I dreamed the person nobody likes long before I met her. I can't tell you when; nor can I tell you why. I can only say that this is true. A dream like that is a dream that stands out above all the rest: tactile, scented, disturbing. The dark is the first thing that struck me; it was twilight when it happened, but there is no question that the sky above where she lived was perpetually overcast. I was walking along a trail in the woods, smelling the soft vegetable decay and ocean smell of the coast, somewhere. When I saw the blue house, shingled, sitting awkwardly on the hill, I knew that she was there in the basement, in a trunk, dead.
The curious immediacy of dreams allows us to see every necessary detail, tangible or not. She had lived on the edge of the village, in the blue house surrounded by trees, endlessly fascinated by the lives of those around her, whether births, deaths, new clothes, or successful gardens. She bled because she could not take part in these lives. She was only an observer, bound to the edge of settlement and society.
What held her back I cannot tell you. Was it her way of speaking? Her awkward conversation? A hint of something not quite orthodox in her sexual preference? I am inclined to believe this last. After all, a murder the basement is no common thing. Though, to be honest, I must almost ask your forgiveness for saying that she was murdered. It smacks of sensation, where there was none. It was almost as if they were putting down an animal who could live no longer without pain.
Imagine my surprise when I really did meet her.
It was shortly after we moved, and we had just finished carrying in all our things, and were eating pizza on our new front porch in the early summer dark. She was out walking her large Siamese cat, stopping at every house to peer into the windows, bring in the mail, and catechise the occupants.
She is a big woman, almost square, with a blonde brush cut and a voice that could shear metal. She wears the most ungodly assortment of clothing: sweatshirts that nobody else wants, men's winter jackets, perfectly good shoes from the flea market. She is happy with her looks. It radiates from her.
There is no escaping her volley of intrusive questions; luckily, she doesn't expect an answer. By the time you open your mouth, she's moved on. Still, she knows everything that goes on on our block, from the renter's adulterous husband to the back neighbour's smoked trout.
This information is invaluable to her, and she hoards it with the same acquisitive glee that she does cheap furniture and household gadgets, bringing it out again and again to display. It is her chosen profession now; a knee injury bars her from the corner store where she has spent her working life.
Improbably, she has a lover: a small, thin, nervous-looking man with two Papillon dogs and a brown moustache. He visits her often in the small, crowded apartment she shares with her sister. They play crib and darts every winter and go to garage sales in the summer. They are happy.
Sometimes, she looks at me and sees the truth, more dreadful because I cannot hide it and I cannot tell it.
She knows that despite everything, she is The Person Nobody Likes.
It breaks my heart, because I do not want to help her.
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