Free No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale by Christine Pope

rolled over me, one after the other, until I could no longer distinguish where one stopped and the other began.
    “Randall,” I sighed at last, reaching up to caress his face. But instead of his firm cheek, my fingers brushed against a surface of smooth, cool plastic, and suddenly I could see the glimmer of the mask in the darkness.
    “Not exactly,” he replied, and at that I felt myself sit bolt upright in bed, gasping as I looked around and realized that I was alone in my narrow daybed, no company save the soft tick-tock of my old wind-up alarm clock from across the room.
    It took a few moments for my breathing to settle down, for me to overcome the last remnants of the dream. I had never before had a dream that explicit, that overtly sexual—and to be dreaming of that stranger from the restaurant, instead of the man I was supposed to be in love with! Though the night was cool, I could feel my cheeks burning with mortification. Was I so weak that only a few hours with that man could poison my subconscious desires?
    With a sudden angry gesture I pushed the bedclothes aside and went to the bathroom, where I poured myself some cold water and splashed some on my face before I turned off the faucet. Then I stood for a long moment, regarding my face in the soft half-light cast by the nightlight in the corner of the room. How much of the residual flush in my cheeks was due to embarrassment, and how much by mental arousal caused by my dreams?
    I would never know, of course. All I could do was vow to keep my thoughts under control from now on. My life was complicated enough without allowing myself to brood over a mysterious man I would probably never see again. As I climbed back into bed, I tried to ignore the small pang of regret that last thought had caused me. Why should I even care about someone I had only seen for one evening, whose name I didn’t even know? Why should the thought that I might never seen him again cause me that sudden flash of pain?
    “Get a grip, Christine,” I whispered fiercely into the darkness. “You’ve got Randall. Anything else is just asking for trouble.”
    Then I closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep, to take myself back into a blackness without thought, without dreams.
    Without desire.  

    Randall did not look happy.  
    We’d agreed to meet at a restaurant at the western end of Olvera Street at four-thirty, since he had class until four, but it wasn’t until almost five o’clock before he rounded a corner, looking grim. I was just glad he had shown up; all sorts of horrible possibilities had presented themselves, ranging from a simple standing-up to a multi-car wreck somewhere along the 110 Freeway. Aside from his expression, though, he looked none the worse for wear, so I thought maybe the traffic had just been especially bad—nothing unusual for Los Angeles at rush hour, even though campus was only about five miles or so from the historic pueblo near Union Station.
    “Hi,” he said briefly. “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.”
    Nice of him to notice, especially when I’d been sitting in the chill for the last forty-five minutes. Although the rain of Halloween night had gone, the cold air mass still hovered over the city, and it was unseasonably chilly.
    “Bad traffic?” I asked, hoping that my tone was neutral.
    “Sucked,” he replied. “They’re still tearing up part of Main for something—pipes, I guess.”  
    The hostess seated us in a dark booth toward the back of the restaurant. It was fairly crowded, no big surprise considering that the Day of the Dead festivities were still going on outside. At least I’d gotten to see a parade of folkloric dancers while I sat waiting for Randall, although I wished I had a proper coat instead of the thin denim jacket I had thrown on over my sweater.
    “Do you drink beer?” he asked, after we’d been seated and were looking over the menus.
    “Not usually, but I do kind of like it with Mexican food.”
    “God,