think?” Jack asked, passing down some more filters. “Oh, yeah,” Kurt said, still chuckling. “That’s some good stuff. You’ve got a good imagination, kid.”
“Thank you,” Jack said. He could tell by the man’s cadence, his enunciation, and just his general presence that he was an intelligent person. In fact, he might have asked the man the same question he had just asked him, because he knew this man was capable of much greater things than slinging filters down a conveyer belt. He thought about asking but decided not to. There would be plenty of time for that. For now, he would just keep his mouth shut and do his job. Which is exactly what he did for the next two hours, until he saw something that changed everything. Someone, actually.
She was three rows up, standing at the second slot on the first conveyer built. She had turned to say something to the person next to her, so he caught only a side glance, but he thought it was her, and suddenly, a wave of exhilaration swept through him with such force that he had to lean up against the conveyor belt to keep from falling. It wasn’t just exhilaration; it was something he had not felt much of in a long time—hope. A hope that this girl, whom he had seen in his dreams every day since puberty, whom he thought, most likely, was a figment of his imagination, a carrot on a stick that he would never touch, was, in fact, real. He steadied himself against the conveyor belt and took a deep breath. He had to know, and he had to know now. He looked at Kurt and said “I need a drink of water. I’ll be right back.”
“No hurry,” Kurt replied amicably.
Jack made his way down the side of the factory floor, past all the conveyor belts, up to the front of the room, where he got himself a drink. As he slurped up the water flowing up from the fountain, he could feel his heart racing with fearful anticipation. What if it wasn’t her? Well, if it wasn’t her, then it wasn’t her; it would only serve to further confirm what he already suspected: God liked to play cruel jokes. He was a sick, sadistic prick. But if it was her? Well, then suddenly his world, gray and closed and suffocating, would open up like a flower greeting a fresh ray of sunlight. He took a deep breath, marshaled his courage, and turned around for a good look.
It was her.
With his head in the clouds, he went back to his station, and resumed his duties. For a few moments, he actually felt like he could float, and at one point he felt his feet leaving the ground and had to look down to make sure he was still fastened to the earth. He was. But nothing would be the same again now that he had seen her in the flesh—the girl who was supposed to help him lead humanity back to the garden of Eden. Eve.
5
As Jack made the trek back from work to the place that served as his unofficial and temporary residence, the Silverton Public Park, he felt a kind of giddy schoolboy euphoria that he had not experienced in . . . well . . . ever. Oh, he had experienced the usual crushes, the cases of puppy love, the teenage trysts, and even one or two torrid affairs, but nothing like this. This was something different. This was spiritual. Literally. He knew this girl—Eve—in the realm of spirit. He only just now could admit that to himself. Until today, when he saw her face to face, he had told himself she was just a dream, albeit a recurring one, and one that involved depths of sensation and emotion a hundred times more powerful than anything a person could experience in real life.
He sat down at the park bench, unzipped his back pack, and pulled out several bags of chips and pretzels that he had pilfered from the break room at work. When you had no home and no money, you learned little tricks to survive. One of the first he had learned was never pay for something you could get for free. And in a large factory you could almost always find unclaimed food lying around in the break room. Discarded potato chips may not be anyone’s idea of a culinary delight, but it could get you through some tough times. It was called stretching the soup, and he had become a master at it. Then again, necessity was the mother of invention. Not many people could live the way he did. He couldn’t live the way he did when he first started. But he learned fast. He had to.
He ate half a bag of chips and saved the rest. That was another trick he had learned. Eat only as much as you need to. The body could go a long time with very little food, as any holocaust survivor could attest. You really only needed water to survive, and he had all of that he needed. He had taken three bottles of water from the break room fridge, and should he run out, which, in this heat he just might, there was always the park sinks and water fountain. It was not high living, but it was enough to get by. And getting by was what he was all about. Unfortunately.
He strolled around the park as the day wore on, taking in the sights—the tennis courts, the fountain in the center of the park, the memorial to the park’s founder, Dr. Winston Hibbard, the botchy ball court, and a number of ball fields: two soccer, three baseball, and one football. It was a big park for such a small town. As the day slowly turned into night, and the oppressive heat faded mercifully away, he made his way back to the picnic area, and prepared to sleep. It was hard to sleep outside; the body had to be cool to slumber, but the exhaustion he felt from the day’s work would help. It would take some time—perhaps hours—but eventually his body would cool down, then shut down.
He retrieved his blanket, and lay down on the bench, face up. He tried counting the stars, but it didn’t work. He was too fired up from work, from the heat, from seeing her. He closed his eyes, took deep, slow breaths, and tried to force all thoughts from his mind. It took some time, but he began to feel drowsy. Even so, he did not fall asleep right away.
After about half an hour he heard a feint, low-pitched growl. He looked around. It was the cat again, staring at him cautiously from under the picnic table. It had returned. Just as he did last night, Jack put a hand on the concrete and tapped, encouraging the cat to come to him. And just like last night, it did, only this time with less hesitation. The cat was starting to trust him now. It hopped onto the bench and snuggled against Jack’s chest. Jack held it tight, like a pillow, as his breathing slowed, and his body temperature dropped. Soon both he and the cat were fast asleep.
Soon after that the dream started. Jack had the sensation of being under a pool of warm, messaging water, but he wasn’t. When he opened his eyes, he could see he was chest deep in a pool of red rose petals. They were all around him, as far as his eyes could see—an ocean, fanning out in all directions. A bright blue canopy of cloudless sky stretched above him, and midway between the sky and the rose petals, were branches filled with lush green leaves dipping down from towering trees and terminating only several feet above the pool of flowers. It was like a scene out a Picasso or a Rembrandt painting. If there was a heaven, he thought, it could not be much better than this. The motion of the petals on his naked body felt like the massage of a thousand soft, supple hands. But apart from that motion, he felt another one. The motion of something else in the pool of petals moving toward him.
And then, in the distance, he saw her, gliding slowly, almost floating, through the petals, her body submerged, but her head and neck visible, and her arms outstretched, lightly touching the surface of the pool of petals as she floated forward, heading straight toward him.
She stopped right in front of him. Then she slid one hand around his neck and dipped the other into the petals, where she brought it to rest on his stomach, palm flat against his skin. She began moving it in circles, slowly, and with great care and precision, as if performing the most intricate of procedures. The warmth of her hand radiated through his body, her touch almost too wonderful to endure. Slowly she drew his face closer to hers as she moved her other hand up toward his chest. The circles grew harder and faster, covering the length of his entire upper torso. Waves of electricity passed through her hand into his body, and his muscles began to melt with a pleasure beyond imagining. As she drew his lips closer to hers, he could feel the warmth of her breath on his face, and when their lips touched he felt like he was literally about to melt into her, and she into him, and he wanted it to happen; he wanted to be sucked into her all the way, until they became as one, intertwined
