, though? There's no way to travel from a dream to Sicily. Besides, I can't have guests, especially strange men. You know that!"

He didn't get mad or anything. He sighed, and he stood up from the table for the first time in any of the dreams. I was a bit creeped out when he did it, honestly. I was even a bit afraid. It was intense. I didn't want to wake up.

He came around the edge of the table, all careful and slow and never breaking eye contact with me. His eyes are always the same, beautiful color. They're that kind of blue that makes you think, "Oh yeah, right. Contacts. Weird, colored contacts that will probably give you an eye disease. Vanity. No cap."

If heaven is real, it should always be that color.

He knelt down in the dream green grass next to me. He took my hand, and said, "Maria, I will become real for you. I know that you are married to his son, but that isn't a real marriage. We should be able to use our bodies to celebrate how well we understand each other, and how much we like each other.

Sick and old, we will lie in our cold, stinking beds and wish that we had taken this chance. I do not want to treat you like a possession or a servant. I want to celebrate the fact that you are yourself, in spite of everything that has tried to make that impossible. If you wish it, I can come to you, in secret. We will have to sneak away, to the little beach that is not far from your room. There is a secluded cave not far along that beach. I want it to be ours, even if only for a single night.

If you would like to leave the drab, living death you are pretending to believe in now, for a life that makes you glad you are alive and have a body, you will answer when I knock."

I have to be honest: I am cleaning my room, and I do not know why. We're running away into the night, right? I shouldn't be worried about my ratty toothbrush and the hospital corners. Fitted sheets show that evil is real. Why does it have to be so difficult?

I'm not sure I believe he can, or will, be here. Maybe I have lost it. I mean, maybe I have had one of those psychotic breaks or something.

I wanted to believe. So much. But if you look at all the stupid, ugly things people do and say, even around here, how can it be true? Maybe he's right. Maybe what's true and real doesn't show up in most stories. Maybe we will have to write a new one, together.

I don't believe it.

He's here.

At the convent of Palma di Montechiaro. At one in the morning.

My grandmother was so happy and proud when they dropped me off here. I've seen her cry before, but never like that. Never with joy that she couldn't contain. The rosary she gave me is always with me. She is no hypocrite. But how much does she understand?

Who else would come here, now, like this? UPS? Jehovah's Witnesses?

Who else would knock?

I have to answer the door. Fuck this fitted sheet.

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This story is a postmodern improvisation upon this curious tale: