The first time it came, she was sitting alone in the sun. Her aluminum-tubing/plastic-mesh chaise-lounge had sunken slightly under her weight into the patchy lawn of her toy-littered suburban backyard. Squinting against the blazing yellow sun, still too bright through her tightly closed lids, she was day dreaming her favorite cheap escapist visualization. The suggestive odors of coconut oil and sweat fit perfectly into the dream space. She held an image of a place, a home, a nest, with virtues that she had found so painfully lacking in the ticky tacky valley houses she had always lived in. It was an ancient stone villa, full of history, permanence, elegance and dignity, high on a bluff overlooking a calm clear blue sea. She knew that it was huge, spacious and labyrinthine, despite the fact all she had ever felt the need to conjure of her villa, was one small patio. Surrounded on two sides by tall white stone walls with massive doorways, loosely draped with billowing cream colored muslin, the patio led to rooms she had never visited. She just sat on huge velvet cushions looking out across an azure sea. Lavish, but minimal, the dream was nothing but the place. There had never been any action. Never any passion, just a dull contented humming. It had never before been one of "those" fantasies.
Before it came, each detail had always been flawless: the sky and sea an unbroken blueness, the marble deck a spotless mirror, the corners of each stone straight and sharp. But today, the patio was subtly, but profoundly, altered: occasionally a small irregular cloud would drift through the sky, a chaotic patch of whitecaps would appear far off on the perfect sea. Today it was more like a movie with some never ending insert shot of an empty room laid over with a unheard crescendo of strings demanding some inevitable event. Today she was breathlessly excited, as if waiting for a wild new lover to return to her bed.
When it first came she was suddenly startled and delivered back onto her K-mart lawnchair by the clear sensation of being touched. Her eyes flashed open and she stared at the spot on her thigh where she expected to see the hand of her child, or husband perhaps. But she was still alone, and the sensation was gone. Frightened, she called out, then got up, looked around, and listened. She could hear the soft sounds of the small branches in the trees rubbing against each other, she could hear the distant humming of an air conditioner, the faint roar of the freeway across the valley, and she realized it was quiet. She knew that she would have heard anyone there with her, their footstep, their breath. She sat back down, and tried to get back her private place, regain the juice, but it was lost.
