Dream Date With A Glass Of Merlot

I smile graciously at the shiny, plastic face of the maître d’ as I sweep through the candlelit entrance. Looking directly into the immovable gaze of his painted eyes, I thank him as I pass. I feel intoxicatingly powerful; the restaurant is an unfamiliar world where I am a celebrity, a queen, where I have some concealed power that fills me with vibrancy and vitality.

I am sure this is going to be a spectacular evening.

I look around the vast, elegant room. My eyes take in the tables, peopled with diners whose faces will not quite come into focus, yet whose bonhomie fills the space with an almost palpable warmth; a glow of good times that is infectious. So infectious that it does not bother me in the slightest that I do not seem able to recall why I am here.

A strong sense that I am in the right place and that everything will become clear propels me across the centre of the floor as I look around to see which table my seat is at.

The plush, purple curtains encircling the dining space look decadent rather than gaudy. The orangutans playing brass instruments in the corner wear ill-fitting waistcoats, but I suppose we cannot all be dressed as fabulously as moi, can we?

I am wearing a scandalously low-cut dress in some sort of mauve satin that I have never seen before, but never want to take off again. It clings to my figure like it cannot get close enough to my naked skin, and I am delighted to see it pairs perfectly with my favorite indigo heels. The heels seem higher than usual, but, conversely, easier to walk in.

Perhaps those calf exercises I have been doing are paying off?

Although now I think about it, didn’t I stop doing them months ago?

Both incongruous thoughts drift away as the maître’ d reappears at my shoulder and guides me towards an empty table for two. Cheekily, he has swapped his plastic doll’s head for that of a cat. I do not give him the satisfaction of acting surprised. Instead, I allow him to seat me on a large marshmallow and begin taking off the suede gloves that I have just noticed I have been wearing all evening. Or have I? I place them down on a side plate that looks like an upturned sombrero. A pale busboy with no discernible features appears immediately to whisk them away, just as he should.

Then I see my date. As soon as I lay eyes on her, I know that she is the one I am here for. She reminds me of someone, but I cannot grasp the fleeting association as it runs by, flashing its lascivious ankles, daring me to recognize it. It flits by, and my attention is once more drunk up by the vision before me.

She is the loveliest creature I have ever seen. Her lips - if she had any - would be the deepest red; her eyes the wildest blue, the most alluring brown, a green more intriguing than any emerald, and a black like impenetrable night, filled with secrets, latent with the promise of a new day.

And red. Red most of all. Red like blood. Red beyond even her lips. Her eyes red like a wine so thick and potent that one sip would leave me drunk forever.

Except, of course, she has no eyes.

I am transfixed, an exquisite tingle rising through my body, finishing somewhere in my chest and resting deliciously below my throat. I surprise myself by letting out an involuntary gasp, a little cry of unexpected pleasure, which seems perfectly in keeping with the mood of the place.

As if in reply, those non-existent lips form a smile, and she greets me by name. My breath catches, a hot flush licking up from my cheeks to my temples.

The capricious maître’ d, still wearing his cat’s head but now in a pink tuxedo, pulls back the seat for my luscious date, who slinks impossibly down into it.

Again, I get a sense of the familiar. That voice. I know that voice. But that cannot be right, as I have never met this person before. I don’t even know, or care, if she is actually a person.

Something about her appearance is bothering me, but I don’t know what, and the feeling fades away.

“Well,” she says, coquettishly, “I believe it is traditional that we talk on a first date.”

I blush. I have been staring at her. She is reassuring and familiar, yet entirely unconventional and intriguing. Like an old friend who I have never met before. And no matter how well-known she seems, there is something about her that is different, other.

Suddenly, it clicks. I realize what I have not been seeing.

The long, elegant neck, the single lip that runs around the rim, the sheer redness that has been screaming at me, yet seems to come from nowhere. I know what it is about her that has been eluding me…

She is a glass of wine.

I giggle, amused at my own folly in not noticing sooner. She gives the impression of a smile. Despite her lack of human features, I can still hear her and feel her, and I know what she wants me to know, and she makes me feel so good and… and why is that?

I am still missing something, but perhaps that is okay? Perhaps I do not need it, whatever it is. Maybe I am fine just as I am?

“That’s the spirit, kiddo,” she says to me in someone else’s voice, and I smile, because I wanted to hear that more than anything in the world.

I cannot bask in the glow of her words for long though, as she continues

“We haven’t got much time, sweetheart.”

I know she is right, although I don’t know how. And I think we are supposed to be doing something, but I do not know what either.

My ebullience has gone. I am shy, unsure of myself.

“Why are you here?” I ask timidly, ignoring the room around us, even as it shrinks inwards. Diners disappear and the focus somehow tightens on both of us, me and a glass of wine, sitting at a table.

“Because you invited me,” she replies, and I realize this is true, but again I do not know how or why I did that.

“Why?” I ask, simply.

“To say goodbye, my love,” comes the soft, tender answer; compassionate yet tinged with regret, it sets something off in me and I feel a huge tsunami is being mystically held at bay by a spell that could shatter at any moment, washing me away into an ocean I cannot return from, or smashing me against a shore that I never want to walk on again.

“Goodbye?” I ask, lost, “but I don’t know you?” And I say it like a question because right now I don’t know anything - not even what I do and do not know.

“Well, that’s because I am not all of me. I am just a part. The part you wanted to say goodbye to.”

This makes strange sense, but I immediately spot the trick…

“Where is the rest of you then?” I ask, my voice laced with suspicion born of a fear that something vital is being taken away from me.

“Don’t worry, my love. The rest of me is scattered about here and there. In trees. In the smell of strawberries. I’m sort of in everything, really. Even in those awful oil pastel drawings you do!” Here we both laugh at a shared memory, and it does not occur to me to question how she can remember it too?

“And I am in you, my dearest darling. Remember when you walked in here tonight, you felt like a Queen? Well, that was always how you saw me. And now I am in you, you get to be a Queen too. Sometimes, when you feel like it.”

I nod. This seems right. This seems true. This feels like freedom, even as I dread the wave building behind me, ready to destroy me as soon as I turn my head and catch sight of it.

“Can I visit you?” I ask, unwilling to submit to a goodbye just yet.

“Well, maybe not quite like this, but I’ll always be here, in some form.” She gestures expansively to the room around her, which seems to balloon outwards, distending like blown glass as our attention returns momentarily to it.

“Where is here? Where are we?” Trying to be sneaky, I think that if I can find my way back here then maybe I will not have to say a final goodbye.

“Sweetheart,” she says, responding to my thoughts, not my words, “we are only saying goodbye because you want to. You are ready, and it is time.”

There is a sweet tang of forgiveness, the first taste of lightness and hope in my breast. A chink is cracked through the lump of coal my heart has become, and a sliver of something brighter sneaks in and lodges there. Acceptance, maybe?

“Where are we?” I ask again, this time out of curiosity, without ulterior motive, although I get the sense I should know the answer already.

Looking around appreciatively, like an architect in a beautiful building, she replies,

“We are in your head, my love.”

As soon as she says it, I realize I am dreaming, and the surprise nearly jolts me awake, but her presence calms me, and I try to hang on to the dream for a while longer. I do not want to leave her, to wake up, but I also know I cannot stay here.

She is as conflicted as I am. As I understand this, I know that she is sad too. More than sad. She is filled with grief.

So am I.

Why is that?

“I had hoped we could enjoy this a while longer,” she sighs, her sorrow clawing into my chest as panic blooms where once a tingling rested.

I am suddenly sure that I have not got long to fulfil my purpose here. Riding a surge of conviction, I take the plunge. My voice is clear and true as I say

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, my love,” she replies.

I am about to wake up. I know there is something I have forgotten. Something big. Something that it is time to remember again. And yet, an absurd question pops into my head and I blurt it out without thinking

“What kind of wine are you?”

With a last look from those not eyes that finally settle into a hazel I know so well, she gives me the inevitable answer

“Merlot.”

“Vanessa!” I wake, her name exploding in my head.

I REMEMBER!

I flinch and draw my knees upwards, trying to protect myself, as her memory hits me like a charging rhino, knocking the air from my lungs, skewering my soul.

I lie gasping, coiled awkwardly in the damp duvet. I am holding a sodden pillow tight to my chest; like I do every night. I keep squeezing it, ravenous for the tiny comfort it offers in her absence.

I hear a low keening. It sounds as miserable as I feel, and I focus on it rhythmically until I realize it is coming from me.

Time passes.

My breathing relaxes.

In the gloom I see the last, empty bottle of her Merlot on the bedside table and smile to myself even before I recognize what I am doing. Rolling over, I reflect that it always gives me vivid dreams.

I have the strange sensation of having made it through some terrible trial.

Maybe I have.

I feel exhausted, but somehow lighter. Something has shifted.

As I descend peacefully into a deep sleep, I finally let go of the pillow.