I swept her into my arms, put my cheek against hers, called her my own name. I felt her weight, smelled Elmer’s Glue and Play-Doh and the juice of canned peaches. I rubbed her back, one hand covering both her shoulder blades, as she buried her nose in my collarbone. She pulled her head back so that her face, my face, was haloed by the sun. She smiled with her whole mouth open and laughed when I lifted her overhead.
Something cold and slimy hit me. As I returned to Anagram, I saw Dawn hovering above me, clutching the empty bowl of Ape Opus. I couldn’t move my arms: Matteo had one pinned to the floor under the table and Howie the other. I licked the soup from my cheek—delicious, like mist, earth, and honey. Shocked silence thickened the air like the moment before a thunderstorm. Faces joined Dawn’s in staring down at me. My skin felt loose and spent, as if I’d given birth from every pore. I could no longer view the memories of people passing, but I still held all I’d seen. The indifferent ceiling faded to pale blue.
I didn’t ask what I’d done. I convinced Howie and Matteo to release me. Dawn handed me a napkin for my face.
“She’s fine, she has a condition, she forgot her medicine, but she’s taken it now,” Dawn announced to the manager, the waiter, the other patrons. She went to retake her seat, but the grave waiter gently steered her away. The manager suggested we return another night soon, when I was feeling better.
Outside, Dawn glared at me like she had in the chapel the previous day.
“Dawn,” Howie said. “Jesus. She’s sick or something.”
“She’s not sick,” Dawn said. “She’s ecstatic.”
The lives around me in the restaurant had merged with my own, inhabiting my tissue. Now they’d been severed from me so thoroughly, I felt utterly alone, except for the presence of Dawn. Somehow, I still felt as if I were a part of her.
“Howie and I are going to find someplace to eat,” she said. “Maybe we’ll see you two next year.”
“Maybe,” Matteo muttered, after they’d walked away. “Shit.”
Back in our room, Matteo texted and Googled while I sat next to him in bed, sticky and spent. Light from a docking cruise ship shone through the windows. I closed my two remaining eyes so as not to bear witness to events occurring beyond the edge of our bed.
“Okay,” he said. “Mom says there’s a kind of fungus in southern Spain that can cause hallucinations. Maybe you picked up some spores. There’s also a huge amount of drug use here. I don’t know, one of the cooks, maybe something spilled out of a pocket . . .”
“Matteo,” I said.
“There’s also the possibility of mercury poisoning, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a brain tumor? You’re a little old for schizophrenia.”