“But how does he look in a face veil?” Jane asked again.
“You must tell me,” Debbie said, when Kady didn’t answer right away. “What is this about a face veil?”
“May I?” Jane asked, then when Kady nodded, she continued. “Kady’s widowed mother worked a couple of jobs, so Kady stayed with us most of the day and she was like part of our family. She used to have—” She looked at Kady, one eyebrow raised. “Still does?” Kady nodded. “Anyway, all her life Kady has had a dream about an Arabian prince.”
“I don’t know who he is,” Kady interrupted, looking at Debbie. “It’s just a dream I have. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing, ha! You know what she did all the years she was growing up? She drew veils across the lower half of every man’s photo she saw. My father used to threaten her within an inch of her life, because he’d open Time magazine or Fortune and, if Kady had seen it first, she’d have blacked out the bottom half of each man’s face. She carried black markers with her wherever she went.” Jane leaned toward Debbie. “When she grew up, she put the markers in the case with her knives.”
“She still does,” Debbie said. “At school we all wondered what her black markers were for. Darryl once said—” She gave a look at Kady, then broke off.
“Go on,” Kady said. “I can bear it. Ever since he heard me say that he couldn’t even fry a chicken, Darryl has not exactly been my friend. What did he say about my markers?”
“That you used them to write letters to the devil because that’s the only way you could cook the way you do.”
Both Kady and Jane laughed.
“So tell me about the man with the veiled face,” Debbie encouraged, and this time Jane nodded for Kady to tell her own story.
“It’s nothing really. When I was growing up, I was obsessed with finding this man.” She looked at Jane. “And now I think I have. Gregory looks very much like him.”
“Him who?” Debbie said, frustrated. “Either tell me or I’ll make you eat processed cheese!”
“I never knew you had such a streak of cruelty,” Kady said dryly, then, “Okay, Okay. I have a recurring dream, and it’s always the same. I’m standing in a desert and there is a man sitting on a white horse, one of those beautiful Arabian horses. The man is wearing a robe of black wool. He’s looking at me, but I can only see his eyes because the lower half of his face is covered with a black cloth.”
For a moment, Kady’s voice became soft as she thought of the dream man who had been such a compelling part of her life. “He has unusual, almond-shaped eyes. The outer lids dip down just slightly, so they give him a look of sadness, as though he has seen more pain than a person should have seen.”
Abruptly, Kady came back to the present and smiled at Debbie. “He never says anything, but I can tell that he wants something from me and he’s waiting for me to do something. Every time it frustrates me that I don’t know what he wants. After a moment he holds out his hand to me. It’s a beautiful, strong hand, with long fingers and tanned skin.”
In spite of herself, Kady felt the power of the dream even as she told the story. If she’d had the dream only once or twice, she would have been able to forget about it, but there had never been a week since she was nine years old that she hadn’t had the dream. It was always exactly the same, with not the tiniest variation.
Her voice grew so quiet that both Jane and Debbie had to lean forward to hear her. “Always, I try to take his hand. More than anything in the world I want to jump on that horse and ride away with him. I want to go wherever he is going, to be with him forever, but I can’t. I can’t reach his hand. I try to, but there is too much distance between us. After a while his eyes show infinite sadness, and he withdraws his hand, then rides away. He rides as though he is part of the horse. After a long moment he halts his horse, then turns back for just a second and looks at me as though he hopes I will change my mind and go with him. Each time I call out to him not to leave me, but he never seems to hear. He looks even sadder, then turns and rides away.”
Kady leaned back in her chair. “And that’s the end of the dream.”
“Oh, Kady,” Debbie said, “that gives me goose bumps. And you think Gregory is your Arabian prince in real life?”
“He is dark like him, and from the first moment, we were attracted to each other, and since he proposed marriage, I have been having the dream every other night. I think that’s a sign, don’t you?”
“I think it’s a sign that it’s time for you to leave your life of food and men on white stallions and join the real world,” Jane said.
“I never looked,” Kady answered.
“What?”
“I never looked under the horse to see if it was a stallion or not. Could be a mare. Or maybe a gelding. But then how do you tell if it has been gelded?”
“I’m sure that if people ate horse meat, then you would know,” Jane said, making the other two women laugh.
Debbie gave a great sigh. “Kady, I think that may be the most romantic story I have ever heard. I definitely think you should marry your Arabian prince.”
“What I want to know is what you are making poor Gregory wear to the wedding. A black robe?”
Kady and Debbie laughed; then Kady said, “My dear Gregory may wear as little or as much as he wants to the wedding. He isn’t thirty pounds overweight.”
“And neither are you,” Jane snapped.
“Tell that to the woman selling wedding dresses.”