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I don't know why I started dreaming of Mercedes, but thinking back on it, the coffee may have been the reason I started to.
I really didn't know what qualifies as being somebody's friend, nor what calling somebody my friend was like. I could say, at least, that a few things had started to change between us—or were changing, like weather conditions in the teeth of a storm. Though we didn't talk much during class aside from the polite hellos between acquaintances, we'd fallen into the habit of taking our lunch together, by ourselves, in some retired part of campus. Mercedes liked plants, so we usually went for the second patio where the younger students had their recess, which also functioned as a kind of greenhouse. It was nice and somewhat damp, and the sun never shone so as to cover the entire courtyard. All the primary school students were in class at that time, so we had the place to ourselves. Only once did a teacher ask why we were there, after which we were left alone. Each room of the three floors must have been, in some way, soundproof, for it really felt like we were completely isolated, like a little bubble shielding us from the violent ends of the universe. That, in and of itself, felt like a dream. Even back then, without realising it, we were slowly building a place for each other.
That particular day Mercedes brought something from home for me. She seemed oddly excited about it and, in retrospect, I can see why now: until then, she had rarely ever showed me the things she liked unless I asked. It's embarrassing to think about now, but it was usually me showing her something by way of making conversation, as if trying to prove myself to be interesting. Truthfully, I hated this the most about being around her, but I simply couldn't help it; stripped of all the pretence that came with being an adolescent, that was my biggest fear: that she would one day begin to lose interest in me. The mere thought of it was intolerable. So I told her about everything: my parents, my hobbies, my music. We met because she liked my coloured pens. Me being me (around her, anyway), I ended up showing her the shop's worth of stationery that I had at home.
That's just the kind of effect that she had on me.
"Have you ever had café de olla?" she asked me the previous Friday, as we waited for each of our parents to pick us up. She was sitting on her desk, her shapely legs swinging back and forth like two pendula. Unlike me, who was a little too thin to be flattered by anything constricting, black tights really suited her figure.
"No, I haven't," I said, giving it some thought. "Coffee of...something?"
"Oh, uh...I guess you would just say 'potted coffee'," Mercedes said, sucking her lips in. I watched them make a thin line from cheek to pillowy cheek. "But I guess all coffee nowadays is potted, huh? What a boring translation."
"That happens to me all the time," I smiled. I liked her tangential manner of speaking quite a lot. "Somebody will ask me for the meaning of something in Japanese, or in French or something, and they're always disappointed when it's just the same in English."
"Yeah! It's no fun, like it loses its mystery, or something," she laughed, though I could hear a new flavour of strain in her voice. Mercedes was no stranger to stuttering her way through sentences, but very rarely did she force her words to sound natural. I didn't know what to make of it, so I just didn't say anything. "Anyway! Not that there's anything mysterious about it. I just figured that, well, it's getting colder out, no? My grandma is visiting this weekend, and she makes it unbelievably well. Old people and their recipes, you know? So, yeah. I want you to try it. How about I make you some and bring it next week?"
I remember how the wind picked up in that moment, and how the soft fragrance of the ash trees, lined up outside the classroom windows, slipped in right between us, parting my mouth ajar. I could smell the scent of Mercedes's shampoo dancing around it, ribboning off the gentle waves of her parted bangs.
"If you want, of course!" she quickly followed. Surprise must've shown on my face. "I know you said you only drink tea, and café de olla can be an acquired taste, so...maybe I'll tell you what's in it, first."
It didn't matter to me what went into making it. I wasn't picky with food in the same manner that she was. What stole the words from my mouth instead was that, for the first time since meeting her, she had asked to share something of hers—direct, well-formed missives in the active voice: 'I want you to try it'. 'I make you some'. The taste of the active voice was intoxicating, and I took an instant liking to it. Being the object, the one on the receiving end—taking the vulnerable accusative, deferring form to the nominative—was completely new for me.
I remember how happy she looked when we made plans for having it during recess, like sunlight pouring through the surface of a river. If I looked close enough, it almost felt as if I could see all the way to the bottom, and pictured myself as the source of her joy.
"I got a new thermos," Mercedes said, pulling a thick cylinder from her backpack and holding it out to me. "Isn't it cute?"
It had a clean, matted, off-white design, with the brand name emblazoned on it in small, stylised letters. I did think it was cute, so I told her so. I liked that her hands were too small to hold it with only one.
"The occasion called for it," she said, looking smug.
"You got it just for this?" I said, smiling, and watched for her fluster. It was not like me to tease, but it was simply too easy to ignore. "Well, then. I feel special."
"Stop," she laughed, clicking her mouth in that funny way of hers. Bull's eye. "Typically, you'd serve it in, like, these clay mugs, right? But like, I couldn't bring those from home because I didn't wanna break them so...not that this is anything like clay, but I read that this thermos is really good at keeping things hot and that's important. I mean, don't you agree? Look, you know it makes sense, so don't you dare laugh."
"I never said it didn't make sense!" I said, or really, I giggled. It felt strange in my mouth, like pronouncing words in a foreign language for the first time. In many ways, it was; I realise now that there are many more ways in which we communicate beyond the shackles of language, and what Mercedes and I were doing was nursing the seeds of a pidgin that only we understood.
Mercedes set a little cloth on the floor upon which she placed the thermos. cleaning it with a sanitising cloth. I watched her do this while focusing on her mouth, which always shifted when she was focused, as if she were silently speaking to someone. Her nicely-shaped lips didn't fully close at the centre, leaving this tiny little opening through which, sometimes, you could see her teeth. I found it impossible to ignore—as if it were the focal point of her entire person. Truthfully, it'd be silly to pretend that I wasn't obsessed with it. I loved that the more relaxed she was, the more perfectly oblong the gap became, like a tiny blue ship in a sea of pink flesh. It was completely indicative of her mood, a one-to-one map of her heart, and it held me in a trance.
I wondered sometimes if she'd let me hold my index finger directly in front of it so that I could feel her soft, wet breath condense on it.
"No puede ser," I heard her say, just under her breath. I understood, at least, that she was upset.
"What happened?"
"I...," she said, drawing a heavy sigh. She ran a hand through her hair. "The thermos...you're supposed to use the lid as a cup."
"Sure, that makes sense."
"Yeah, but," she said, looking genuinely distressed. "There's only one lid. I...forgot to bring another cup."
I remember blinking a few times, and the sound of a classroom door being shut somewhere upstairs.
"We can just share the lid, then," I said, with such a lack of awareness that, even now, horrifies me. I can only imagine how she must have felt. "I don't mind."
"Are you sure?" she asked, after looking at me for a moment. The gap on her lips closed. "I mean, like, it doesn't bother you?"
"It doesn't," I said, easily, with my terse, teutonic directness. "As long as it doesn't bother you, of course. And as long as you're not sick."
"Right. Okay, then."
"Yep.
"Then...you try it first."
Thinking back on it, I find it funny that it was she who immediately found meaning in drinking from the same cup, and not me. I had made such a fuss about her making something for me that it didn't dawn on me that now, without any warning, we were going to share it like wine drank from the same chalice. It was, though, very much the way Mercedes operated. She liked to—or rather, she couldn't help but to—anticipate and nurture meaning out of the most mundane of soil; where I could only see a field of flowers, she could see the outline of a forest. This would cause some problems later on, but I found it (and still do) nothing short of a spellbinding—like she could tap into the waters of the future and know where it would disembogue.
I wish I could recall what followed in order, my memory of that moment. Now, it only exists in my head as fragmentary images, tenuous microcosms I can peer into only if I concentrate. Of course, I remember the coffee. I remember its taste and the aroma of cinnamon under the star anis. I remember, too, the smell of the moss by the begonias and the way the sun cut sharp between the light and the shadow. I remember the way she looked at me as I took my first sip, her eyes itinerating between mine, the lid, and my hands; I know now that she must've felt from the start what I was only beginning to sense—a sudden shift in my chest, as if something struggled to fit in my ribcage.
How is it? She asked me. It's delicious, I answered. Good, she said, and tucked her hair behind her ear.
When the lid switched hands from mine to hers, she placed her fingers on mine, using her thumbs for support. My mouth parted as if shock had rendered my jaw immobile, and when I looked up at her—perplexed and, let's face it: afraid—I knew that she felt something as well. Her eyes were cast down, spotlights focused on our arms, and her lips drew a beautiful straight line across her lips. No gap under that sweet tension, interrupted only when she brought the coffee to her lips. Her throat rose gently as she swallowed.
I'm really glad you liked it, she said, lowering the coffee down to her lap. She peered at me, her almond eyes squarely on mine, and I found myself lost in all manner of ways. I really did, I managed, as if defending somebody's honour—hers, I suppose. It tastes, I thought suddenly without any reason or precedent, like I imagine you would. I froze. I don't know what or if emotion showed in my face, or whether she noticed it or not—if she did, she didn't point it out. She simply smiled, as if she could read it off my mind.
The first thing I do is see.
I see the vast expanse of the sky—an uninterrupted shroud of blue, punctured throughout with burning, argentum stars. The moon, like a giant old pearl weathered by time, pools its bright light over me, and I can see with such clarity that at first I was hard-pressed to reckon myself anything but awake. After my sight, which bears me into this world, my sense of hearing is the next to come back to me, invariably, when a soft breeze rouses the feather grass around me. I hear it rustling, like wind chimes in the summer, before the rest of my senses arrive, one by one, as if in a procession. It smells of olive, rosemary and thyme, mixed to just the right balance so as to always catch my attention though never steal it. The air is always mild and inviting, with an uncanny sort of warmth that I'm sure I have never felt in real life. I suppose, though, that the nature of my dreams—of our dreams—hardly precludes them from being counted as reality as well. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
That first one wasn't any different. I remember not moving for a long time—not so much out of fear or confusion but because it took me a while to realise that I could—that I had any sort of body at all. I simply stared at that never-ending night sky, noting the rhythm of its tiny, twinkling suns. It was only after I felt the low grass around me that I tentatively flexed my fingers, combing through its soft, green blades. After some time, figuring that I wasn't waking up any time soon, I hoisted myself with my arms and sat up, surveying the area around me. As there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the moonlight illuminated the land plainly before me. I lay at the landing of a step near a plain, overlooking a large, rounded valley. A few lines of short, lush trees sloped down into the base of the hills, drawing my eyes, as it were, towards the horizon: I saw a beach, flanked on both sides into a rocky cove, leading into the ocean. I didn't recognise the place at all and yet, as with many of our dreams, none of it felt particularly unfamiliar. How should I put it? It was as if an artist were to draw a sparrow from memory. The sparrow need not exist for it to take shape on a canvas and, once drawn, for it to evoke a sharp memory.
What did surprise me though, once I noticed, were the clothes I was wearing. They were, for a lack of a better word, simple—as if a large, folded cut of what I knew to be linen had been wrapped around me, hoisted onto my torso by two simple knots on my shoulders, draping above my ankles. I guessed, at first, that it was some kind of dress, or maybe some type of robe. Wrapped around the waist, as if to give it the little shape it had, was a simple leather girdle belt. There was nothing else to it; I was barefoot, and I wore nothing underneath. I suppose I should have felt more vulnerable, given the circumstances, but the layers of linen felt soft and gentle on my bare skin, and I couldn't find it in myself to feel anything but natural—as if I'd never worn anything else my whole life.
That first time—before I knew where to go—it was a little gasp that turned me around. Behind me lay nothing but the face of that small, rocky cliff, like the underside of a terrace. I couldn't find the source of the sound. The sides, though, could be easily scaled by walking around, its right flank forming a natural path up the edge of the valley, so I decided to head in that direction. Or, at least, such was my intention; a short moment later, I heard a sudden flutter of grass somewhere above me and, when I cocked my head up to have a look, there came another gasp. This time, though, it came from me.
It took me a few moments to register it, held back by disbelief, but my sight was so crisp that there was no mistaking it—I could have recognised her by silhouette. How could I not know it was her, looking right back at me, the wind sweeping her hair? Neither of us spoke, nor moved, our gazes barely wavering. I remember feeling, out of all the emotions I could have possibly imagined to feel at a moment like this, a sense of euphoria. It wasn't joy, and it wasn't happiness, for both imply a certain level of control. This was different, primal even, like a visceral longing to be caressed by the sun—and it seared itself into my heart. For such a short moment, the measure of its impact is something I've never been able to grasp.
For a long time, I wondered what it was about that day, about the sips of the coffee, that pulled me into that world. It had been the first time and, with it, the start of our shared existence; I desperately wanted to immortalise it with a reason worthy of its importance. The reason however, far from being anything grand and particularly rare, was really quite simple: that was the first day that, when it was over, after her name was called over the loudspeaker and she crossed the threshold of the classroom door, I started missing Mercedes. A holiday, a weekend, a single night—it didn't matter; There was not a moment of time that I didn't wish she were around. If I thought it was silly and selfish, I had to concede that it was also clear as day—I hadn't yet dreamt of Mercedes, but that night I started to.
And, as it turned out, I wasn't the first one of the two—though that hardly matters when you consider that, somehow, joined by the same abstract desire, we were dreaming each other into the same dream.