Page 6 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me
“Sylvia Plath,” Gabriel said.
“Yes!” Annika beamed at him. “I had never heard of Sylvia Plath until I met Cleo. A fourteen-year-old reading Sylvia Plath and all this deep poetry.” Annika shook her head like she couldn’t get over it.
She grabbed her fork and ate off Gabriel’s plate.
“Anyway, it turns out she designed the T-shirt and silk-screened it. She hand-painted her Doc Martens too.” Annika smiled at me. “My brilliant, talented friend.”
“You’re the brilliant one. Annika is so incredibly talented,” I told Gabriel. “She’s an amazing dancer and choreographer.”
“She is.” Gabriel wrapped his arm around her. “When I stopped by the studio last week, I was blown away.”
Annika laughed and smacked his arm. “You saw two minutes of my rehearsal.”
He smiled. “That’s all it took.”
Gabriel was being sweet with Annika, so I started to thaw a bit. Not that I was enamored with him, but at least he appreciated her and wasn’t being a total dick.
“Do you read a lot of poetry?” he asked me.
“I just read a lot in general. My mom’s a writer and a voracious reader so I grew up surrounded by books, and we used to go to a lot of poetry readings,” I said. “How about you?” I thought to ask.
“My mom’s not a writer or a voracious reader. That I know of,” he added, his face shuttering before he smiled. “But I got into poetry because of my high school English teacher. Cool guy. He used to read Bob Dylan lyrics like it was poetry and he introduced me to Rimbaud.”
“I love DylanandRimbaud,” I said. “They were my gateway drug to beat poetry and literature.”
“Same,” Gabriel said, sounding thrilled that we’d found common ground. He looked around the diner then leaned in conspiratorially. “I saw Ginsberg eating a bowl of broth in here a few weeks ago and was hoping to see him again.”
“Oh yeah, he’s a regular,” I said. I was a big fan of the beat poet, too, and had seen him quite a few times over the years. “I’ve never spoken to him, but if I ever do, I know exactly what I’ll say.”
Gabriel raised his brows, prompting me.
“Howlyou doing, Al?” One of Allen Ginsberg’s most famous poems was called “Howl.”
Gabrielhowledwith laughter then pointed to himself. “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?Youtalkin’ to me?” he said, doing a really good impersonation of an unhinged DeNiro inTaxi Driver.
“Well, I’m the only one here.” I was aiming for a tough guy accent but mine paled in comparison to Gabriel’s. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
“Listen, you fuckheads, you screwheads…listen, Al, justhowlif you need me.”
I don’t even know why it was so funny, but I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt. Every time we looked at each other, we started laughing again.
“Howl you doing, Al,” Gabriel repeated, wiping tears from his eyes like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Can you imagine?”
“I would give you all the tips I earned tonight just to see that.”
Annika caught my eye and gave me a smug smile.See? He’s amazing.
I wouldn’t gothatfar. It was just one funny moment.
“So you’re a fashion designer?” he said.
“Not really. I’m a struggling artist who works at a boutique. A girl’s gotta eat,” I said with a laugh. “So why New York? Why not LA?”
He shuddered. “LA isn’t my scene. I played guitar in a band in Detroit, and those guys all wanted to go out to LA. They kept hyping it up like it was some kind of Promised Land. It sucked my soul dry. I ended up doing session work and odd jobs just to pay for a plane ticket out of there. The first time I came to New York, I felt like I’d finally found the home I’ve always been looking for. Now I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
Detroit. LA. NYC.
