The Unsound Sleep

© Julian Cantella

I don't know what it was that brought me to Porto's office that first time.

Could've been the word, echoing throughout The Ten, that we'd finally attracted something beyond roast beef joints, knock-off cafés, and sleazy parlors where berries in clownish make-up dangled from bar stools and waited to be plucked. Porto was something altogether different, a professional with a white coat and framed degree.

Could've been the months of restless nights. Every time I took a lay down, the dreams combed me from one side of the cot to the other. Mussed up my hair, threw the sheets to the floor. Left me a real mess by morning.

My guess, it was my damned curiosity. Same curiosity that made me so popular with every low life All-American in need of a favor. The kind earned by laying regular heel on the shadowy side of the street.

Porto's office was the size and shape of a coffin made for two. We sat knee to knee, me wondering if I was stinking up the room with the smell of omelettes and pancakes from morning rush, Porto running a pink finger along the wisp of hair that passes for a mustache among educated types.

“Too much stress, Taste,” he said. He didn't call me Taste, of course, but I go by the nickname for a reason. “You're working long hours at the restaurant, performing these… additional duties for customers on top of that. Letting the waking world spill into your dreams. When that happens, sleep can't serve its purpose. You waste it.”

A shaft of sunlight caught the doctor's eyes. They were a pale grey, almost translucent. Following the light back to its source, I noticed that the window was crisscrossed with stainless steel bars. Either The Ten's reputation had traveled all the way to the Ivy Leagues, or the doctor had a more than casual interest in personal security.

“I shoot for more sleep, I'll be paying in coin. I do an awful lot of night business.”

If his office was a coffin, Porto was the perfect corpse, rigid and well preserved. “Most people fail to realize how much they can do while sleeping. Given the time and the will, we can exercise control over the dream world. We can cultivate our abilities, navigate far beyond the confines of our expectations.”

The doctor saw something in my face that told him to drop the current line. “I'm going to give you a prescription. Follow the instructions on the bottle and don't miss a dose. In the meantime, Taste, it's very important that you set time aside for sleep. Instead of taking on these endless favors, take care of yourself.”

That was good sound advice, but Janet Lynwood had other plans. She was the prying type, nose always dipping into other people's business. It was hard not to smile when she told me her daughter had found herself knocked up.

“She won't tell me who the father is,” Janet said, blocking the path to the till. “You talk to her.”

There's a time to follow doctor's orders, and a time to recognize that a few hours without sleep is easier to handle than a lifetime headache.

Besides, I was far too tired to argue.

Dani, Janet's daughter, wasn't the sort you'd expect to be out busting every grease pool in gym shorts. She had the stress lines and permanent frown of a girl who'd been pressed into manic adulthood way too soon.

Caught in an unexpected rush—a whole busload of waddling seniors had been deposited at my front door—I kept Dani waiting a solid hour. By the time I slipped into the booth she'd chosen in a far corner of the restaurant, she'd mowed through fifty pages of some massive novel with a French name.

“My mother won't believe me,” she said, marking her place with a dog-ear. “Maybe you will.”

Dani's story was simple: she'd never had sex. Ever, with anybody.

“Look,” I replied, working to digest both the unlikely tale and a piece of undercooked bacon, “this ain't immaculate.” I would have pointed to her stomach for emphasis, but she wasn't showing yet.

In the silence that followed, I took the time to read Dani's ragged eyes.

They told a sad story, said this girl knew she was circling the drain. Taking the time to deliver a baby was going to cut into her GPA, chip away at those extracurriculars. Best-case scenario, she could turn the whole experience into an inspirational college essay.

I slid a napkin across the table and pulled a pen from behind my ear. “Let's say I do believe you. Your mom's still not going to let me settle up without a little digging in the dirt.”

It might have been a hiccup, but I could have sworn I caught a smile flicker its way across Dani's face. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Name every guy you've run across in the last six weeks,” I replied. “If nothing else, I'll enjoy making them nervous.”

Over the next few days I put myself down for a few hours of sleep—none of them good—and split the rest of my time between running the restaurant and hunting down Dani's deadbeat in the making.

Day one I toured the creep circuit: teachers, coaches, a knobby-eared monsignor Dani volunteered for on afternoons. I spent the whole trip to the church weighing my options: saintly types could be tough seeds, ready to slap you with the righteous indignance card at the drop of an undersized hat. I vetoed a confession booth play, ruled out speaking in tongues, and ended up playing it simple. Pulling the fire alarm, I waited until the monsignor ran past and stomped down hard on his robes. Stars in his eyes, rasping for breath, he was more than happy to take a timeout and run a little one-on-one.

Day two I pounced The Rink and wiped off half the list in one swoop. I scored malts in exchange for teenage gossip, played the bankroll on a game of small-stakes hold ‘em, then blew my rep when a frecklehead in torn cut-offs made one too many jibes about the pouches under my eyes. Going full strength on the right cross was a sore move, but I envied him the aftermath: joker spilled nothing useful and still got the gift of sleep.

Day three saw me in a real daze, blinking constantly and drinking wide-awake straight from the urn. I tried to break daylight for a few hours, but as bad off as I was, sleep just wasn't in store. If I was going to get any rest, it'd have to hard earned.

On day four I plucked the last few odds and ends. The mailman had nothing, but appreciated the notion. A neighbor who showed an odd interest in what the Lynwoods were paying me turned out to be their accountant. The last name on the list was mine, and while the lack of sleep had made a blur of my day-to-day, there are some things I make a point of remembering.

Day five I gathered up the Lynwoods and explained that everyone on the list had been tipping zero. “No confessions, no guilty parties, no leads,” I said, hoping that was that.

Dani looked down at her stomach and played with her hands, but Janet wasn't the type to sit silent. “You said you'd do this for me, and you're going to do it!”

“I did it for your daughter, and it's done. Say, I'm a short-order man short, so maybe you could-“

Janet pounded the counter, catching eyes and breaking conversations. “Maybe! Maybe you could stand by your word and help us. Us: my daughter and me. We need to know.”

My place is a restaurant and a restaurant only: no stand-ups, no strummers, and certainly no goddamn dinner shows. Normally, when someone decides to put on a performance, they find themselves hailing a cab from their seat on the curb.

I don't know why, but this time I gave in. Might've been confusion caused by lack of sleep, or a trace of sympathy for Dani. My guess, it was my damned curiosity.

“Alright,” I said, “just be quiet. For the love of anything you want, be quiet.” I took a moment to make sure my customers knew the curtain had closed, then wearily slid another napkin across the counter.

Janet was still in high dander. “She's already done this,” she said, pushing the napkin back.

I brought the pen down from my ear with just enough force to get the point across. “Think,” I said, ignoring Janet and speaking as gently as my temper allowed. “Wrack a few more names. I worked broad on the first pass, hoping we'd get something easy. Now that we didn't, we have to dig in the cracks.”

After a few minutes, Dani generated some new misters. I scanned the list, coming to a sudden halt at name number four. My eyebrows formed a question mark.

“For all his reputation, man didn't know a thing,” Janet said, one foot already out the door. “Said Dani wasn't getting enough sleep.”

If that was the current line, I was all too happy to play. Fate had been calling, calling for a while, but I'd torn the phone from the wall. Now it was beating down the door. I set up another appointment with the doctor, said I wanted to talk about upping my dosage. For a random alibi, it wasn't too bad an idea.

The sleep racket was getting worse fast, the world closing in on me as I stumbled to Porto's office. I made a few wrong turns, forgot where I was. Forgot who I was, and where I was going. If I ever cracked this thing and slept sound, I'd be on a long holiday: felt like a few days with shut-eye would just be the start of it.

His office looked strangely familiar, like the first visit had inked a map of the place on the walls of my brain. I must've signed in, been led to the doctor's room by a secretary, maybe a nurse in those obscene get-ups that look like kid's pajamas.

Then I was sitting in his office, waxing small for a while about this and that. Clouds must have rolled in: there was no sun. Shadows, in fact, like with all my wandering about I'd lost the day. The doctor was running his finger along the black line above his lip, the mustache that could have been drawn on with coal or felt-tip pen.

I suddenly wished I was packing trigger. Wished I could lay heel right out of there and never come back. I blinked my eyes over and over, but couldn't blink away the shapes dancing in the dark corners of the room. The coffin.

Might as well get it over with. “Dr. Porto, I'm gonna step off course just a second. You remember a patient named Dani Lynwood?”

Strange. When the doctor smiled, that wisp of hair above the lip got lost in the folds of his skin.

“I remember her well. I've lain with her, many times, in her sleep. She will bear me a child.”

Let all the air out of a coffin, you find yourself choking, choking quick. We were underground now, at least it felt that way, the room pitch and musty and still. My hands blurred, fingers multiplying, splayed, pawing at the air like curious animals.

The doctor kept smiling, that wispy mustache still buried in the curl of his lip. He leaned forward, closing the tiny gap between us in less than a second. His hand on my knee, I felt something inside give out.

And fell sleep.

“Now, Taste. Let's have a conversation.”

The darkness is a lousy front, breaking apart in places and revealing traces of whatever rustles beneath. I hurry from column to shadowy column, eyes on the lonely figure a block and a half ahead of me. A familiar task, but not familiar scenery: I'm following someone, that's obvious enough, but for some reason I can't remember who.

It's a starry part of town, the sky surprisingly bright away from all the neon and concrete and smoke. Towering monoliths rise from stone foundations, wreaths hanging perfectly centered on rows of bay windows. This is not The Ten, not even close. If I could feel my legs, I'm thinking they would mark miles.

The set-up has a nasty odor, so I check my belt buckle: a trigger, but not just a trigger. Some kind of blade, hooked and jagged, to boot. All wrong. I work to call it quits, turn heel and put pavement between me and my supposed prey. But I can't. This isn't my show.

“Listen Taste, we have no need to travel. We have no need to build, to exert physical influence on the physical world. We can see anything we want to see, do anything we want to do, with our eyes closed. Asleep, in dreams.”

“Have to see it first. See it in the real world before it's a dream.”

“That's false. It's all already there, in your memory. For those who wish it, the whole world lies at their feet. I wish it, Taste. I know that my patients—you and Dani and many others—can do so much in their sleep, far more, in fact, than they ever could awake.”

I'm in my restaurant after close, emptying the till into a backpack. Not even counting, banding the ones and rolling the coins like I'm used to, just dumping the whole mess. No one's here. The blackboard that lists the specials has been wiped clean.

This is not something I do.

If I'm dreaming, all I have to do is wake up. I tense my muscles, hold my breath, even play the old pinching game. There's too much of a haze, too heavy a curtain. A weight that holds me under. I'm about to panic, but I don't have time. He calls me back.

“Wake me up, doctor.” We're sitting in that same coffin, knee to knee. Porto looks far more relaxed than I feel.

“No need, Taste. Not ever again.”

Behind the doctor, lying on a ruffled single bed, is the doctor. Asleep. I try to get up from the chair, but this is one of those dreams where you can't move. Doctor Porto knows this. Smiles.

“We don't have to wake. Don't even have to move, when we can bring the world to us.”

He finally gives up on that smile. This brings the mustache back, but it's no longer attached to his face. It floats just an inch or so away, shimmering in air that's turned to sludge, too thick to breath. Porto recites something, something I'm guessing he's prepared for a sick scene like this one.

“Mountains reach too high. In time, I will uproot them and cast them into the sea. The sky is too far away. I will tear it from the heavens, bring it crashing to the earth. If I cannot see it, I will burn it, flood it, render it wasteland. The world is where I sit, the space around me.”

“You're working a cackle, doc. Hope you know that. Not going to convince too many people talking crazy like that.”

“We'll all live in little boxes, Taste. The world inside is big enough for everyone.”

A sudden tear in the shadows, and I'm echoing that figure again. Emptying my till. Spraying the doctor's words on the walls of the local precinct. Feeling blood splash across my face.

If I'm sleeping, I'm helpless.

I try not to follow. Wrestle with the hands that undo my work. Scream, tensing my body until muscles ache and tendons stretch to bursting, the words battering at the backs of my eyelids.

“Wake up. Wake up.”

The doctor watches over his sleeping body, a mother proud of her newborn. “I want to share my dream with others. Share love and beauty suppressed for so long.”

“No one wants a piece, doc. You keep it for yourself.”

“What makes you believe that?” The doctor turns away, alone for a moment with his thoughts. “I don't know why you would believe that. I fully expect that some will deny me, scatter my path with shards of glass. That's why I have my walkers. People like you, Taste, to help me sweep up the glass and throw it back in their faces. Cut away the layers and layers of delusion that weigh down their bodies, chain them to the ground.”

I get a real bad feeling.

“You've been helping me. And you're going to help me now. With Janet Lynwood.”

She's the lonely figure I've been following through several nights of dreams. The swank neighborhood, the stars watching from the sky, the arc of a blade pressed cold against my stomach.

I look in on Dani. Safe under the covers, absentmindedly rubbing her stomach as she scans one of a pile of books scattered across her bedspread.

Like all nightmares, this one throws curveballs. Dani's skin melts from her face, eyes spinning in their sockets. She turns and stares right at me, her mouth bent in a demented rictus. Black tears stain her cheeks. Her spine swells, punctures the skin at the back of her neck, begins to slither towards me.

Real terror stuff, the kind that turns toughs like me into gumdrops.

But then there's a leap forward. I've skipped a few scenes, and now I'm outside Janet's room.

The knife is in my hand.

She lies on her side. With her back to me, I can't tell if she's awake or asleep. Lucky with calm or ready to spill a scream from some ghastly scene painting her mind.

This is a dream. I'm just watching, not in control. For control, I'd have to wake up. Again I strain, swear, fight to drag the feet that inch ever closer to the edge of the bed.

Last ditch, I slice a patch of skin from my left arm: it hurts like hell, but I don't wake up.

Now I'm on tap. Drops of blood polka dot Janet's sheets and shine in thin stripes of moonlight.

I wipe the blade on a throw pillow at the foot of the bed. It has to be clean, something says, clean so I can see the lines it draws in Janet's skin.

It's that part of a dream where it's so easy to detach. I'm just watching myself, that's all. I'm going to do what I do and it doesn't really matter.

The screaming voice, my voice, whimpering and pleading, is almost quiet now. Almost gone. I watch Janet's breath mist on the blade.

Then, as my fingers grip, as my arm readies for action, I actually hear the doctor's words.

“Given the time and the will, we can exercise control over the dream world.”

I don't dismiss him as insane. For the first time, I don't try to think past him, to fight what I've never given a chance.

“I know that my patients can do so much in their sleep. Far more, in fact, than they ever could awake.”

I believe him.

“Alright,” I say, finally taking control. “Change the scenery.”

And what do you know, it works.

I'm in the doctor's office, over his body. His sleeping body.

“You're asleep,” I say, knowing Porto can hear me. “Asleep. And awfully exposed.”

Even though the doctor's dreaming, I can hear him scream for me to stop. I rifle through his cabinets, find a few dozen bottles of those pills I've been taking. Those pills Dani took, I bet, and all the other patients too.

I open the doctor's mouth and upend bottle after bottle until the dream is finally over.

***

A few days later I got up the nerve to visit Janet and Dani, clue them in on who the father was. The version of the story they heard was a little vague, long on pop science and short on stalking, knives and nightmares.

No surprise, Janet was a little tight with the thanks. I'm thinking her goal all along was to find an old man she could hit up for child support.

Wasn't going to have much luck there. The doctor's prophecy had come true, for himself at least. After downing a couple hundred doses of his favorite medication, Porto got to live out the rest of his days in a little box.

“We have no idea where he is,” an attendant said, tightening the doctor's restraints, “dreaming like that, he could be anywhere.”

I thought it was all behind me, the trouble riding shotgun with this particular favor, until Deputy Anderson showed up one morning and fired a few questions at the tail end of his usual order for black coffee and eggs.

“Where were you on the night of the fourth?” he asked. “We've got a few witnesses placing you at the scene of some vandalism. My precinct.”

If Anderson had anything, he wouldn't have made with the questions. Would have dashed my head on the counter, cuffed me extra tight, made sure my head hit the roof of the cruiser on the way to county.

Knowing he had nothing, I gave him a smile that turned his blood hotter than the scalding wide-awake I spilled in his lap.

“On the night of the fourth,” I said, lying through my teeth, “I went to bed early. Slept like a rock.”