It came to me swathed in a dream that should never have been. Many times I’ve tried to take back the dream, to reverie it into non-existence, foolish one that I am. Still, the memory and reality of it sticks to my consciousness like varying tentacles of drizzled honey, hardened in its path by the coolness of time. My mind fathomed it long before my heart knew it to be true. If it could happen to me, it could happen to you, I wanted to say. He’s married, the dream whispered. I refused to be the other woman.
* * *
Coming out of the state of deep relaxation was not a dramatic affair. I didn’t bolt upright in my bed, surrounded by sheets damp with the perspiration of an angst-riddled nightmare. Horrific screams failed to tear at my throat and threaten to rob me of my voice. I merely opened my eyes and I was there. Beside him. Fear held me captive in its grip where I lay, afraid to move or breathe. Fragmented images of Tanzora Cooper’s Friday night Hatha Yoga class at the YWCA flashed through my head. Pranayama, I told myself. Relax, meditate and breathe.
His shallow breathing, without the slightest hint of a snore, was the only sound to penetrate the darkness of the room. But inside my being, the beating of my own heart reverberated in my ears, thudding like too much drum from an overzealous rhythm section. “You’re married,” I spoke softly to his broad back as I quietly molded my body to his and spooned him. And then there was no sound. No rustling of sheets, no thudding in my ears, no inhale-exhale from the warm body in silent repose next to mine. That undeniable moment spoke volumes and told me all I needed, but dared not wanted, to know.
He heard but chose to ignore. Even his breath had stopped breathing, it seemed. “How could you do this to me?” I wanted to shout. “You have a wife!” I fought from yelling. Instead, I quietly rolled out of the bed that still held the slightly musty, erotic scent of a sexually placated married man embedded in the sheets—a scent which would linger in the bed, in the room, in my nostrils, long after he was gone.