I rang the doorbell at Veronica's flat and adjusted my backpack higher on my shoulder. It's funny how the backpack has become ubiquitous nowadays, no matter how old you are. I think it is probably the only legitimate way a man can use something akin to a purse and get away with it.
The door swung open and she stood, dark brown hair flung about her face with excitement. "Jonas!" she squealed and jumped into my arms to give me a huge hug.
"Ah, you remember me!" I joked. It had been a while since I had seen her, and her hug was tight and long.
Pulling me into her flat, she was gushing. "It's so good to see you! We have so much to catch up on. I'm almost ready, so let me just go finish freshening up and I'll be right out."
She walked out and I saw the little bubble butt of her behind bounce under form-fitting tights. Thoughts of utter depravity raced through my mind as she disappeared around the corner of her bedroom doorway.
I stood in the middle of her living room and noticed her extensive book collection. "No worries," I said. "I'm sure I can keep myself entertained while you're gone."
She smiled, and gave me a peck on the cheek, and then disappeared into her bedroom.
She had quite an eclectic collection of books, everything from philosophy to psychology to historical fiction. She seemed to have a particular fondness for the classics, and I couldn't help but smile when I found a copy of the
Kama Sutra
, which looked like it hadn't been put back away completely and stuck out just a little bit.
"Nice collection," I called out.
"What?" she yelled back.
"I said, 'Nice collection of books you've got here!" I repeated a little louder. I started to reach for the
Kama Sutra
book when the book bag shifted and began to fall off my shoulder. Reacting quickly, I caught it and stood up straight, catching it just before it slammed into the ground in one dramatic sweep.
Straightening up to reset the bag, I saw Vee's entertainment center with her extensive DVD collection, and decided to bypass the
Kama Sutra
to see if her tastes ran into the more movable of naughty images.
Sure enough, her collection seemed to contain all of the usual suspects. "Classics" (though only in the sense of their age, I suppose) such as
9 1/2 Weeks
and
Caligula
, were there, as well as
Body Heat
and
Lolita
.
Surely, she must have something more recent
, I thought to myself, and started moving to some of the disks that were just laying out on the shelf unshelled from their cases.
In addition to some
Sex in the City
DVDs (oh well) and some
Angel
and
Firefly
box sets (getting better!), I found a couple of disks that were generic with handwriting on it.
Now, I'm not a nosy person by nature, so I sifted through these absent-mindedly until one caught my eye:
Jonas: April, May, June
I don't know too many "Jonas'", so seeing my own name stare back at me was something of a shock. The last time I had seen Vee, though, was in the fall of the previous year, and here it was July.
Without even understanding why, because it was something I would never ordinarily do, I snatched the disk off the shelf and stuffed it into my backpack in-between the pages of a book I had inside.
Moving back to the bookshelf, I decided to pick up the
Kama Sutra
anyway and began leafing through the ancient illustrations. Included in this version were photographs of couples engaging in the acts as well, some of which were true feats of physical athleticism.
At that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped, feeling like I was falling a huge distance.
Lurching awake, my heart raced making me feel like I had just avoided falling off a cliff. I rubbed my eyes, thinking about how much I hated waking up from a vivid dream like that. I stirred on the couch, sitting up to find my TV blaring some sort of commercial for the boxed DVD set of
Sex and the City
.
The dream had felt incredibly real, but it was definitely too short to really warrant an examination.
As I watched the commercial on TV I started to think about Veronica, and realized that maybe I should make plans to see her, especially since I hadn't seen her in months. As I recalled, we last say each other around Halloween last year, and she was always fun to hang around.
I grabbed the phone and dialed her number.
"Hello?"
"Hey Vee, it's Jonas," I said, hoping she wouldn't find it too strange that I was calling her out of the blue.
"Jonas!" she cried. "So good to hear from you! How are you doing?"
"Doing well," I said, a little unsure of what to say next. "This may sound crazy, but i just had a short dream about you and it made me realize that I haven't seen you for a while. I was wondering if you might like to get together some time and catch up."
The words had come out in a rush, or so it felt. She seemed enthusiastic, though. "That's a great idea!" she said. "We have a lot to catch up on. It's been, what, since Halloween?"
I smiled. Glad to see my memory wasn't so far gone after all.
"Yeah," I said, "I think so. When do you think you'll have time to meet up?"
We chatted for a little while longer, made plans to meet up in a couple of days, and got off the phone. I was still feeling somewhat groggy from my brief-but-intense nap, and so I excused myself to get a proper sleep.
The night went by with blissful, solid sleep. If I dreamed, I had no recollection of them in the morning. I don't get to sleep solidly very often, so the rare occasion that I do meant that I could enjoy my day feeling extremely energetic.
For once, work flew by, and I returned home and dropped my book bag onto my office desk to begin sorting out the contents. Papers, books, DVDs, catalogues got spread out onto the desk for organizing into things that I had to pay attention to.
Wait a minute. DVDs?
Typically it's not a good idea to store DVDs outside of some sort of case or cover, because they get scratched. But there it was, a DVD lying on the desk with the familiar copper rainbow reflecting the light.
Turning it over, I got a chill:
Jonas: April, May, June
The strange sense of vertigo was unnerving.
What the hell!?
I turned the disk over and over in my hands, examining it and trying to determine if my eyes were playing tricks on me. If anyone had seen me I would have looked like a dumbfounded monkey confused about what the shiny-shiny circle was.
There was only one thing to do: I put the disk into my computer to see what was on it.
When the window opened on the computer I was stunned to see a series of video files labeled with my name and the date, starting (not surprisingly) in April and the most recent one in June, only about a week and a half before.
I double-clicked on the oldest file, and descended rapidly down after the White Rabbit.
The view was a high, wide panoramic view of Veronica's living room, showing the front door on the left, the bookshelf and media center in the middle, and a soft-cushioned chair to the right of the screen.
For a long while, nothing happened, then I saw Vee enter into the frame and begin moving things around the room. adjusting magazines on the coffee table (just out of view), and tidying up. In all appearances it looked exactly like what you'd expect when preparing for company.
Then she did something odd. She went over to the bookshelf and began adjusting the books. With a strange twist in my stomach I began realizing that she was making one particular book stand out among the others, in the exact same place as I had dreamt the
Kama Sutra
to be.
Even at this point, the realization of what was happening was too surreal to believe. For a crazy moment I began to wonder if I had had a psychic episode while taking a nap the previous night, but the rational side of my brain scolded me for being naive and stupid.
Something had happened, and whatever it was had been by design. Veronica's design.
Veronica's doorbell rang, and I was surprised to hear that the audio quality was stellar. It truly sounded as if Veronica had professionally mic'd her living room.
She went over and opened the door, and my heart flipped as I saw myself standing there, just as I had in the previous night's dream, adjusting my backpack on my shoulder.
Jonas!
Ah, you remember me!
It's so good to see you! We've got so much to catch up on! I'm almost ready...
The sense of deja vu was so strong if I hadn't already been sitting down I would have collapsed.
In the video, I watched Vee saunter out of the room, not even hiding my lascivious, lingering gaze at her incredible bottom as she exited the room. I blushed and felt a little bile rise in my throat as I watched the video-version of me be an incredibly sexist pig.
Video-me started looking around the room, and like a moth to a flame I found the
Kama Sutra
book that she had effectively dog-eared in the bookshelf for me to find; almost as if I had been coached, I turned and showed the camera the unmistakeable cover.
Vee walked back into frame, and handed me a glass. It was hard to tell from the video what it was, but I certainly seemed enthusiastic about the contents. Vee motioned for me to sit down on the chair facing the camera, which I did. She sat down on the couch, facing me with her back facing the camera.
"What have you been doing these past few months?" I asked. "You got any more clients?"
"More than I know what to do with," she said. "I've been trying different massage techniques and my existing clients have been referring me to their friends. I actually don't have any more room on my schedule and will have to start raising my rates."
