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I haven’t been sleeping. I keep having these dreams.
That is what I want to tell him, sometimes, in moments of weakness. When he looks at me the way he has been looking at me since I went into remission: like it’s all too good to be true. Like my illness was just the first shoe to drop, and that the worst storms always follow a period of reprieve. He would tell me, probably, that dreams have long been thought to have some kind of significance that bleeds over into the physical realm. There are even those in “X, Y, and Z places” that hold to the idea that dreams have prophetic power.
I really hope that’s not true. Because most nights, I dream of the end of the world.
* * *
“Is it possible that they gave me too much whipped cream?” he asks me the next morning over breakfast at Steve’s Diner 49er in El Dorado County, California, and I want to laugh. Because it is spilling over in a heaping pile that sits precariously on top of his stack of waffles. It looks like a diabetic coma waiting to happen, and he demurely scrapes some to the side of his plate, only to make room for a deluge of maple syrup. The irony of this is lost on him, but he does flick some of the excess whipped cream onto my pancakes, if only to provoke a reaction.
I manage a smile, at least, but it will not be enough to satisfy him. He is greedy for my reactions, - my approval, laughter or exasperation. Sometimes it exhausts me, this responsibility. He is looking at me even now, with expectant eyes. He had woken up chipper this morning, packed up his bag and was at the door to my room by 8 a.m. I had dragged myself through checkout, still feeling strangely tethered to that dream, and glad to leave the claustrophobic confines of that blithely sunny Santa Fe-style room. “I can get that bag if you want,” he had said, but I had ignored him. Still thinking about that dream.
“You’re not feeling sick, are you?” he asks me now. I realize I have been staring blankly out the window through the loop of the painted ‘9’ in ‘49er’. Looking inward rather than out. I turn to him, and find that his entire demeanor has changed. Gone is that summer’s day carefree breeziness. His eyes are pinched and his posture is stiff now and it is worry, I realize, that shadows his face. Worry for me.
I am still too pale, too thin. I look down at my hands. They are bony, and I can trace the vital blue trail of my veins through the skin. But I am whole. I am alive. Why can’t he see that?
“I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well.”
He accepts this with visible relief. He’s unknowingly adept at lying to himself when the truth is too much to bear. “Huh. I slept great. Cable was out. I left the static on and fell right to sleep.”
“That makes sense. White noise is a natural sleep aid. The wide range of frequencies allows the brain to tune out other disturbances.”
“Maybe I’ll get some ocean sounds on tape,” he says with a grin. I give that same depleted smile and I hate myself a little for it.
A tinkling bell cheerfully announces the arrival of a new customer. A weathered man in a flannel jacket, wearing a baseball cap that is probably older than me. He smells like menthol cigarettes and he’s most likely a long-distance truck driver. I watch him for a moment and ponder such a solitary existence, try to put myself in his place.
“Hey Scully, why don’t you let me drive roday?” Mulder says quietly. “I don’t mind.” I nod but my mind is a thousand miles away, traveling down some endless stretch of highway, looking for a place to rest for the night.
* * *
I can feel its hands on me, black and cold, but I cannot move. I am trapped and so close to death I can smell it. A voice that is familiar cuts through it all.
“Scully!”
I wake with a start and when my clenched fist flails defensively, it makes contact with something warm and solid. The darkness falls away and I am back in our rental car. Mulder is at the wheel, looking at me with bewilderment and a little bit of hurt in his eyes. He is rubbing his jaw.
My chest is heaving like I’ve just run a marathon. I look down at my hands and find them shaking. I frown at them, irritated at this small betrayal. I turn to look at him finally and he sees the guilt in my eyes, softens with it.
“So you haven’t been sleeping well?”
* * *
It has been a month since I was given the all-clear from my doctors to return to work, and he’s never quite resisted the urge to hover. He is clingy, as if he loathes even the idea of distance between us. He worries, he brings me food when he thinks I haven’t eaten enough. It had been almost painful to watch my first day back, the way he tied himself in knots over me. I had placed a hand on his arm, and whispered that it was okay, that I was fine. He had closed his eyes like he was savoring it.
I don’t know what to say to him now, as he sits there expectantly with a red mark the shape of my fist on his cheek. I hope it doesn’t bruise.
“Scully?”
I guess I’ve been silent too long.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine.”
His face falls, and there is that look again. The one that says I haven’t given him enough. He wants more from me, but I’m not quite sure what it is he wants, or if I would be capable of giving it.
“Scully-“
“-I’m fine,” I say with finality. And then, “I’m sorry I hit you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, as stilted as my apology had sounded. Why have we become like this? What has changed? He pulls back onto the empty highway and finds a radio station that is in range. We listen to the tinny big band brass of ‘102.3: golden oldies’ and try our best to ignore one another for the time being.
* * *
This trip was supposed to be special for him. I could tell when he stepped into the office on Monday morning with the assignment.
I had taken the file and looked over the preliminary report. He bounced on his heels expectantly. I read the preliminary in its entirety before looking up at him, incredulous. “A ghostly miner killing people with a pickaxe? Really, Mulder?”
He grinned, boyish, charming, foolish. “Yeah, Scully, the real deal. Local legend dating back to the early 1900s. A 49er who came out for the gold rush but never got rich, or so the legend says. He lost everything and supposedly hung himself in the mine.”
“There have been sightings before now?”
“Oh yeah. For decades.”
“But no one’s ever died before.”
“Not that we know of.”
“Well, then what changed?”
His eyes lit up and his whole body had poised for the leap: “El Dorado has opened the old mine back up. Trying to make it a tourist attraction. I think they disturbed his place of rest. Made him angry.”
“Sounds like something out of Scooby-Doo.”
“Zoinks.”
I rolled my eyes, attempting to cover up a smile. He had seen through me, though. Enough to feel comfortable enough to make that request.
“So, Scully. I was thinking…”
I inclined my head pointedly, visibly prodding him, smiling in spite of myself. He continued, even less certain of himself. I watched excitement and panic war for control over his features. “I was thinking…You know El Dorado is pretty close to the Grand Canyon. Well, fairly close. You could do the drive in a day. I’ve always wanted to go. Have you ever been?”
I’d smiled. “Once, when my family was living in San Diego. We took a road trip there when I was 8. Bill and Melissa fought and Charlie cried the whole way there. By the time we got there, I think everyone was ready to go home. But when we saw the Canyon, everything got quiet for just a moment. We all just stood in awe. I remember my parents were holding hands. It’s a trip I’ll never forget.”
I had called up that memory, my mind’s eye lingering on my parents, whose loving devotion to one another had always been a comfort to me. Mulder had stood there quietly, understanding that I needed that moment. When I had looked back at him, there was something unmistakably affectionate in the way he was looking at me.
“I think we both have enough unused vacation days to last til the end of time. Wanna stop by on the way home?”
I smiled. The Grand Canyon was not on the way by any stretch, but faced with the opportunity to see it with him, to watch him experience it for the first time, I could hardly say no.
* * *
I must doze again, or maybe my mind just drifts away for awhile. When I open my eyes next, an hour has passed and he is still white-knuckling the steering wheel, sitting in a ramrod straight position I can hardly fathom keeping up for over an hour. I feel guilty now, for having blown him off like I did. I have always struggled to open up to him, whereas he often struggles to control his emotions. He is my perfect opposite, this strange and intense man. I don’t know what to do with him sometimes. I don’t know what to do with myself.
“It’s some kind of dark figure,” I say without preamble. He tears his eyes from the road for a moment, surprised by the sudden interruption. We had both been in our own worlds, and this is something of a reuniting. “In the dreams,” I explain. “It…comes for both of us. I can never stop it. I feel it, grabbing me. It feels… It’s illogical to be afraid, but…it’s the feeling I get, that it’s all just … impending. Looming over us … That’s what makes it so unsettling. When I wake up, that feeling doesn’t go away.”
I can see him nodding in my periphery. I stare resolutely ahead, because this is hard enough for me as it is.
“Scully, is it possible … You never talk about the fact that you…” He stops, heavy-laden with something, and I already know what he will say, because I have considered it myself. But I let him continue, because maybe he needs to say it. Neither of us have really dealt with it.
“You almost died, Scully,” he says, so soft I almost miss it over the dull roar of the road. “Do you think these dreams are some kind of manifestation of, of something? The fact that you haven’t taken time to deal with the way that made you feel?”
He tightens his grip on the steering wheel again as I consider my response. “I’ve thought about that. I don’t know.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” The words are timid, and I get a rush of affection for him. He is looking at me out of the corner of one eye, trying to affect openness as much as can be achieved and without running us off the road.
I smile, and this time it is not so much of a chore. “I think that’s a little somber for a road trip, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be talking about something happy?”
He chuckles. “Well, Scully we’ve got 11 more hours to go, I think we’ve got time for both.”
I sigh. “I’m not very good at talking about … feelings.”
“I know. And I’ve never held that against you.”
I laugh this time, and he smiles. For whatever reason, he loves making me laugh. I think of that first case with him in Oregon. Standing out in the rain, soaked to the bone and shivering, and laughing, really laughing at him, at his unbridled enthusiasm, at the ridiculousness of the whole situation. The smile that had lit up his face when I had laughed. I still think of that Mulder sometimes. Of that version of myself. A lot can happen in four years, and I hope that time has not brought too much pain, too much cynicism our way for us to ever be able to be those people again.
“As much as you don’t want to hear this, I really am fine, Mulder. Yes, what happened was … it was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through, but I just, I want to move past it. I feel like we’re both stuck in this weird place and I know it’s because of that. I just want things to be normal again.”
His fingers are tapping out a frantic tuneless staccato on the steering wheel. He is worrying his lower lip between his teeth and in that moment I do think that we are going to drift further apart. I couldn’t bear that, I don’t think.
“This is my fault,” he says slowly. “I’m sorry.”
I twist in my seat to get a better look at him, if only to give him my most incredulous expression.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know I’ve been hovering. I know I’m making things tense. I’m sorry it’s made you uncomfortable. I just-“
He’ll poke a hole through his bottom lip at this rate. I place a hand on his arm.
“I know,” I say, because I do. I understand. I don’t blame him. “It’s okay.”
He places his hand over mine briefly, squeezing it. A silent apology or a thank you, or just a desire to return to the way things used to be.
* * *
“Scully, I know you grew up in California, but as a New England boy, I am still endlessly fascinated by the fact that tumbleweeds exist outside of the world of ‘Wile E. Coyote’.”
His eyes follow the two dried-out husks as they blow single-file over the interstate, like traveling companions. I remain convinced that in another world he would’ve made a good scientist. It’s his enthusiasm for the unknown, I think. There is a spark in his eyes that, against all odds, just refuses to dim. The light of discovery is in him. If only he weren’t so squeamish.
I look at the upcoming mile marker, which tells me we’re still 200 miles from our destination. “Gear up, Mulder. There’s a lot more where that came from.”
* * *
A great behemoth looms, and Mulder excitedly pulls off the road in a cloud of dust. The creature stands, mute and majestic, and an alarming shade of seafoam green. Mulder hands a five to a pimply, bored looking attendant and beckons me first through the turnstile with a grand, expansive gesture.
If there were a conceivable reason that anyone would put a 30-foot sculpture of The Loch Ness Monster in the middle of the desert, I have yet to find it. But Mulder looks happy, and he readily gives another five dollars to an ancient woman, wearing a hat which looks more suited for jungle exploration, who offers to take our picture. She flaps the square of celluloid with little fanfare and hands it to him, and we both hunch over it, shielding it from the sun and squinting as it develops.
By some miracle of happenstance, or perhaps heat stroke, we both look incredibly, deliriously happy. His arm is around me and there is laughter in my eyes. I fit perfectly into the carefree slouch of his side. We look like two newlyweds, casting our lots together, foolishly optimistic, ridiculously young and in love. And behind us stands Nessie, her eyes canted off into the distance, ostensibly looking for a habitat in which she would be better suited. It is perhaps the most ridiculous photo we’ve ever taken and by the way Mulder holds it protectively to his chest, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to convince him to part with it.
“You make a lovely couple,” the safari-ready photographer says.
* * *
Mulder takes his cue from the waning of the daylight and the stifling of my yawns and finds us a motel for the night. He is quick to correct my hasty verbiage. “It’s a motor lodge, Scully.”
And, to his credit, he is absolutely right. It is most definitely a lodge. Our connecting suites are wood-paneled from top to bottom. I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen this much wood in one place before. I flick on the droning fluorescents in the bathroom and find that it, too, is wood paneled.
“You can never go wrong with wood,” Mulder says in an exaggeratedly sage tone from behind me. For some reason it elicits a laugh from me, about which he looks delighted.
* * *
“What is a continental breakfast?” Mulder ponders the next morning as he stares dubiously at a bowl of oatmeal that seems to be having an existential crisis as it can’t decide whether it is liquid or solid or neither or both. It appears to be some kind of non-Newtonian fluid, and the longer I look at it, the more convinced I become that it may not even be oatmeal.
“I think it’s European,” I say.
Mulder grimaces. “It’s a diplomatic crisis then.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes into our drive that morning, I turn sharply in my seat and slug Mulder in the arm.
“Ow!” He shouts, having forgotten that we began a game of punch buggy a half hour ago. I laugh loudly, surprising myself. He chuckles in response.
“Sorry, I got excited,” I say, rubbing his shoulder sympathetically. The Beetle rolls innocently by on the other side of the road, unaware of its part in such an act of violence.
* * *
It’s such a simple, foolish thing. Mulder, who is mercurial and unpredictable and entirely resistant to any kind of habitual pattern of living, is dependably starving by 7:30 on any given night of the week. The drive-up diner, a relic from the 60s, is the kind where the waitresses wear pleated skirts and zip about on roller skates. Mulder gets a chocolate milkshake and a brain freeze, and in his momentary agony, he scrunches up his face in the most charmingly goofy way. I giggle and place my hand on his arm in consolation, and I notice immediately that something shifts in his eyes. But all it is is a touch.
That night, outside the door of my motel room, in defiance of logic and good common sense, I do it again, and this time he kisses me. He kisses me and I let him, because I remember the long hours by my hospital bed, where he read to me, talked to me, sat in companionable silence, and even wept. Yes, I was awake that night, and it occurred to me then, as it occurs to me in the dimly lit hallway of the Cozy Shack Inn and Suites that he may love me. It occurs to me, as I wind my arms around him, that I may love him too.
* * *
The path winds endlessly upwards, an infinite coniferous spiral. Our road-weary bodies are at the mercy of inertia, and I know for a fact that Mulder would be vomiting off the side of the road if he weren’t the one driving right now. As it is, Mulder gnaws on a toothpick in nervous anticipation, and I rest a hand atop his on the center console. It brings him out of his uneasy reverie, and he smiles at me, a real smile, and I realize suddenly that my dream, the specter that had haunted my nights, is just that - a dream.
The sun winks through the eternally swirling trees. I roll down the window and feel the clear Arizona air on my skin. This is real. This is what it feels like to live again. It feels like being brought back to life. Mulder squeezes my hand, oblivious to the miracle happening in the seat next to him.
* * *
A smooth trail dotted with stones and the occasional cactus gives way to rough-hewn steps carved out from the canyon itself. The terracotta soil looks like something from a painter’s palette. We descend on a pathway ringed with dusty stone and wiry shrubbery, then we turn a corner. I hear Mulder’s soft inhale of surprise as the world opens up, and spread out before us is a work of art. The river cuts a delicate turquoise vein through the heart of the canyon, which bleeds red and pink and gold and pine needle green. The sky is infinite, bluer than blue, and cotton candy clouds slide across it with the unhurried ease of practiced travelers. It takes not only the breath, but the soul, and for a moment we are caught up in the sheer, unadulterated majesty of it all.
Then, Mulder chuckles. “Wow,” he says, and puts an arm around me, pulling me close.