29. Existence
Although everything about their lives was real, Riza occasionally wonders about what might have been, in a different world.
For instance, there is a dream of the two of them lying together on her bed in her sunny apartment. They are young and in love, carelessly so, with no one to answer to and nowhere that they have to be. All that they must obey is their own desire, the gradual awakening from the warm tangle of arms and legs and blankets. They are lazy and still, enjoying that bright, unfiltered light streaming in from the open window. There is a dog lolling messily atop someone's discarded blazer on the floor.
At last Riza rises, pulls on a shapeless robe and pads barefoot into the kitchen to make coffee and toast, to sort through the mail, to straighten up the kitchen and the bedroom. She sets aside the personal letters—one from her mother, one from Maes and his wife, another from an old schoolmate—washes out two mugs and brings a tray of breakfast back to bed. In her absence, Roy has curled himself inextricably into the covers. She can see his smirk and knows that he is awake, teasing.
But that is not the truth; it is only a wish, one that she does not care to dwell on. She lives in a world outside of her desires, or so she likes to think.
Somewhere today, Riza is home alone in her shabby, clean apartment, her dog lying across her feet. She is in bed, fully dressed, and she is ill with a virus that leaves her a weak, quivering mass of unusable muscles. She is daydreaming of the impossible, trying to ignore the ache in her bones, the unwelcome, heavy hum in her skull. Her life is on hold; the only continuing noises in her frozen word are those of her heartbeat, her pistol's recoil, the skritch-scratch of a pen on paper, drowning out what can never be fully realized as more than a dream.