THE MARLIN AND THE MORNING AFTER

They were in the bed.
She stared at the stained ceiling that loomed over them, counting the old yellow rings of water marks, eyes tracing the chipped dry wall that had long ago peeled and hung down like the skin of an animal.
“It’s really a shithole,” she said.
“Hm?”
“This place.”
He moaned his agreement. She passed the crudely rolled joint back to him and he took it slowly. She leaned up on her elbow and looked past him out the open sliding door, watching the distant silhouettes of birds through the rolling fog that drenched the balconies and the apartment blocks. The couple in the next room argued.
“I kind of like it,” he said. He rolled over and faced her. “It’s got a certain character to it.”
“What does.”
“This place.”
“We just .... with the doors open.”
“For the whole world to see,” he said, handing her back the joint. “It’s too foggy out there to see anything anyway.”
“People have ears.”
“Fuck em in the ear.”
“That’s a line from Goodfellas.”
“Fuck em in the other ear, too, then.” He sniffed and watched her smoking. Their eyes met like two nervous animals seeing each other for the first time. She smiled timidly.
“What.”
He touched her face with the back of his hand.
“Nothing.”
“What.”
“You look nice.”
“Gee,” she said, handing him the joint. It was almost used up. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious.” The wind blew in from the open sliding door.
“We’re inside of a cloud,” she said, nodding outside to where the fog was still sweeping in. They were on the fourth floor. The city was blanketed in this cold cobalt mist.
“You do look pretty,” he said. “You did before, too. That’s how I knew it was you.”
They lay together naked underneath a white comforter filled with cheap feather stuffing. It collapsed over them and outlined their bodies like plastic. She still leaned up on her elbow.
“You knew it was me,” she said.
“I knew it was you.”
"But how?" she said, turning over onto her stomach. She propped her head up with a forearm. “How is it possible?” He passed her the joint.
"I don't know. It just is."
"I don't remember you."
He turned to her, eyebrows slightly raised. "I thought you would."
She passed the joint back to him.
“Well.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
"When I saw you ... you looked so familiar. I couldn't stop staring at you, because of how familiar you looked." She spoke distantly and turned onto her back. She watched the ceiling fan spinning. He traced the skin of her forearm with his hand. She looked at him. "Did you know that?"
“That I looked familiar to you?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew that you looked familiar to me. Something … uncanny.”
“Strange, right?”
“Like it was out of a dream.”
“Yeah,” she said.
"I know when you left, I spent about three hours trying to find out who you were."
She let out a small burst of laughter.
"No you didn't."
“Yeah I did. I went around asking people if they’d seen this beautiful girl I had just seen. They sent me to her but she didn’t want me, so then I came to find you.”
She hit him playfully and he laughed.
“Ass.”
"I did, I swear I did," he chuckled, pretending to massage the place where she'd hit him. He put the smoking remnants of the joint out in a glass kitchen bowl on the bedside table. A car passed down on the street below with rap music blaring, a ghost save for the sound and the slow tires over wet pavement.
"Didn’t you feel like we would see each other again, though?”
"Yeah, but ..." He shrugged. "I couldn't wait, I guess. I saw you at the airport and I knew that I recognized you, but at the same time I knew that I had never met you. It was … a sucky feeling."
“And you just let me get onto a plane and disappear.”
“I was scared.”
"I can't remember the airport, at all,” she said. “Except that when I saw you again last night, I instantly recognized you, and I knew right away that I recognized you from all those years ago.”

"I did too." He laughed. “I thought about you a lot. The girl from the airport that I knew I had dreamt about before even knowing she existed. I thought about you a lot.”
“You’re a smooth talker.”
“It’s all true.”
"I was definitely there, though," she said, eyes locked on him with admiration. She wiped his lip with her thumb. "And here we are. I thought about you too. Not all the time. But I did.”
“You did?”
“Yes,” she whispered, staring at him. “Like I said, I just … felt … such a connection to you. Like we had already known each other for a long time. Then when I saw you last night …”
“Yeah.”
“What year was that?"
“What.”
“When we saw each other for the first time at the airport.”
"It was 2005," he said. "Right before hurricane Katrina."
"How do you remember that?"
"I left New Orleans a few days before they announced a statewide emergency."
"You saw the future," she said.
"Well actually you weren't half as pretty as the girl I saw at the airport, you jus-" a barrage of slaps and hits fell upon him as he started to laugh loudly. Her face was frozen in a pretend-shock; mouth open and smiling, eyes wide and aware.
"You ass, you ass" she said, abruptly smashing him with a spare pillow. She laughed. The floor was littered with the clothes they had stripped off of each other the night before, and she leaned down to her jeans and pulled up a half smoked pack of American Spirits. She lit one.
“Wanna split this?”
“Yeah,” he said. "I can see the future, you know."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah,"
"Oh yeah?" She leaned in and kissed him and then handed him the cigarette.
"You said so yourself. I'm precognant."
"What's that."
"Like…” he blew smoke through his nose. “Did you ever see Minority Report?"
"No," she said. "What's it about?"
"It's about this guy. He meets this beautiful, mysterious girl, and he knows, somehow, that he's supposed to be with her. But she disappears, and he doesn’t see her for about six years, and when he finally finds her, she turns out to just be this ... really mean blonde girl who constantly beats him while they lay in bed together an-”
Again an assault wave of punches and playful slaps struck him as she realized he was full shit.
"I can't believe you!" she exclaimed. "Three! Three times, I believed you."
"I'm gonna get you a fourth time,"
"Nope."
"Yup, four times for me."
"Never."
The couple in the next room had stopped arguing, trading their annoyances and agitation for the blasting acoustic sounds of Bruce Springsteen's album 'Nebraska'.
"I think I dreamt about you," she said, laying her head back against the pillow.
"I dreamt about you."
"Do you think that's something that everybody says?"
"Probably."
"People try so desperately to feign romance," she said. She turned to him. "I think being honest in itself is romantic."
"I dreamt about you. More than once. Before I saw you at the airport in New Orleans in 2005. That’s why … when I saw you, in New Orleans … I just froze up. I was so … terrified? I guess. I guess that’s the right word. I couldn’t believe you were real. I had dreamt about you. And there you were. And then you were gone.”
“But we found each other again,” she said. She wrapped an arm over his chest, her fingers fanning out over his shoulder. “In a bar in downtown Dover, Delaware.”
“I missed my plane,” he said. “It left two hours ago.”
“That’s okay.”
“I dreamt about you.”
"I believe you," she whispered in his ear. He looked at her face.
"You were a fish, in the first dream."
"A fish?"
"A marlin."
"Like a swordfish?"
"Yeah." He turned back to the ceiling.
“Is this another joke?”
“No,” he said. "You saved my life in the dream." He looked at her. "Then you turned into you. Like the real you. That was the first dream. That was before 2005. Before I saw you in the airport.”
“And now it’s 2011.”
“And now it’s 2011,” he said.
“And now I'm in a bed with you.”
"I know," he whispered. A driver outside hit the horn repeatedly.
"Why was I a marlin, I wonder."
"You were a lot of things in my dreams."
"What else," she whispered, her nose and lips against his cheek. He could feel her eyelashes move when she blinked.
"A statue, in one. Holding a musket."
“What?”
“You and two men, like colonial men. All holding muskets.”
“Was I naked?”
“Yeah.”
"Oh was I," she laughed. "Was it awesome?"
"This is better."
They lay quietly.
“That’s a real statue, you know.”
“What?”
“Three men with muskets. Here in Dover.” She looked at him.
“I can’t explain it.”
"I must've dreamt about you."
"People told me ... so much," he said. "That 'blonde girl was symbolic for God or love or passion or jealousy' ..." He rolled over to face her. "I'm still expecting this to be a dream."
"It isn't."
On the second floor, Bruce Springsteen was singing about Atlantic City. Outside it started to rain.
“It’s gonna get cold.”
“Do you want me to shut the door,” he asked.
“No.”
"What do we do now?"
She smiled. He smelled her hair as she put her head against his neck and shoulder."It doesn't matter what we do now." She closed her eyes, listening to the music through the walls from the next hotel room. "We can stay here forever,