Last night I dreamed Consuela called and a scrim was lifted from my eyes. After a long silence, she had returned, and things looked more defined. Several years ago, in Germany, she had cried about her father, who, many times, had drawn close only to disappear again. I couldn’t understand how she could produce so many tears. She had chopped off her hair, and it was spiking up, and she looked like a little bird with her big eyes and sharp nose. The less beautiful she tried to look the more beautiful she became. She said she had her father’s talent for seduction, making it sound dangerous—like she could magnetize metal with her mind and inadvertently extract fillings from your teeth. She was a performer. She said, ”I give the perfect audition, and I want to be called back, but I don’t always want the part.”
I wondered if she was talking about us. I loved her in the way I fall in love with people who make the ground feel rickety. When I woke up, I realized she had not called, and I tried to understand the scrim. Was it part of the dream, or did the dream reveal the scrim was there? There are spaces that lack rooms and walls and therefore don’t exist in architecture. They are third spaces, like secret slots for messages and light shafts you can see into but cannot enter. When I realized Consuela had not returned, I retold the story from the beginning, and it had a better ending.
