12.00

He's sharing our favorite backseat after pouring me drinks and receiving the same from me late into the evening. Somewhere deep in the cumulus of his coat his arm presses into mine. It's a forbidden gesture, but it's not unwelcome nor is it the first incident. People assume we are a couple, but we are not, have never been. We have the idea of it in common though. He's laughing with me about a childish pleasure we share, which makes us feel like neighbors and not the strangers we were and remain to be. In a dream he was the front seat passenger in a car my grandmother drove and I was strapped into the backseat gazing through the window. When we pulled over, he and my grandmother changed places by crawling over the hand brake and each other while I looked on in astonishment. In a dream we were lovers and he came to the room where I stayed in an old woman's house, but he never removed his clothing and when his handphone rang he answered it and left. Katz says when we dream about foreign men we are trying to reach an unknown part of ourselves. He does not look like the way I dream him. In dreams he is emaciated from illness, as he was when we first met. Over wine he showed me his driver's license. The picture on it was taken only months before I moved in and in it his eyes are black pearls glowing beneath wisps of long hair that reach the temples of a young, angular face. Now he has gained health back and his face is rounder. He let his hair grow some and seasoned it with dashes of blonde. I remember watching him move chess pieces on the board with long slender fingers, and those same fingers on my coat when touch was the most effective way to communicate imperatives. I'm watching him now and he is immovable in this chaos. Simply untouched by it. As he stands or as we walk swiftly, the swarm curls around him. It's as though he has no sense of the current. Nevertheless, he is surprised by my skill saying, Oh - you know this city better than I do. Who are you that part of me wants to be?

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