Tea Shop At The Edge Of Sleep

THE TEA SHOP AT THE EDGE OF SLEEP ~ Jared strolled down the sidewalk, chalked in carbon from the ceaseless traffic that roared alongside. He kept looking at his watch to keep his head.

At first glance, the watch was a black sports watch with bubbly features that read "11:37" in large black numbers. The second glance revealed a small and handsome businessman's watch with gold etchings that said "2:25."

With each successive look, both the watch and the time transformed. He looked at it at regular intervals should he lose concentration.

He walked on, waiting for the tea shop to appear. It was a surprising challenge to look for the shop and to remember to look at his watch. Like the two thoughts were to big to occupy his head at once.

Don't get tense, he told himself. Then you'll really blow it. Making room for a third concept, he looked at the faces of the drivers that wheeled by. They were awfully convincing. Women in their thirties wearing business suits that could have been supermodels if the stress of their ordinary lives weren't etched on their faces. Their unflinching faces. Staring ahead at the path before them. The balding, fat men in clunkers that would ogle other drivers. The minivans with silhouettes of children that their parents were trying to tame so they could focus on the road.

That was the common thread between them all: focused on the road. Even the oglers had to do it. Eyes ahead. The important things are ahead, not already here. Or so we're told. Nevermind the blurring buildings or the pedestrians strolling beside them, let alone the one stroller, the young man, looking for the tea shop, on whom the universe hung.

Just as Jared looked at his watch again, something soft bumped into him in a burst of fragrance.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said without looking at him. He grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her toward him with just enough lack of chivalry to cause a shadow of alarm to come across her face and her breath to stop. His eyes dove straight into hers. Then there was a look of dissatisfaction.

"Sorry. I thought you were someone else," he muttered. He had turned his back and continued before finishing the sentence.

He could feel her confusion warming his back. He did not turn.

Then it was there like it had decided to sneak up on him in his moment of distraction. The storefront was deceptively small. Every square millimeter was tooled with arabesque engravings, gold in wood, silver in wood, runes and scripts and perhaps even spells, each of them filaments of one root that stemmed back to a single concept:

Tea.

Jared felt a tension leave him that he didn't know he was carrying. But it was quickly replaced by a peculiar anticipation. His efforts had thus far been unyielding. Finding the shop was part of the battle. It was never in the same place twice. Then once he could find the place, he would have to reach deep into his heart for what (he hoped) would follow.

His shrewdness found him before he grasped the door handle. He summoned a grey, ornately embroidered robe and cloak out of his skin. Yeah, he wouldn't be able to do this twice. He'd be spotted the next time. But oh well. He had his chances and he was going to take them.

The door sang with a magical tinkling as Jared entered. As usual, the interior was slightly different than it was the last visit. He spied the counter where Rani was commanding her shadow to bus an empty table in a far corner.

She raised her dark oriental eyes and Jared felt them penetrate the the shelter of his hood. There was a perceptive light in the diminutive red gem fused into her forehead.

"Jared?"

"Who else?" he shrugged in a tone of defeat.

She smiled a sad, pitiful smile and shook her head. "You certainly don't learn a lesson easily."

"Neither does she. That's why we were so good for each other."

"She isn't here, Jared."

"That's cool. While I'm here, I'd like cup of True Seeing."

"You don't believe me."

No, I don't."

Rani sighed deeply and pulled out a small tin of herbs. She dumped them on the counter and spread them out into a sigil that luminesced bright blue and congealed into a delicate beige cup of steaming golden liquid.

"She's sitting at the table next to the window by the entrance. Incidentally she's having of cup of Concealing."

"You tell me now why?"

"So you can enjoy your tea together," she smiled. Her eyes didn't smile. They did something more like patting him on the head and telling him 'There's a good poor sap.'

The sleeve of his cloak nearly swallowed the cup as he took it and made for the table Rani indicated. There were two chairs. One was far too close to the table to be occupied. The other, facing the window, was just the right distance. Had she seen him approach the shop? Too late to think like this. He stood behind the chair some distance and took a sip.

She began to take shape. The dark auburn hair. The pink tube top. The jeans shorts. One hand was on the teacup, the other was teasing the base of the vase of little yellow flowers at the center of the table. Daydreaming. So she probably didn't see him enter. He smiled to himself.

Lookin' good, lookin' good.

He came around to the other chair.
"One of us is dreaming," he said.
The cloak and robe melted off of him and revealed his face, white t-shirt and jeans.

Her answering glare was so stone-like, that he wondered if she recognized him.

"Probably you. I doubt my concept of you would be this stubborn to sniff me out."

"Or maybe we're both dreaming."

"Possibly." She whipped her arms into a fold and leaned back in her chair, trying to look past him out the window. Shields up.

Tibetan gongs sang their monotonous voices through the sound system.

"What do you want Jared?"

"As if you didn't know."

"I told you, I'm married now. We're not getting getting back together."

"I wouldn't want to put you through the horror of getting back with me, Marian." His sarcasm was fine enough to cut a bone clean.

"Then WHAT?"

"I just want to talk."

She gulped down her tea, even though it was piping. The cup was absorbed into the table.

"Well, I don't."

"Why? Got something to lose?"

"Yes..."

Her work uniform uncoiled across her body from invisible space.

"...Valuable time. And customers."

"Yeah? Well I've lost a lot more than that."

"Bull. You have your health, your job, and I'm sure you still have your crazy religion."

She grabbed a rag from nowhere and began to wipe the table with the fury of a rotary buffer. Her hair fell into her face like she were trying to hide behind it.

She froze. She felt him press up against her from behind, and his arms gently wrapped around her waist. His cheek touched hers.

"I lost you."

He felt the heaviness of a guilty look cross her face.

"So like I said. I've lost a lot."

Heavier.

There was a trill of laughter. It wasn't her laugh of amusement. Nor was it a laugh of cruelty. It was the laugh she threw out when she was trying not to cry.

She ripped out of his embrace.

"You have got to be the only person I know who gets a gushing orgasm off of a guilt trip like this. You want closure? I sent you a freaking eight-page letter explaining everything. That's closure, right? Eight pages of closure? If that's not closure I don't know what is."

"The letter explained why you fell for some hippie roach you went to college with, but it didn't explain what happened to you and me."

She wheeled around.

"SO WHAT?"

"Marian, I kept my promise to you. I waited three years. Do you know how long that is? For three years I didn't date anyone else. Three years waiting for you to say something. If I can wait three years, you can spare a few minutes of explanation."

"Yeah, well I don't remember three years ago."

"I do, because you were important to me. Wasn't I important to you?"

For the first time since the exchange began, she was stunned.

"No! Not then, not now, not ever!"

Her eyes became completely black like two onyx stones.

"If you don't stop pestering me, I'm going to send you back to the waking world with a lot of pain."

"Do it. See what it gets you."

With movements too quick to follow, she grabbed the vase and shattered it on the table. She severed her other hand with the jagged glass and threw it on the floor. Her wound jetted a great circle of crimson around the twitching hand.

"Daddy! He's bothering me again!"

The hand exploded into the figure of a short and stocky man in overalls with dark hair and a full black mustache.

"I'm so depressed.." he mewled to himself. Then he saw Jared.

"You're standing close to my daughter!" he yelped. He pulled open Jared's pants and looked in.

"And you're MALE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEAR MY DAUGHTER??"

"Trying to reach her heart instead of beating her into submission. You should try it sometime."

The fat man's features froze.

"But I doubt that you're really her father. Or I couldn't do this..."

Jared raised his right hand and a bright blue ball of fire launched from his palm with explosive force. It hit Marian's father square in the chest, blowing open his overalls revealing thick curly hair, now smoking. He flew through the shop window from the impact.

"You, you brute!" Marian sputtered.

"I've been waiting a long time to do that."

"I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!!"

"Tell me what I want to know and you'll never have to see my face again."

She raised her hands which each gained a dark purple halo. Her father leapt to his feet and burst into a towering crimson demon with shaggy goat's fur and black horns twisting from it's skull.

"STAY AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!!!" he rumbled with sanity-blasting volume. Then he charged through the wall of the shop. Jared dove out of the way and the beast nearly fell into the void at the center of the shop floor.

"I'm only going to tell you what you need to know... I don't love you anymore!"

"..because??" Jared shot back.

The demon's great clawed fist was a blur as it swung fruitlessly into the floor where Jared had just sprang back from.

"...BECAUSE???" he cried out.

Another blow. Another dodge.

"Because you met some baby-faced arse-rag in college that could get you out of the house faster than I could?"

"What... did you call my husband?"

The demon flickered in and out of being, alternating with the appearance of its human shape.

It worked. She was so flustered, her flow of concentration to her father was interrupted.

"You still haven't learned. Your father let you down the last time you hid behind him. Now watch him fail you again..."

Jared gestured at the flickering monster and a ring of blue fire roared up around it. It shrank into a narrow pillar and burned her father out of existence, the wailing of the fire and the beast rang as one.

Jared was so proud of himself, that he failed to see the table fly at him. It smacked him like a large fly, knocking him into the void at the center of the shop floor. He watched as Marian's flushed face flew up and away. He fell past platforms suspended in space that held other tables with other patrons enjoying their tea. He fell into a sea of stars. And fell. And fell.

He had the sensation of falling onto his mattress with full force. His alarm blared loudly in his small bedroom as it announced the beginning of a new day and the end of all dreams.

~RM