“You are not well, are you?” Dr. James asks.

I shake my head. It’s all I can manage. I’m reduced to rocking back and forth. Unable to write, because I would only write that moment out, again and again. I have written it so many times I have filled half a notebook with it, until my hand cramps on the pen so badly a nurse must force my fingers to release it.

“What is it you have remembered?” he asks.

I only hand him the notebook, and he reads:

[From a handwritten journal; date unknown]

It’s the same dream, the same memory, over and over and over again, driving me mad.

I see her, above me. Hair draped around my face like a dark curtain.

No…not HER—

You.

Ava.

I see you above me, Ava. Your hair is an inky black curtain around my face, obscuring the sunlight, which is glimmering and glinting through the strands in brilliant scintillating refractions. Your smile…it is an expression of the purest love possible on this earth. It is beyond comprehension, beyond description. Your eyes are the vivid cerulean of the High Sea, and they pierce into me and see my soul and somehow, see something within me worth loving with such purity. Your skin is flawless cream and ivory. Your lips are redder than the most scarlet apple.

This is all there is to the dream. Your hair, the sunlight peeking through it, your red lips and pale skin and blue eyes. And that look of the purest love that could ever exist.

Again, and again, and again.

No words, no sound, no sensations or smells. Just that look on your face, and the upwelling of raw ecstatic joy it causes in me. I cannot fathom it. I cannot pierce the memory, nor dredge it for more. I dream it, every night. I close my eyes as I sit on the veranda in the hot sun. I see you, waking and sleeping, and I am mad with the seeing of it, desperate to know you, desperate to know if I have truly seen such a look directed at me, desperate to know…you—

And myself through you.

Who was I that you could gaze at me like this? That you could love me, like this?

I have but the tiniest fragments of myself, so far: a capacity for the written word; a vague notion of unhappiness as a child; the sea; a son, Henry, who died, and the icy ghost fingers of dread the knowledge of his death engenders within me, though I know not why; and you, for you are truly an intrinsic part of me, Ava, in a way I do not know if I can even now comprehend.

The dream, the dream, always this dream.

You, you, you.

Sometimes I wallow in the madness the dream catalyzes inside me. I linger in it. Allow myself to be mad with it. Allow myself to chant your name and allow the vision—the dream, the memory—to repeat in my head like a looped GIF, the splice between frames perfectly married in an endlessly repeating moment: your head drawing down to mine, your hair draping around my face and pooling on the pillow, your lips curved in that secret smile of purest love, your eyes flicking back and forth as you gaze down at me.

I want to drown myself in that moment.

Am I truly going mad? For days now, that vision has been in my every thought, laced through every moment, awake and asleep. I dream it, and when I awake with a start, lonely and mourning the loss of such love, I close my eyes to steady myself and yet there you are, staring at me, all over again.

There is no escape from it.

WHY?

Why must I be taunted with it? Why can’t I make it stop? Or remember more?

What came before? What comes after?

Did you kiss me? That look, that smile, did it morph into a kiss, into more? Into us, drowning in each other there in the sunlight? Or was that moment what came after we made love? Was that the look you gave me in the moments after we both climaxed together, clinging together, gasping, and loving each other as fiercely as our bodies would allow?

I don’t know…

And I want more than almost anything else in this world to know, to KNOW.

That vision is taunting me, haunting me. Teasing me. It is a cup of water just out of reach of a man dying of thirst.

Sometimes I’m so mad with it I nearly wish I could dig it out of my head, drive it away from me forever.

Other times I’m so besotted with it I want to live always in that single moment, cling to it like a drowning man to a spar in a storm.

All I can do, however, is endure it.

---

Dr. James flips back and forth through several pages, and finally removes his spectacles and looks at me closely.

“I can see that the same thing is written over and over many times, this central image of your vision of your wife, this woman, Ava.”

I nod.

“Can you explain why?”

“It’s all I see. Over and over and over again, awake and asleep—I see her but I can’t remember—I can’t remember what came before, or what came after.” I rock back and forth in my chair, squeeze my eyes closed and mutter her name a few times—Ava, Ava, Ava. “I can’t remember. I just can’t remember.”

Seeing that I was becoming agitated, Dr. James said, “You must try to calm yourself. This will not help you remember.”

“I CAN’T REMEMBER!” I shout. “If I could remember the rest, I know I could remember my name. I just…I know it.”

Dr. James doesn’t argue. Just nods and pats my knee. “You must not try to be forcing it. As we have discussed before—the memories will come when they are ready to come. You can only help them along so much.”

“I’m trying, but this is just...it’s so frustrating.”

“I know, I realize that. Which is why I think you should take a few days of a break from the writing. I think you are becoming obsessed with it and I don’t think that is healthy for your psyche.”

“I have to remember. I have to. I have to know her. I have to remember more of her. I have to remember what happened.”

Dr. James leans forward, hand on my knee. “Please, put the pens and the notebooks away for a day or two, at the very least. Please. It will help, I promise you. It will give your mind a rest. Your injuries are healing and I think it is time for you to do some walking. Let us focus on the healing of your body, and regaining your mobility. And then you can go back to the writing, and then I think you will have more luck in shaking loose the memories.”

I nod. “Okay.”

He claps his hands, pleased. “Very good! Okay. More walking, more gentle exercise. The staff is here to help you. The weather is very pleasant and I think you will enjoy exploring the grounds and breathing in the fresh air. You will feel like a new man, I promise you this.”

And so, when Dr. James leaves to continue his rounds, I lay aside my writing.

My casts have been off for some time, but for how long? Days? Weeks? I have no idea. It doesn’t seem to matter, either.

How long have I been here? I have no idea. Forever, it seems.

For the next week—I count the days, mark them off in a corner of my notebook—I walk around as much as I can. There is no residual pain any longer, but my muscles feel stiff and sore and weak. I walk around the hospital, and even walk to the shore, under the watchful eye of a nurse, as if I am a child or a prisoner but, in truth, I am grateful for her presence, because I know nothing of their languages beyond a few words.

Once at the shoreline, with the sea in view, something in my heart swells.

Cracks.

Trembles.

I kick off the flip-flops I wear—they are handmade from a piece of rubber and bits of rope, but they protect my feet from the rocks and heat of the earth. I roll up the edges of my trousers, and I wade into the sea. I go in up to my ankles at first, and then my knees, and then to my hips, the water soaking my trousers. The water is cold. I touch a finger to the sea and then to my lips and taste the salt.

A wave slaps unexpectedly against my chest and salt sprays my face, and I am abruptly plunged into memory—

---

Black sky above. Lightning flashes, illuminating an angry jade wave cresting over my head, caught mid-motion, the tip becoming a spear as it curls, arching over me. Salt on my lips. I am tossed like a stick. A wave slams onto me, plunges me under the surface and I am twisted and rolled and flipped. I am at the mercy of the Sea. I paw clumsily at the water, trying to paddle for the surface, but there is no surface, no up or down, only the angry waves and the sky and lightning and the clap of thunder and the wind.

---

I feel someone pulling me backward, and I stumble and twist to see the face of the nurse. She’s jabbering at me in Susu, scolding me. I am soaked from head to toe and I am shaking from the memory rather than the cold.

She gestures, indicating she wants me to return to the hospital, but I can’t go back yet. Instead, I strip out of the wet clothes and leave them in the sand to dry, and lie down beside them—this nurse washed me when I was helpless, so I am unconcerned about being naked around her. I lie there in the sand, eyes closed, and let the sun beat down on my face.

And for a moment, I have a shred of peace.

Perhaps I doze, I don’t know.

I awake feeling a bit calmer, and I return to the hospital with the nurse. I feel in possession of myself again, not so mad with the need to know.

The dream of Ava continues, but I find comfort in it now—I choose to believe that she is with me in spirit, and that itself is a comfort.

Another week passes and I continue with my explorations in the area around the hospital, and I even convince Dr. James to take me into Conakry itself. We bump along the narrow streets in his rattling old car with the windows down, the radio playing something melodic and bouncing and fun and light, chatter floating in from the streets.

He points things out places and people of interest. “My cousin, he live there. He sells mobile phones…That is a restaurant which is very good, maybe we go there soon…I had my first flat in that building…My first wife, she grew up just there—oh, she passed on, many years ago, from an illness…”

We drove until we came to a market; he parked and we browsed the market stalls, speaking together like friends; he told me of his second wife, to whom he was married for twenty years, and of her death in the Guinean political protests in September of 2009. I spoke of Ava and shared some of the things I remembered. Speaking of her seemed to jar loose more memories, little ones, which I tuck away for later.

Dr. James drives us back to the hospital, and now the radio is off and we are both silent. The air billowing in from the open windows is warm, smelling of dust and food and exhaust. Dr. James parks near his office and, for a moment, we just sit in the car, listening to the engine tick and pop, watching a group of boys and girls play stickball in the shade of a huge tree.

A thought occurs to me—a question. “Dr. James?”

He glances at me. “Yes? What is it?”

“How long have I been here? In this hospital?”

“Seven months. Almost eight. You came to us in the beginning of May, and it is now the middle of November.” He checks his watch, a cheap, digital thing. “Today is November 19, 2016.”

Eight months? That is a long time.

“What if—what if I never remember anything else?” I ask. “What then? What will I do? Where will I go? I can’t stay here in the hospital forever.”

Dr. James sighs. “No, you cannot. But we cannot just send you out alone without even your own name. What if someone is looking for you? Surely this woman you remember, your Ava—surely she is looking for you, missing you. But where is she? How do we find her? We have very little by way of resources here.” Another sigh. “What will you do if you do not remember yourself? I do not know. Begin again, somehow, somewhere, I suppose.”

Begin again.

Choose a new name? Forget Ava? Just…start life anew, from scratch?

How could I do it?

No, no. I must remember.

I will remember.

When we return to the hospital, I write once more, for the first time in two weeks.

I write feverishly, with renewed desperation:

[From a handwritten journal; November 20 2016]

A memory, which has bubbled to the surface:

I am sitting at a computer, typing—I was a writer, then, I believe, which is consistent with what I feel in myself. It is late at night, the sky beyond the windows dark. Lightning plays far out on the water, visible through the sliding glass door to my left. I wear faded jeans, the knees ripped and fraying, a gray T-shirt, and a thin, faded black hoodie, which I wear superstitiously whenever I write. I am stiff, sore. I have been at this desk many hours. Cans of soda are clustered, empty, on one side of the desk, and a bag of pretzels sits open nearby, mostly gone. Music plays from a sound system, tiny square speakers installed in the corners of the ceiling—solo piano music. The only light is from a pair of floor lamps in opposite corners of the room.

I hear something behind me—the door opening. I know it’s you. I don’t turn, but I’m smiling at my screen.

“Hey, babe,” I say.

I hear you clear your throat meaningfully.

“Yeah, I’m just finishing up.”

“You’ve been working since six this morning. Have you even eaten?”

“I’ll grab something. I’m done now.” I still haven’t turned around, instead saving my work and backing it up to a thumb drive.

I feel your hands on the back of my office chair, pulling me away from my desk and spinning me around.

“Hey!” I protest. “I wasn’t done—”

You stop the rotation of the chair with your foot, and my words die on my lips. “I have something for you to eat,” you say, your words low and your voice sultry.

“Oh yeah?” I ask.

You tangle your fingers in my hair, and pull my face toward your leg, your foot propped up on the chair between my thighs. You’re wearing a set of lingerie I got you a few months ago, a just-because gift. It’s a black lace bodysuit, which obscures and reveals and emphasizes every curve of your breathtakingly sexy body. Stockings, garters. Your breasts are pushed up, and your cheeks are pink with excitement. I can smell your desire.

You pull me closer yet, and my lips graze your inner thigh, just above your knee. “Start there and work your way up,” you murmur. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

I kiss the creamy skin of your thigh, lapping and licking and nipping upward until I reach the apex of your thighs. I inhale deeply, sniffing along the seam of your pussy, covered in lace, soaked with your need. “Smells delicious.”

“It does, huh?” You’re breathy, now. Your thighs tremble with anticipation—you crave my mouth on your clit.

“So good. It smells so good I think I might just—” and instead of saying it, I do it.

I hook a finger in the gusset of your bodysuit and pull it aside to reveal your slit. Your pussy is soaked with desire, and you smell delightfully, arousingly, of anticipation.

I love that word—pussy; I think of your sex like a pink flower, two delicate petals and a tiny, hard little bud.

I slide my tongue up the damp opening of your pussy, and you gasp.

I flick my tongue against your swollen clit, and you moan.

The sounds you make, Ava…they’re intoxicating. I am drunk on you. I devour you. Work you with my tongue into a thrashing fervor, your hands in my hair clutching me hard against you, and your hips pivot and flex and you grind your clit against my swirling tongue, against my suckling mouth. You cry out as you come, hunching forward, legs trembling.

And then you drop to your knees. Gaze at me, still breathless. Keep your eyes on mine as you unhook the clip of the garter from the stocking and peel it off. You use the stocking to tie one of my hands to the arm of my chair. Then the other stocking is removed, and my other hand is bound.

“This is a fun game,” I say. “I like where this is going.”

“You’re going to love what I have in store for you,” you say, mischief in your eyes. “I was reading some erotica earlier, and I got a really fun idea.”

“What’s that?”

You just grin. “Now why would I tell you when I could just show you?” You huff. “Dammit. I forgot to take off your shirt before I tied you up.”

I laugh as you untie me, roughly peel off my hoodie and T-shirt, toss them aside, and then retie me. “Now. Where was I?”

“About to tell me what your plan is?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“I think you were about to bring that sweet, juicy peach of a pussy of yours over here so I can eat it some more.”

Your cheeks flame and you step closer. “Hmmm. Tempting.”

You sidle up to me, and I frame you between my knees. I kiss your breasts, over the lace, and nibble at the bump of a nipple, until you pull away with a gasp, and I bend lower, dip my mouth closer to your mound.

You let me get a teasing whiff, a brush of lips on lace, and then you pull back. “Tempting, but no. I have other ideas. And I’m not going to tell you. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“I trust you,” I say, immediately. “Obviously. Go on, then, wife. Have your wicked way with me.”

“I think I should blindfold you, though. It’d be more fun.”

“If you insist.”

So I find myself blindfolded by my own T-shirt, and then I’m truly helpless, which is how you want it. Usually, you like it when I’m in control, when I pin your hands over your head and take you, when I guide your hips with my hands as you ride me, when I bend you over our bed and thrust into you and spank you as I fuck you, when I roll you to your stomach and pull you into doggy-style position and pound into you.

This time, though, is different. You’ve got a spark in your eyes, a heat in your gaze that tells me this is going to be about you taking what you want—me. How you want me. What you want from me.

I like this. A lot.

I sit, bound and blindfolded, waiting. My cock is bent and throbbing inside my jeans. I smell you, feel you near me.

You spin my chair around a few times, disorienting me. And then I smell you, feel your presence at my shoulder, and then your lips close around my earlobe and your breath is hot and loud, and then you’re gone. A nip at my nipple, sharp and sudden. A fingertip trailing from hip to knee over denim, your fingernail tickling my skin in the rip of my jeans. Another spin, then another. I’m truly disoriented now. I feel lace brush against my hand. I hear rustling.

“Know what I’m doing?” I hear you ask.

“No.”

“I’m taking off the bodysuit.”

“I want to see.”

“I’m naked, now.”

“Take off the blindfold.”

“Nope. You’ve seen me naked a million times. Use your imagination.” You slide between my knees. “This time, just FEEL me.”

I gulp as you press your lips to my chest, and I gasp as you trail kisses down my stomach. I hiss as you pry open the button my jeans, and then hold my breath, tensed, as you tug down the zipper. I dressed quickly this morning, in a hurry to get to writing, and didn’t bother with underwear.

“You’re commando.”

“Yep.”

“Normally I’d say that’s kind of gross, but in this situation, I approve.” You grasp my shaft in your hand, sliding your fist up and down my length. “Easier access.”

“God, that feels good, Ava.”

“Mmm-hmmm?” I feel you between my thighs, feel your body descending as you sink to your knees; you tug at my jeans, and I lift my butt up off the chair so you can tug them off of me. “You like the feel of my hand on your cock?”

“So much.”

Now your naked skin slides against my thighs, and I feel your breasts swaying and brushing against my stomach as you lean close to kiss my chest, both of your hands around my erection. I’m wild with need, groaning and flexing my hips unreservedly into your touch, gasping and huffing laughs as you pepper my flesh with kisses, from chest to stomach, stomach to ribs, ribs to waist, and then to my hipbone and over my thigh. You’re not really stroking me yet, just sort of toying with my cock, petting it, caressing, rubbing your thumb across the tip, and I’m shaking with anticipation of your touch, of your mouth.

You do not disappoint me.

There’s no warning, no buildup, no teasing. Just your mouth dancing from thigh to hip, hip to stomach, and then the warm wet suck of your mouth on my cock, and my expulsion of breath in ecstatic relief.

“That feels good, too, right?” You pull away just long enough to say this, and then take me into your mouth again.

I laugh. “Fucking amazing.”

“Probably don’t want me to stop, huh?” Again, you say this and then fill your mouth with my erection.

“No—god no.”

“You wanna come in my mouth?” You whisper this to my cock, the words huffing hot on my wet, sensitive skin.

“Fuck yes.”

“I might just let you, since you made me come so hard.”

“Oh fuck, Ava.”

“But not yet.” You punctuate this by releasing my cock so it springs free of your hand and slaps back against my belly.

“Aw hell, babe…I was getting close.”

“I know.” I can hear the grin in your voice. “But…I think I might need one more orgasm before I give you yours.”

I hear my desk creak as you sit on it, and then feel your toe hook around the back of my leg and you haul me across the hardwood floor, the casters loud as I roll toward you. Your thighs are velvety soft as they come to rest on my shoulders, and I nip the flesh hard enough to make you squeak and jump, and then your hands are in my hair and you’re guiding me to your slit, pulling me against you. I feel your body arch as I begin lapping at your clit, feel your fingers tighten in my hair. You’re on a hair trigger, already gasping wildly, and I’ve only licked at you a few times, and when I pause to suckle the hard little button of your clitoris into my mouth, you whimper and shift and thrust against me, and then when I return my tongue to you, circling faster and faster, you cry out and gasp and tell me, “YES! YES! Right there! Don’t stop!”

As if I would stop—as if I COULD stop. The sounds you make, the erotic whimpers and breathy groans, they’re enough to make my cock throb without even being touched. And when you clutch me hard against you and scream wordlessly in your thrashing climax, I nearly do come just hearing the sounds you make.

And then you kick me away, one foot pushing at the chair so I roll backward, and I hear your feet hit the hardwood floor and I feel your hair tickle my thighs and that’s all the warning I get before I’m in your mouth and you’re sucking hard and pumping my shaft with both hands, and I’m groaning and thrusting.

You don’t let me finish, though.

You stand up and I feel you twist around between my thighs, and then your hand clutches my cock and bends me away from my body and you sink me into your slick wet tight heat and you’re straddling me, facing away, the angle delicious and tight and taut, and your walls squeeze around me and your ass slaps down on my thighs and I’m trying to thrust but I have no leverage.

“Hold still,” you say. “Let me do it.”

So I go still, which is difficult. You only have a little leverage, so your thrusts are shallow, just enough to tease us both. Enough to get me close, but not enough to push me over the edge.

“Fuck, Ava—I need to come.”

“Yeah?”

“I need to come so bad.”

“So come.”

“I can’t—not like this.”

“You can’t?” Your voice is teasing. “How sad. Whatever shall we do?”

“Untie me, and I’ll show you.”

“Unh-uh. I don’t think so.”

Without warning, you rise up and climb off me, and I slide free of your tight wet slit, aching, dripping, and a single touch away from exploding.

“You know what I’ve always wondered?” you ask.

“What?” I ask, my voice guttural, tense.

“What you taste like after you’ve been inside me.”

“Oh—shit!”

It’s all I have time to say before you have me in your mouth, sinking down around my aching shaft, tongue swirling, and then you’re licking me from root to tip and your mouth is sideways on my length, tongue flicking and sliding, tasting our mingled essences. I feel you gather your hair and drape it across one shoulder, and then you take my cock in your hands and wrap your lips around the head and suck and stroke, until I’m grunting and thrusting and begging you to let me come.

You don’t.

You let me go, turn around again, and sink me into you, slowly, all the way, and you rock there, hips rolling, driving, until I’m panting with need, and I think NOW, now you’re going to let me come, buried deep inside you.

But you don’t.

You slide off me again, and you take your time going to your knees, not touching me, giving me time to back away from the edge, and then you’re licking your taste off my flesh, and I’m grunting and groaning, and I can’t take any more.

“Ava, PLEASE—please. I’m going crazy.”

“You want to come, huh?”

“So fucking bad. I NEED it, baby.”

“Okay. But I have one demand.”

“Anything.”

“When you come, I want you to say my name—shout it as loud as you can, and tell me how much you love me.”

“Yes—yes, of course.”

“Then I shall allow you to have your orgasm.”

“How kind, my mistress.”

You take me into your mouth and now I know, finally, there’s no more teasing, no more games. Your hands curl around my shaft at the base and slide up and down my length, and your mouth bobs down and then you suck hard on the way up, and your hands grind me to the edge, and there’s no holding back. No chance of it, and I wouldn’t even if I could.

I hit the edge and my hips thrust and you take it, allow me to thrust into your hands and mouth, and my hands tug and test the bonds.

“Ava!” I shout. “AVA! Shit—shit—I’m coming now, Ava. I’m gonna come so hard.”

You hum around me. “Mmmm-hmmm!” and stroke me faster and suck harder, taking more of me into your mouth.

“AVA! Oh my god, Ava! I love you, god I love you so fucking much! I—god—oh god oh god, Ava, I love you so much I can’t stand it, I love you more than anything in this whole universe—”

I have no idea how I’m managing to formulate words right now, much less say them without stuttering hopelessly. It feels too good, so good—this is heaven, this is perfection, this is—it’s everything, and I don’t want it to stop, I don’t want to come, I want to just feel this forever, your hands gliding and your mouth hot and wet and sucking hard around me.

But I can’t stop the orgasm—it’s a freight train slamming through me at a thousand miles per hour.

“Ava—I love you—I love you…oh my god Ava, I fucking—I fucking love you—oh god…AVA!”

My shout is so loud it echoes off the windows, and I come so hard I see stars bursting behind my eyelids, and you swallow and suck more out of me, pump it out of me, and you don’t let off until I’m going soft and gasping raggedly, chanting, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

I’m left utterly spent when you finally pull away. I hear you pad away, hear a drawer open and close, and I know you’ve brought out my hideout bottle of whiskey. I hear the cap unscrew and the glug-glug as you pour a measure into the glass tumbler I keep in my office. You put the cup to my lips and tip and I taste the fiery burn of the whiskey as it slides down my mouth, and then I hear you drink and hiss, and then you’re untying the blindfold and I’m blinking in the dim light of my office. You take another drink, and then dip three fingers into the whiskey and smear the golden liquid across your nipple and bring your breast to my mouth, and I lick and lap it away, and you groan in delight as I do so.

You feed me another drink, and then take one for yourself, and then the glass is empty and you set it aside, move to sit astride me. Smash your breasts against my chest, wrap your arms around my neck, clinging to me. One hand drifts away, unties my hand, and then the other, and I enclose you in the circle of my arms and stare up at you.

Lightning flashes, out at sea, illuminating the endless horizon of the sea for a split second.

Your hair is loose, hanging around your shoulders. I lean back in the chair as far as it will go, taking your weight as you lean over me. Your hair drapes on either side of my face, and the standing lamp in the corner shines on you, the light playing through the strands of your hair.

You straddle me, and though I just came, arousal stirs through me at the sultry, seductive, pleased, happy, sated expression on your face, and the beautiful glow of your creamy perfect skin and the softness of your curves against me, and the feel of you in my hands. I let my palms skate over your silken flesh, everywhere I can reach.

The chair allows me to lean backward almost horizontal, and I prop my feet up on the desk, and you’re on top of me, all around me, above me, gazing down at me. The smile on your face is one of purest love.

There is a long moment of silence as you stare at me, letting your love shine on me.

You palm my cheek. Touch your lips to mine, ever so gently, ever so softly, with an exquisite tenderness that steals my breath and makes my heart thump and freeze and then hammer and expand and swell and float on ether.

Both palms on my cheeks, then. Another soft, warm, slow kiss.

Your voice is barely above a whisper, but I hear each word as if it is being carved into my bones, etched into my soul:

“I love you with everything that I am, Christian St. Pierre.”