Shambhala Page 8

  “Well, there you go. It’s just a matter of time before you start going out.”

  It’s a good thing I didn’t mention the kiss, otherwise, based on his enthusiasm, he would have left me there at the table with his meal half eaten to start looking at wedding dates.

  “Okay, enough,” I said seriously, “we’ll see if anything happens between us. You, for the time being, don’t get too excited.”

  “Okay. I’ll be patient, but I think you’d make a fabulous couple,” he said seriously.

  “Come on, finish eating. It’s going to get cold,” I motioned with my head to his plate. But the food had already been cold for some time.

  After the initial excitement, the afternoon was quiet. We finished lunch, picked up the dishes and washed them and retired to the living room. We turned on the TV, though we weren’t paying attention to it as we started talking about our work weeks.

  “Do you have any plans for today?” my father asked.

  “No, nothing,” I answered. But it was also true that I hadn’t looked at my cell phone since I’d arrived at his house. I didn’t know if anyone might have proposed some interesting plan.

  My father Joaquín started channel surfing and I took the opportunity to check my phone. I had six messages from Ian.

  “Hello, Smurfette. How are you? I hope the fever is gone for good and you felt okay for clothes shopping. I sure liked your good-bye kiss...I wasn’t expecting it. I’ll call you tonight if you feel like it. I’m going to keep unpacking, I have a few more to go.”

  “The clothes! That’s right.” I’d completely forgotten about my innocent lie to get him out of the house. “Well, it’s better that way. Eating with my father has been very therapeutic,” I thought.

  “Hi, tough guy. I finished shopping and I’m with my dad now. Yes, let’s talk tonight. And cheer up with the boxes, I’m sure you don’t have much to finish the move,” I answered, returned my phone to my purse and went back to the dining room with my dad. I noticed when I came in that a movie had started.

  “What are you watching that’s so entertaining?” I asked, looking at the screen. “It sounds like...”

  “Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s starting now.”

  “Ah!”, I whispered, hypnotized, while I got comfortable on the sofa.

  “Do you want me to change it?”

  “No, leave it,” I said without taking my eyes off of the TV.

  After immersing myself for awhile in the story and without knowing why, one scene, where the protagonist starts obsessing with repetitive dreams he has, got me started thinking about mine from that morning, reproducing the three figures that appeared in the middle of the forest, the extraordinary height of two of them, and the sensations that they projected. That really caught my attention.

  “Last night I had a dream that was a little strange,” I said during the commercial break.

  “Oh, yeah? Why?” asked my father, interested.

  In a matter of seconds, I accessed the ‘archives’ of my mind, and I told the story with as much detail as my memory allowed. I watched my father listen with great interest, and at the same time, trying to find some significance in it.

  “Is this the first time you’ve had that dream?” he inquired with interest.

  His question left me a little taken aback. I hesitated a minute while trying to remember more accurately. Although the most logical answer based on my memories was a firm ‘yes,’ part of me was not entirely sure.

  “No,” I finally answered. “Well, the truth is that I’m not consciously aware of having dreamed it before, but there was something very familiar in those three figures.”

  “Could they be people you’ve seen before somewhere else?”

  “Yes. I think I’d seen them before.” I felt my eyes lost on the horizon, trying to keep my brain focused on reproducing those details that until then were proving so valuable. “Especially one of them,” I went on. “He was a very tall being, more than eight feet tall, and even though I couldn’t see his face, I know that I know him...”

  For a few seconds, they were both quiet. The only sound in the room was the commercials.

  “You know what? Years ago, I had some dreams, too, like the ones you just told me about,” Joaquín said thoughtfully.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Before I knew your mother, as I recall, I experienced several similar to yours but then I never had them again. I never understood why I had them or what they meant. The night before seeing her for the first time, I had the last one. In one of them there was a very tall, thin woman, very similar to your mother. That beautiful and unknown woman said something that, once I was awake, I completely forgot.”

  “The next day, an impulse took me to a park. I hadn’t been there in years. I was alone, there was no one with me. I took it as kind of a date with myself.

  “After I’d been walking there for awhile, I saw your mother from afar, sitting on a bench. I was paralyzed. She of course noticed that I was staring at her, and then I don’t know how, we were suddenly sitting next to each other. We started talking and I felt the time flying by. Before leaving the park, we set a date for the next afternoon, and that’s when we started going out.” He paused for a moment. “After that first fortuitous meeting in the park, we were never apart again.”

  “You know what’s strangest of all?” he asked rhetorically. “I felt like I’d known her all my life.”

  “What park was that?”, I asked, intrigued.

  “Here in Madrid, in El Retiro.”

  “How odd.”

  “Yes, it is. She came into my life suddenly and she left the same way,” he mused aloud.

  There was a long silence and in the meantime, the film came back on. We didn’t say anything else.

  *･｡.·.｡･*

  “Do you think there is intelligent life outside this planet?” I asked my father once the movie was over.

  “Yes, I’ve always believed it.” He paused briefly. “And you?”

  “Yes, I do, too.”

  “Do you want me to tell you a story?” he asked in a mysterious tone.

  “Of course.”

  “Many years ago, when your mother was pregnant, something very weird and unusual happened to us,” he said, reflectively. I kept listening without saying anything, he had my full attention. “One night we got back home from visiting your grandparents. At that time, we lived in Mósteles and didn’t have a car, which meant we used public transportation to go everywhere. The fact is we lived in what might be called the outskirts of that town, in a residential area of new construction where your mother and I had just bought an apartment and moved there after we got married.”

  I appreciated that he gave me a little of the back story to get some context.

  “There still weren’t many people there—just a few newlywed couples, or families with small children, had moved there,” he continued, “so the building, and those around it, were almost empty. Our buildings were at the end of the town.

  “As I said, that evening we came back late from Madrid. We were in the last bus that went to the stop closest to our house, but even so, from there to the buildings we still had a good stretch to walk. The streets were empty at that hour, and dark since there were no streetlights yet.

  “After walking a few minutes, near the first block of houses, we stopped for a moment to look at the sky. It was clear, and since it was a warm evening, we were entertained watching the stars.

  “We’d only been watching the nighttime show for a few moments when suddenly we saw a very bright light in the middle of the darkness. You can imagine the impression that made on us. We wondered if it was a shooting star but it didn’t die out as you’d expect. The light was intense, first whitish-blue and then yellowish-red. The tone changed randomly. The intensity of its brightness shone dazzlingly and then became more tenuous, but always latent, without disappearing entirely, without blinking like planes do. From time to time, it moved around, making comple
x circles, wide zigzags in any direction. It was a spectacle without equal.

  “After that intense and hypnotic dance, the illuminated object stopped, fixing its projection in a single color. It stayed fixed and unmoving for a few moments, until we realized that, whatever it was, it was getting closer and closer to us.

  “Your mother was afraid. She took my hand and pulled on me to keep moving. We were only a couple of blocks from our doorway.

  “I was amazed, absorbed. In spite of walking fast, I kept scanning the sky as I walked. My heart was beating fast, and I felt a great eagerness. It was a strange situation, disconcerting and happy at the same time. I couldn’t stop gawking at that light, until I noticed to my surprise that it was following us as we advanced.”

  “What do you mean, it followed you?” I asked.

  “Yes—we were walking and the light stayed on the sidewalk, making the same movements as we did. If we turned the corner around a building, the object automatically appeared behind it. Your mother got even more scared and we almost ran the few yards to our house.

  “It was fascinating to see how it accompanied us. It was as if it wanted to show us something, to greet us or communicate with us.”

  “What happened then?” I asked, intrigued.

  “When we got to the doorway, I was tempted to turn around and go back out to the street once more to see if it was still there, but your mother grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let me.”

  “That’s incredible!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, it was a one of a kind experience,” he said, smiling.

  “What do you think it was?”

  “I always thought it was some kind of superior being.”

  “Extraterrestrials?”

  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully.

  “And if they were extraterrestrials, what do you think they could have wanted?”

  “I don’t know, it’s something I’ve always wondered.” He paused and then continued, “You know what, sometimes I wondered if they knew your mother was pregnant...”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, frowning. I felt my heart starting to beat faster.

  “When you were little, sometimes you’d come to our bed saying you’d had strange dreams, with people who talked to you and explained things to you,” he insisted.

  My face maintained a look of doubt and confusion, but my heart, for some strange reason, started to slow down again.

  “I suppose that happens to all of us as children,” I said, dismissing the matter. “To dream about people who talk to you and explain things to you probably isn’t that unusual. I’ve even seen some of them next to my favorite cartoon characters,” I said, amused.

  “I suppose you’re right. And when we’re older, we keep having a lot of them, some so strange you don’t where they came from,” he laughed. “At any rate, you kept having them for a long time and from what you told us, they were all the same. You described the same people, landscapes, and similar scenes...it’s strange you’ve forgotten them.”

  “Now that you mention it, I’m starting to remember them, but I don’t think they’ll come back to mind, nor their faces nor what they told me,” I confessed.

  “Well, I suppose that at some point of our lives, we’ve all had recurrent dreams.” I got the feeling he was trying to downplay the issue.

  “Yes,” I answered, “like when you’re sick?”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  It was shocking to not be able to remember details something I’d ‘lived’ so many times when I was sleeping. If they’d been so repetitive, I should have a certain ability to evoke them, or some detail no matter how minimal, right? But no.

  On the other hand, I began to have some strong memories of some passages when I was sick from when I was a child. How strange it all was!

  “I told you about what happened when you were a kid in case it had some relation with what you dreamed last night,” my father continued. “It’s possible it has something to do with them,” he explained gently. “Maybe they were the same beings or people you ‘saw’ in your childhood.”

  “Why do you say ‘beings’?” I asked, uncomfortable.

  “I don’t know, I suppose because I don’t know any humans over eight feet tall.”

  Chapter 9

  Conflicted Feelings

  I arrived home feeling a little sad and disoriented. The afternoon with my dad was very nice and it was good for me to talk out some things with him, but now I was alone again, with no distractions or anyone to cheer me up or entertain me.

  Part of me didn’t feel like dealing with reality: Ian. I felt that something was missing, a strange perception of being incomplete.

  I threw the keys on the tray in the entry and walked into my bedroom. I dropped my purse on the bed. I took off my jacket and hung it up in the wardrobe. I went into the bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush, added some toothpaste, and started brushing my teeth while I took my socks off and got undressed.

  On the way to bed, I got my cell phone. I hadn’t looked at it again since I answered Ian hours ago. I had two missed calls from him and eleven Whatsapp conversations. I didn’t feel like answering anybody, and I didn’t. I turned off the house wifi, left the cell on the table in the office and I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Then I went back to bed and fell asleep.

  The next morning I woke up feeling a little better. The sun shone brightly through the windows. It was spring, but that reminded me of summer.

  I put on a bathrobe and went to the living room for my daily meditation. I tried to imagine myself inside of an energy bubble, one that would help me harmonize with the state I was in. I visualized an emerald green color to enhance the peace and balance of my emotions.

  I was able to stay in that state of tranquility for a few minutes, until the sun started going behind a dark cloud that threatened a strong downpour.

  I got up from the sofa and went to the window, opened it quietly and stuck my head outside. The air smelled like damp countryside. I filled my lungs with that fragrance and closed my eyes. There were almost no sounds, not even song birds. They must be getting ready for the storm, too.

  Suddenly, I felt a glow and my eyes flew open. It was lightening, and a few seconds later a thunderous sound made the building rumble.

  The storm was close.

  Soon the first drops began to fall, darkening the area where they were falling. Almost instantaneously, those timid pearls turned into a torrent of water, forcefully bathing everything in their path.

  Despite getting soaked, I enjoyed the sudden downpour. I just wanted to breathe in the weather around me. My lungs appreciated it and part of me felt like that breeze was cleaning me inside. My skin loved the water. It felt like a warm shower, except this time it was cold.

  I retreated back inside the house, my head and chest soaked, and closed the window. I felt strange. I wanted to go back to the emotions I’d felt the night before, only this time a little more clearly. My confusion centered on longing, on the feeling that I was missing something, or someone. Ian had come back and I should be happy. I thought that having him back in my life would placate that mysterious feeling of lacking that I’d had for several years. But I was wrong. Maybe it was time to ask when that hole had punctured me. Was it related to the death of Eric and Mom? Or was it before?

  I reeled when I realized that, actually, that feeling throbbed in my chest before the accident. I was always searching, trying to find something I couldn’t figure out. I still wasn’t able to identify it. My clarity only went as far as to tell me that it didn’t have anything to do with Ian or with my family. Whatever I was yearning for, I still couldn’t find it.

  “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life wishing for something when I don’t even know what it is, right?” I told myself angrily.

  But the problem is that I didn’t know how to get rid of that unhappy emptiness inside, or if I’d able to some day. However, I wanted to try to heal that emptiness once and for all. And then Ian�
��s dazzling image came to mind—his smile, his hair...a feeling of peace came over my being. I felt happy thinking about his body, his voice, and above all, that he had returned.

  Suddenly I remember that I hadn’t returned any of his calls the night before, so I got my phone from the dressing table and looked to see if apart from the previous two messages, there were any others.

  “Hi, I’ve called you a couple of times and...well, I don’t want to bother you. It’s late and you’re probably tired, or maybe you want some space to think about what happened yesterday. I understand that my coming back has been very sudden and you’ll need time to get used to the idea. I don’t want to upset you. When you’re ready, or you want to, or whatever, I’m here. Sending you a kiss and I hope you get some rest.”

  I read his message carefully a couple of times. I thought about what a good answer would be, something that wouldn’t distance him but wouldn’t give him any hasty hopes, either; something that would make him feel okay but that I would feel okay about, too...It was hard to think about humoring someone when I didn’t know what I myself needed to be satisfied. I decided I should be honest.

  “Hello, Ian. I got home late last night. I saw a couple of messages from you and some messages, but I ignored them. I was tired and I just didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

  Honestly, I loved seeing you, I felt very comfortable with you, but it’s also true I don’t know what to think. Right now I can’t promise anything, whether we’re going to be friends or if there will be something more between us. I don’t know what you’re thinking or what your intentions are, but whatever it is, I need to go slowly. Anyway, I must also confess that I would like to see you again, without any expectations. I’d just like to reconnect with an old friend. I think I need it right now. I doubt I could give anything more.

  I don’t know what else to say. I’d understand if now you want to think about what you want. I’ll be here.”

  Chapter 10

  The Proposal