Reminiscing (part4)

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You know, I once dreamed I was here, in Matt’s room,” Maria’s face grew thoughtful as she remembered. And I was lying here, on this bed.” She stopped, recollecting the details.

“Oh?”

Maria leaned forward and rested her arms on a crossed knee, a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was searching for lost images. “ I was trying to take an afternoon nap here. And I was alone, until Matt walked in and put on some latin dance music on his stereo. It had an infectious rhythm. Lots of trumpets. He didn’t speak. I remember I had trouble falling asleep because he kept forwarding the CD every half minute. It was quite annoying, but I was tired, and I fell asleep in the middle of some loud but engaging music. Then the music stopped, and it was quiet. The bathroom door slammed and the lock clicked. Then, I heard another song come on. It was slower and sadder than all the rest. I realized it was “Beautiful Maria of My Soul.” From The Mambo Kings soundtrack. Did you see it?”

“Mm-hmm. Saw it on video.”

“The melody, it’s haunting isn’t it?” she continued. I think it was the way the guitar strung the notes together. And such a deep feeling of sadness. Deeper than the somewhat tacky lyrics implied anyway. I heard the bathroom door open and the music turned off. It was quiet after that, and I realized Matt must have left the room. Then my alarm-radio came on, and I woke up. It was morning and I was in my own room.

“The radio was playing that same song, Beautiful Maria of My Soul. It took a while for me to realize it was all a dream. It was weird, but in a nice sort of way.”

Maria looked at him, as if waiting.

“Interesting,” he obliged. To him, the song had seemed the ultimate ballad of lost love. He’d first heard it one night on Matt’s Mambo Kings CD when they were in his Golf, with the top down and hair flying as they sped towards Telok Ayer Market late one night.

In the cool of the night sky peppered with stars, the music seemed to ripple over years of longing, as if letting out a graceful sigh of melancholy in some faraway place. It reminded him of beach sunsets in his not-too-distant youth, of one special day which cannot be repeated no matter how hard you try to journey back into the past. Matt had remarked afterward that if he could find the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, he would sing the song to her. In Spanish. That confirmed Wei Hsien’s suspicions, after all these years, that beneath Matt’s cool façade lurked a pretty sentimental guy. Funny that now Maria was affected by the same song.

“Its funny, “ she was saying, “how things, like music, can seep into your subconscious—especially when you, like, half asleep—and the music gets stuck in your head. I think later it moves to your heart and it stays there. Even when you’ve forgotten.” She paused. “But why Matt’s room, of all places. Dreams are strange, aren’t they?” [Next page]