The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

else there. Let me think.”
    “Come here, we’ll think together.”
    “Damn it!”
    “What?”
    “My knee...I just touched it...it’s like bruised or something. What did I do? Last night it was fine.”
    “Did you hit the bedside table? You’ve been jumping up and down all night. Let me see.”
    “How bizarre. How very bizarre.”
    “No, no bruise...Does it hurt when I do this?”
    “No, not really.”
    “What about here?”
    “It’s like it’s inside somewhere, really deep. Muffled. Really weird.”
    “Well, go back to sleep then. You scared me and I lost my dream again. All I remember is that I loved you very much for some reason. Why would that be?”
    “That’s good. You just go on loving me. Love me all the time.”
    “And what do you think I’ve been doing?”
    “Man, I am in luck.”
    “We’re both in luck.”
    “Uhu. Madly.”
    “Oh...Aidy...Aidy, I love you. No, please don’t stop...oh, God...oh, you, you’re my...my...my...—my love...my beloved...”
    “Here, let me wipe your tears. Put your head on my shoulder...like that. Just like that.”
    “That’s even better than in my dream.”
    “It’s what comes after.”
    “Actually, that’s exactly what it is...because when I’m with you, I always see something. New pictures every time—like a movie...”
    “You’re my picture. The best in the world.”
    “I only wish you could see what I see...I wish I could show you. That would be some kind of a movie!”
    “So what was it this time?”
    “A flash. Just a flash, but incredibly bright. Like a searchlight straight into your eyes after coming out of a dark cellar. And a blast...a mix of terror and thrill, like flying out of your body. I wonder if it’s like that when you die...”
    “The way you moaned...it scared me a little.”
    “It really seemed a lot like dying.”
    “You know, you just helped me understand something.”
    “Something about your infinite sets again?”
    “No, about that dream of mine...I realized why there’s no fear of death in it, in any of those dreams...even though they’re all, in a way, about death. Strange, isn’t?”
    “You little fool...”
    “Baby, what is it now? Why are you crying again?”
    “Because I love you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it.”
    “Shhh...don’t cry. Here, do you want me to hold you and rock you?”
    “Jeez!”
    “There...I’d rather have you laugh.”
    “Go ahead, tell me. What about the fear of death?”
    “Nothing, that’s the thing, it’s not there. I don’t think he was afraid of death at all, that man. I think he was always ready for it. And that’s what made all the pictures in his head so sharply focused, intensely physical. It’s the same as in ecstasy, you know? When you said the thing about leaving your body, it made me think of this.”
    “Oh God. No, it can’t be...”
    “What?”
    “No, nothing...just a guess. I think I know who that man was.”
    “For real?”
    “More or less...you wouldn’t recognize him, would you? In a picture?”
    “No more than myself without a mirror.”
    “Well, then it’s moot. No use thinking about it.”
    “About what?”
    “That flash. Nothing, forget it. How’s your knee?”
    “Quiet now. Not a peep. You’ve healed me.”
    “Aidy?”
    “Mm-hm?”
    “Do you think it’s really us? Or are we dreaming ourselves?”
    “I don’t know, Lolly.”
    “Sometimes I get this feeling...promise you won’t laugh at me?”
    “I promise.”
    “I get the feeling that we got someone else’s love. Someone’s once unfulfilled love—you know, like the imperfect tense in grammar.”
    “Well, then it was meant to be.”
    “No, listen...once when I was little, really little, when we still lived in Tatarka, this one girl moved out from our apartment building. The whole building got blighted; they moved us out not long after that, too, but this family was the first to go, and the whole building helped them. The truck came and parked in front of the gateway; people carried furniture out of the apartment—the same armchairs we used to pounce on together—I can see them nowin that girl’s living room.... Outside, under the sky, they looked like pulled-out teeth. They let me hold the lampshade they’d had above their dinner table, with a wire frame, you know, bright yellow with little tassels.”
    “I know—vintage fifties.”
    “Uhu, everything they had was old...taken out of place, it stopped being a lampshade—I could