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Gate of Ten Thousand Things

My dream from a few mornings ago.

I am in my office with an old friend and his young son. We are looking out the window at the metal gate in our deer fence and my friend’s son asks wistfully, “Can I go out that gate and go all the way around the house and come in through the gate of ten thousand things?” And I know he means our front gate with the two old bells.

Then the alarm went off and I woke up.

The gate of ten thousand things reminds me of my short story Ten Thousand Things, one of the forty-two stories in Buddha In A Teacup.

Ten Thousand Things

Esme watches herself in the mirror putting on lipstick. She frowns at her myriad wrinkles and snorts at the absurdity of the thought that she has grown old. She is eighty-six.

Esme is standing in front of her house when her son Bill arrives. He is fifty-eight. Before he can get out of his big blue pickup truck, Esme barks at him. “Move the garbage can out to the curb. Sweep up these pine needles. They’re unsightly.”

“Ma,” he says, working hard to stay calm. “How about saying hello?”

She flounces around the nose of his truck to the passenger door as if nothing has been said by either of them.

She climbs in and puts on her seatbelt. “I don’t know why I bother,” she complains bitterly. “They haven’t had a decent fair in twenty years.”

“We don’t have to go,” he says, gripping the steering wheel. “This is supposed to be for fun, Ma.”

“Of course we have to go,” she says, sneering imperiously. “It’s a tradition.”

Inching toward the fairgrounds, traffic snarled, Esme shakes her head and says, “I told you so.”

Bill turns to her. “Ma. How old am I?”

“Horrendous heat,” she says, fanning herself and making a spluttering sound. The day is mild, the truck air-conditioned. “Why do they always have the fair when the weather is so awful?” She sighs. “Worse now, of course. We never had smog like this.”

Bill resists the temptation to point out that she is part of the current We. He closes his eyes, wondering again why he bothers to do anything for his mother.

They come to a dead stop. Esme sighs—an audible moan—exactly as she has sighed ten thousand times before, but this time, this ten thousandth time, something gives way inside of Bill, something in his heart. He touches his sternum with the middle three fingers of his right hand and for one stunning moment he feels such overwhelming pain that his vision abandons him in a flash of light—and the pain is gone.

He turns to look at his mother. She is glaring at the road ahead as she always does, but he sees something in her face he has not been aware of before—nobility and strength.

“What could it possibly be?” she asks, her voice no longer grating but musical—a viola taken to the edge of sharpness. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

“It’s the Grand Coulee Dam, Ma,” he says, feeling a gush of love for her. “They brought it in last night with sixty-five thousand blimps.”

“Don’t be absurd!” she cries, trying to contain her mirth, but the word blimps unglues her and she bursts into laughter.

In line to buy tickets, Esme scowls at the list of admission prices. “This is an outrage,” she hisses. “This is robbery. Why… when I was a girl it was practically free.”

“Free love,” says Bill, stepping up to the ticket window and beaming at the sweaty young woman glued to her stool. “One outraged old woman and her suddenly euphoric son.”

“She your mom?” asks the young woman—two tickets emerging from two slots in the metal counter.

“From her womb I came,” says Bill, feeling downright reverent.

“Then she’s in free. It’s moms in free this afternoon.”

“You here that, Ma? Free.”

“Don’t believe it,” says Esme, her eyes narrowing. “They’re just trying to sell us something.”

In the beer garden, Bill sipping stout, Esme having lemonade, three knobby-kneed men in faded lederhosen play a peppy little polka.

“Shall we dance, Ma?” asks Bill, nodding. “I think we shall.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she says, frowning at him. “With my hip? Are you drunk?”

“I’ve had a conversion,” he says, seeing everything as if for the first time. “I stepped over a line or my heart broke or I forgave you or I forgave myself. I don’t know. But I’m not mad at you anymore. I actually love you.”

She shrugs. “Well la dee da.”

“Shoe bop shoe wah,” he says, bouncing his eyebrows.

She looks at her watch. “It’s late. We haven’t seen the quilts yet.”

Making their way through a flood of humanity, they are momentarily separated—Esme crying, “Bill! Don’t leave me!”

Bill makes his way to her and says, “Here I am, Ma.”

She clutches his arm and stamps her feet. “This is awful. I hate this. They ruined everything. It used to be so nice and now look at it. Garbage everywhere. No place to sit. The restrooms are filthy.”

“Do you want to leave or do you want to see the quilts?”

“I want to see the quilts,” she groans. “But how will we ever get there?”

“We will sing songs,” he says, taking her hand. “From all our favorite musicals.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, allowing him to lead her along.

“We’re off to see the wizard,” he begins. “The wonderful wizard of Oz.”

“Judy Garland was a drug addict,” says Esme, nodding emphatically. “I could never forgive her for that.”

“Why not?” says Bill, giving his mother’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Let’s forgive her.”

“Oh, look,” says Esme, pointing at the sign above the pavilion. “We’re here.”

“I never gave a hoot about quilts,” says Bill, sitting beside his mother on a cushioned bench to take a long look at the grand prizewinner. “Now I’m in love.”

“These are nothing,” says Esme, dismissing everything in the vast room with a wave of her hand. “When I was a girl, we really knew how to make quilts.”

“This is phantasmagoric,” says Bill, gesturing at the giant blue field dotted with stars and sheep and bubbles and clouds. “I believe in this.”

“It’s big,” says Esme, nodding. “I’ll give it that.”

“You’re just you,” he says, looking at her. “And I’m just me.”

“I’m out of gas,” she says, leaning against him. “Take me home?”

He walks her to her front door. “Shall I come in? Cook you dinner? Rub your feet?”

She turns away and fits her key into the lock. “Not like it used to be,” she sighs, opening the door. “Don’t come in. Place is a mess.”

“Ma?” he says, deftly sending the word into her heart.

“Yes, dear,” she says, turning to gaze at him. “That’s me.”

fin

Bill Evans

Buddha In A Teacup on Apple Books

Listen to Todd read Ten Thousand Things on YouTube

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honing: the quorum

quorom shining sea

On a cold rainy morning two days before New Year’s Eve, Elisha Montoya, a beautiful woman with reddish brown hair, stands behind the counter of Mona’s, the one and only bakery/café in Carmeline Creek—the café doing a brisk business.

Elisha is the manager of Mona’s and works here five days a week from six-thirty in the morning until two in the afternoon. Her husband, Paul Windsor, seven years older than Elisha, is sitting at his customary window table having breakfast with two of the newest residents of Carmeline Creek, Tivona Descartes, sixty-seven, and her husband Ephraim Spinoza, seventy-one, arrived from Zurich, Switzerland barely a month ago.

The four of them—Ephraim, Tivona, Paul, and Elisha—have become fast friends and are on the lookout for three other people to fulfill the imperative of a dream Ephraim and Tivona had while living in Zurich, a dream they interpreted as a directive to leave Switzerland and settle in Carmeline Creek.

In that life-changing dream Ephraim said to Tivona, “Our first visitor will be one of the seven,” and Tivona replied, “And you and I are two of the seven.” And Ephraim said, “Leaving four to find.”

As it happened, Paul was the first visitor to Tivona and Ephraim’s new digs in Carmeline Creek, and three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Tivona identified Elisha as the fourth.

And since becoming the fourth member of Ephraim and Tivona’s dream collective, Elisha has been on high alert for the fifth, though how she will recognize the fifth is a mystery to her.

“I’ll have a large oatmeal cookie, a baguette, a bran muffin, and a large cup of coffee,” says Ira Weinstein, an owlish man with black-framed glasses, his order never varying in the seven years Elisha has been serving him. “To go.”

Elisha hands Ira his bag of goodies and says, “If you had said ‘For here’ I would have anointed you the fifth.”

“The fifth what?” asks Ira, handing her the never-varying twenty-dollar bill.

“The fifth of seven,” says Elisha, handing him four dollars in change, all of which Ira puts in the tip jar as per usual.

“Seven what?” he asks, frowning quizzically.

“People,” she says, nodding. “But you never say ‘for here’ because you only come here on your way to work. And who knows where you go on weekends.”

“You’re being kind of weird this morning,” says Ira, grinning at Elisha. “And actually… I like not being sure what someone means. Doesn’t happen to me very often. Not being sure.”

“Oh it happens to me all the time,” says Elisha, laughing. “But there’s a wonderful sort of freedom in not being sure.”

“I’m late,” says Ira, giggling, “but this has been fun.”

Elisha watches Ira go out into the rain, and a brief interlude of nothing much happening precedes three people entering the café together—a man and two women, the words swashbuckling, exotic, and regal popping into Elisha’s head.

The man is tall and broad-shouldered with olive skin and longish black hair, clean-shaven with an impressive jaw, his heavy blue coat beaded with raindrops. Forty-two guesses Elisha. Fearless.

The older of the two women is nearly as tall as the man, her skin alabaster, her silvery gray hair cut in a boyish bob, her coat gray. Seventy-two guesses Elisha. Mother of the man. Fearless, too.

The younger woman is African and very pregnant, her black hair in many braids strung with yellow wooden beads, her coat magenta. Thirty-seven guesses Elisha. The man’s wife. Goddess of hope and happiness.

“Welcome to Mona’s,” says Elisha, nodding graciously to the trio. “How may I help you this morning?”

“We are famished,” says the younger woman, her particular British accent suggesting her first language is Swahili. “Dreaming of eggs and sausage and hash browns.”

“Eggs and sausage we have,” says Elisha, smiling into the woman’s huge brown eyes. “Baby potatoes, not hash browns.”

“We are saved,” says the man, his accent purely British, his arms stretched heavenward. “We’ll have piles of eggs and sausage and toast and gallons of coffee and orange juice. And then we’ll wait a bit and have lunch. What a beautiful place you have. Smells divine.”

“Just two breakfasts,” says the older woman, her accent British, too. “No eggs and such for me. Just one of these gigantic pumpkin muffins, please, and endless coffee.”

Elisha taps the keys of the cash register and says, “That will be forty-two dollars. Please find a table and we’ll find you when your food is ready. Help yourselves to coffee.”

The table the trio finds just happens to be adjacent to the table where Paul and Ephraim and Tivona are nibbling scones and drinking strong black tea and discussing the exigencies of fate. Thus when Elisha serves the goddess of hope and happiness and her two companions their breakfast and asks, “What brings you to Carmeline Creek?” and the man smiles magnanimously and says, “We’ve come to complete the quorum,” Paul and Ephraim and Tivona freeze mid-nibbling.

“Which quorum might that be?” asks Elisha, arching an eyebrow and making eye contact with Paul.

“We never know,” says the older woman, sipping her coffee. “It’s something my husband used to say whenever we arrived anywhere new and were queried as you have queried us, and my dear son carries on the tradition. This coffee is divine, by the way, which I take as yet another good omen.”

Ephraim and Tivona and Paul hold their breaths, listening intently.

“We are pilgrims,” says the younger woman, holding her coffee mug with both hands as if it is a precious chalice. “Seeking a new world. With clean air and fertile soil and friendly neighbors and a good school for the child we’re about to bring into the world.”

“Forgive me for barging in,” says Paul, barging in, “but Carmeline Creek is blessed with excellent schools. Public, yes, but they might as well be Waldorf Montessori.”

“Please barge in,” says the man, turning to Paul and extending a hand. “I’m Terence Duval. This is my wife Adaugo and my mother Florence.”

“Paul Windsor,” says Paul, gripping Terence’s hand. “This is Ephraim Spinoza and his wife Tivona Descartes, and you’ve met my wife Elisha. Welcome to Carmeline Creek.”

“We were drawn here as if by a powerful magnet,” says Florence, looking from Ephraim to Tivona to Paul. “On our way to Canada, we thought.”

“But when we drove across the bridge,” says Adaugo, her eyes sparkling, “coming from the south, and we saw the river meeting the sea, the little town nestled on the headlands, we felt we were coming home.”

At high noon on New Year’s Day, the seven gather on the beach at the mouth of Carmeline Creek, the sun playing peek-a-boo with ragged gray clouds.

They face the shining sea, standing shoulder to shoulder, no one speaking—the ocean roaring eloquent.

Now Adaugo begins to sing a lovely wordless song, and in the next moment Tivona begins to sing, too, harmonizing with Adaugo as they invent the melody together. Now Ephraim joins in, now Elisha, now Terence, now Florence, now Paul.

They sing for a long time and continue to sing as they traverse the beach and climb the stairs and walk through town to Ephraim and Tivona’s place called honing—a splendid feast awaiting them.

Fin

News Flash!

My brand new album of songs Lounge Act In Heaven is here at last and you can buy copies of the CD with all the marvelous artwork for just five dollars from my web site. Think Solstice/Xmas/Hanukkah gifts. Or you can download and stream the album from Apple Music, CD Baby, Amazon, qobuz, YouTube, or any of your favorite music sites. I’m very happy to be sharing this collection of twelve new songs and hope you’ll take a listen.

 

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honing: the fourth

beach dance

On Christmas day in Carmeline Creek, a small town on the far north coast of California, Elisha Montoya, fifty-one, and her husband Paul Windsor, fifty-eight, make their annual walk around the town giving gifts to their friends: sturdy hot pads Elisha crocheted, jars of home-made apple sauce, and copies of Paul’s new holiday short story Naughty and Nice.

This year’s walk is especially poignant for them because this is the first Christmas since they married seven years ago that Elisha’s children Conor and Alexandra are not with them, both living in Ireland now—Conor twenty-two, Alexandra nineteen.

Elisha, who is half-Irish and half-Spanish, misses her children more than she ever imagined she would, and Paul misses them, too, though his missing them is conflated with his concern for how deeply sad Elisha is about her kids living on the other side of the world; and he blames himself a little for their leaving because he knows they were emboldened to go by their mother having a loving husband.

The last stop on their Christmas ramble is the home of Ephraim Spinoza and Tivona Descartes, very recent transplants from Switzerland.

“Come in, come in,” says Tivona, greeting Elisha and Paul on the front porch of the stately old brick and wood building she and Ephraim took possession of just three weeks ago. “Get warm by the fire.”

Tivona is sixty-seven, Moroccan, raised in France, her black hair cut short, her figure girlish, her eyes brilliantly blue. She leads Elisha and Paul through the empty downstairs space—a single large room with a very high ceiling—and up a long flight of stairs to a two-bedroom apartment where a fire is blazing in the living room hearth and Ephraim is in the kitchen cooking—Bill Evans playing on the stereo.

“Here you are,” says Ephraim, seventy-one, Spanish, with an impressive mop of gray curly hair. “I’ll open the wine.”

“Looks like you’ve lived here forever,” says Paul, gazing around the cheerful room.

“We found everything at the secondhand store,” says Tivona, taking their coats. “Now the only question is what to do with the big empty space downstairs.”

“Why do anything with it?” asks Elisha, joining Paul by the fire. “It’s lovely empty.”

“Did Paul tell you about our dream?” asks Tivona, hanging up their coats in the hall closet.

“Your quest for a magnificent seven?” says Elisha, arching an eyebrow. “He did.”

“We have not yet appended magnificent to the seven,” says Ephraim, laughing. “Or any adjective for that matter.”

“I think you are the fourth,” says Tivona, gazing at Elisha. “I love the way you think and speak.”

“I thought she was the fourth the first time we met her at Mona’s,” says Ephraim, nodding in agreement. “I was only waiting for you to think so, too.”

“Which only leaves three more to find,” says Tivona, going to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine.

“I smell garam masala and garlic and tomatos and onions,” says Elisha, standing beside Ephraim at the stove.

“A lentil stew,” says Ephraim, stirring the mélange in a large iron pot. “Inspired by the stew you served at Mona’s a few days ago. Was that your recipe?”

“My mother’s,” says Elisha, lifting the lid from a pot of jasmine rice. “Forgive me. My café habit. I’m terrible.”

“You are a great cook,” says Ephraim, speaking Spanish to her. “You may lift our lids whenever you desire.”

“Gracias,” says Elisha, Ephraim’s Spanish bringing tears to her eyes. “I don’t often hear Spanish as my mother spoke it.”

“The mother tongue,” says Ephraim, offering Elisha a taste of the stew. “They say there is nothing more profound to our senses than our mother’s voice.”

During supper, in answer to Elisha’s question about where and when Tivona and Ephraim met, Tivona says, “Paris. I was thirty-seven, so… thirty years ago. I was a lecturer in Archaeology at the Sorbonne, Ephraim was a professor there in Spanish Literature. We met at a party given by a mutual friend. And we fell in love at first sight, only he had a wife and I had a husband, so…”

“So,” says Ephraim, taking up the tale, “we were in love but would not pursue each other because neither of us was inclined to adultery. We did occasionally have lunch together in a café near the university, but spoke only of academic things and never revealed our feelings for each other, at least not in words.”

“And then seven months after we first met,” says Tivona, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight, “I came home one evening and my husband Jerome told me he had fallen in love with someone else and wanted a divorce. I was quite surprised because I had no inkling he was having an affair. Fortunately we had no children and I was ready for a change, so I agreed, and then I asked him who he had fallen in love with and he said Margot Espinosa, Ephraim’s wife.”

“Yes,” says Ephraim, swirling his wine. “Margot was confessing to me at the very moment Jerome was telling Tivona.”

“So then how long was it before you got together?” asks Paul, who was married twice before he married Elisha, both marriages ending when he learned his wives were having affairs.

“A year,” says Ephraim, gazing fondly at Tivona. “Our lunch dates became more personal and less academic, but we both wanted to be completely free from our previous mates before we embarked on a relationship. We didn’t discuss this, but we knew this was what we both wanted.”

“Then finally we did get together,” says Tivona, her eyes full of tears, “and eleven months later our daughter Simone was born. Our only child. She lives in San Francisco now, which made our decision to move here much easier.”

“What does Simone do?” asks Paul, loving the romance of their story.

“She is a film editor,” says Ephraim, smiling as he thinks of their daughter.

“And a fine musician,” says Tivona, proudly. “She plays the guitar and sings.”

   ∆

“So you are one and two, Paul is three, and I am the fourth of the seven people your dream told you to find,” says Elisha, sitting with Paul on a small sofa facing the fire and enjoying after-supper tea. “What happens when you find the seventh?”

“We don’t know,” says Ephraim, sitting in a grand old armchair. “Maybe the mystery of what to do with the room downstairs will be solved when we find the seventh or the seventh find us, but maybe not. Meanwhile, we are trusting the dream and living the days as they come.”

“What if I said I don’t want to be one of your seven?” asks Elisha, speaking to Tivona who is sitting on a big pillow near the fire.

“I don’t think it matters,” says Tivona, shaking her head. “In the dream Ephraim says, ‘Our first visitor will be one of the seven,’ and I say, ‘And you and I are two of the seven.’ And he says, ‘Leaving four to find.’ But nothing is said about any of the seven belonging to us or belonging to a collective or that any of the seven is required to do anything or even acknowledge they are one of the seven. I think it must be more about recognizing them and their recognizing us.”

“For that matter, we don’t even know if the seven are all people.” Ephraim shrugs. “They might be the four of us and a dog and a cat and a beautiful parrot, like the parrot in our dream. So perhaps the purpose of finding the seven is a way to focus our awareness as we settle into our new lives here.”

“I feel the seven are people,” says Paul, sounding quite certain. “Though I realize the dream is yours and not mine.”

“Maybe it is your dream,” says Tivona, dancing into the kitchen.

“Maybe you will find the other three,” says Ephraim, following Tivona. “And now we are going to have a special sherry we brought all the way from Zurich.”

“A Christmas tradition,” says Tivona, clapping her hands four times. “A most delicious elixir.”

“How will we recognize the fifth, sixth, and seventh?” asks Elisha, lifting Paul’s hand to her lips.

“A certain je ne sais quoi,” says Paul, shivering as Elisha kisses the back of his hand.

“A delightful aliveness,” says Ephraim, pulling the cork from a tall green bottle.

“A pleasing complexity,” says Tivona, setting four small crystal goblets on the counter. “An ineffable sparkle.”

“I feel those things about so many people,” says Elisha, laughing.

“Then it shouldn’t take you long to find them,” says Ephraim, pouring the dark red sherry.

Fin

Breaking News! My brand new album of songs Lounge Act In Heaven has just come out. You can buy copies of the CD with all the marvelous artwork for just five dollars from my web site (think Solstice/Xmas/Hanukkah gifts), or you can download and stream the album from Apple Music, CD Baby, Amazon, qobuz, YouTube, or any of your favorite music sites. I’m very excited to be sharing this collection of twelve new songs. If you give them a listen and like what you hear, please tell your music-loving friends.

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only connect

Mary Munich

photo Mary On the Piano by Robert Smith

In my dream I am playing a beautiful black grand piano in a large restaurant, all the tables full, many of the diners listening to me. I am playing a piece entitled Love’s Body, a passionate fast-moving improvisation from my forthcoming CD lounge act in heaven. I am ecstatic as I play, the experience so moving to me, I weep as I play.

I finish the song with a lovely run of notes from low to high.

A few people applaud politely.

The elegantly dressed young man and young woman at the table nearest to me do not applaud. They seem perplexed and embarrassed by my performance.

Now a man at the back of the room rises from a table he’s sharing with three other people. He has long gray hair and a long gray beard and black-framed glasses and a big paunch. He applauds strenuously and shouts, “Bravo, bravo, bravo!”

I bow in his direction, happy to know I connected with someone out there.

 

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Alexandra’s Dream

inevitability

A few days before Christmas, Alexandra Windsor, a lovely young woman about to turn seventeen, comes to visit Herschel Steinberg in his old white house at the end of Climbing Rose Lane in Carmeline Creek, a small town on the far north coast of California.

Herschel is seventy-two, a dream interpreter with spiky gray hair, his accent that of a person raised in Los Angeles by Yiddish-speaking parents. He shares his house with a scruffy Golden Retriever named Lorenzo, a sleek gray cat named Zorba, and several dozen potted cacti.

Alexandra and her few-years-older brother Conor have a movie company specializing in short fictional dramas and music videos, with seven thousand subscribers to their Windsor Montoya Productions YouTube channel.

Herschel recently starred in one of Alexandra and Conor’s movies, an eleven-minute film called The Dream Interpreter, in which he played a character indistinguishable from the actual Herschel. The movie is by far the most successful Windsor Montoya movie to date (over 10,000 views) and Alexandra and Conor are eager to make another movie with Herschel.

Alexandra and Herschel sit in high-backed armchairs in Herschel’s cozy den, facing each other across a coffee table, a fire crackling in the hearth, scruffy Lorenzo sprawled on the floor at Alexandra’s feet and sleek Humphrey curled up in Herschel’s lap.

Sipping lemon verbena tea and brainstorming about possible plots for the next movie featuring Herschel, Alexandra says, “What if I play the part of someone who tells you her dream, which we dramatize, and then you interpret the dream.”

“I like that idea,” says Herschel, sipping his tea. “Now we just have to invent a compelling dream and an equally compelling interpretation.”

“Actually I had a dream last night that might work,” says Alexandra, frowning. “It was kind of a nightmare, but… shall I tell it to you?”

“Yes, please,” says Herschel, closing his eyes to listen.

I’m in a car on a highway with a bunch of people who are much older than I am, and we’re stuck in a traffic jam. We’re really crammed into the car, and I can barely breathe, so I decide to get out, which means I have to climb over a man and a woman to get to the door, and as I climb over them, the woman says, “We’re so sorry. By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late to change the way we did things.”

I get out of the car and see the traffic jam stretches out of sight in either direction. The trees on either side of the highway are dying and the air is full of smoke.

I wander away from the highway into a deserted city and come to an intersection where a few people are sitting around a small campfire. A young man looks at me and says, “It’s not safe here. We won’t be able to protect you. Sorry.”

“Where is it safe?” I ask, wondering what I need protection from.

“I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “Everything’s been destroyed.”

Now darkness is falling and I’m running through a neighborhood of old houses. I see a faint light in the window of one of the houses, and though I’m afraid of what might be in the house, I knock on the front door. The door opens and a woman gestures for me to come in.

I follow her down a hallway to a dimly lit room where a dozen women are packing backpacks with food and clothing and books. Two of the women are teenagers like me, the rest are in their twenties and thirties, except one woman who might be sixty and seems to be the leader.

She looks at me and asks, “Are you strong?”

“I am,” I say, meeting her gaze.

“Can you fight?” she asks, putting her hand on my shoulder.

“Yes,” I say, nodding. “If I have to.”

“The packs are heavy,” she says, pointing to the one she wants me to carry, “but we’ll need everything we’re bringing with us.”

Now we’re walking fast through the city with the packs on our backs.

The woman walking beside me says, “God I hope the boat’s there.”

We come around a corner and encounter four men blocking our way. One of them has a gun, but rather than run away, we overwhelm them and kill them. I don’t do the killing, but I’m standing beside a woman when she stabs one of the men in the heart.

We arrive at a pier guarded by two men and two women with guns. They recognize our leader and allow us onto the pier where we board a large sailing ship. When we are safely aboard, the two men and two women who were guarding the pier come onto the boat, too, and we sail away into the darkness.

A young woman approaches me and says, “Come with me. I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

I ask her, “Do you know where we’re going?”

“To northeastern Greenland,” she says, nodding solemnly. “God willing.”

Herschel opens his eyes and says, “I’m sorry, too, Alexandra, that I didn’t do more to try to change things before it was too late.”

“Do you think it is too late?” she asks, frowning. “To save the earth.”

“Oh the earth will be fine,” says Herschel, wistfully. “But human society may soon come crashing down as the climate wobbles further and further out of balance. And the saddest thing is that we knew better, yet refused to change. We opted for convenience and ruined everything. And I really am sorry, my dear.”

“So you think my dream is literal. Not symbolic?”

“I think you saw the possible future,” says Herschel, his eyes full of tears. “And if you did, I hope with all my heart there is a place for you on that boat.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtldtL7PJXY&list=PL7A2gJzg9TABWCexjtnwCuCksuLuxI6ma

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The Dream Interpreter

dream wine

Leona Mozart, forty-nine, wearing a baggy gray dress and clunky brown shoes, her long brown hair gathered and compressed into a tight bun, her face masked by large black-framed glasses, the lenses tinted gray, hesitates to knock on the door of the little white house, the voices in her head chorusing, “You stupid desperate fool.”

But misery prevails, she knocks, a dog barks from within, and a moment later she is settling into a high-backed armchair facing another high-backed armchair across a coffee table in a cozy den, a fire crackling in the hearth, a scruffy Golden Retriever sprawled on the floor at her feet, a sleek gray cat sharing the windowsill with seven potted cacti.

“Tea or coffee or water or wine?” asks Leona’s host, Herschel Steinberg, a stocky fellow in his early seventies: spiky gray hair, round-framed red glasses, brown corduroy trousers, purple sweater, green T-shirt, bare feet. “I’m having black tea.”

“I guess I won’t have anything,” says Leona, though she’d love some tea.

“Shout if you change your mind,” says Herschel, heading for the kitchen. “I won’t be long.”

Leona puts her head back, closes her eyes, and grows drowsy in the delicious warmth—the windy winter day having chilled her to the bone.

Herschel takes his own sweet time in the kitchen and returns to the cozy den with a tray bearing a blue teapot and two white mugs. He sets the tray on the coffee table and Leona opens her eyes, embarrassed to have fallen asleep.

“Sorry,” she says, blushing. “I haven’t slept very well for the last few weeks and I got cold on the walk over and your house is so toasty I… sorry.”

“Who doesn’t like a good cat nap?” says Herschel, sitting opposite her. “I brought an extra mug in case my delight in the Darjeeling makes you want some.”

“I actually would like some tea,” she says, smiling shyly at him. “Thanks.”

He meets her gaze and she looks away.

“Needs another minute or so,” he says, lifting the lid of the teapot to inspect the brew. “So… Elisha referred you. I’ve never seen you at Mona’s. How do you know Elisha?”

“Her daughter and my daughter are friends. They’re both being home-schooled and…”

“Is your daughter the marvelous Sylvia?” asks Herschel, beaming at Leona. “Now I see the resemblance. As you probably know, she and Alexandra are making a movie in which I play… wait for it… a dream interpreter.”

“You’re in one of their movies?” says Leona, frowning. “Would you please not mention to them that I came to see you?”

“I will not mention it to anyone,” says Herschel, pouring the tea. “I keep everything about my dreamers strictly confidential.”

“It’s just… I wouldn’t mind if Sylvia knew, but if she told her father…” She clears her throat. “He… it would be better if he didn’t know.”

“I understand,” says Herschel, sipping his tea. “So… you had a dream or dreams you’d like help making sense of.”

“Yes,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Dreams.”

“Well I’d love to hear them, but first I want to give you my brief disclaimer.” He arches his eyebrow. “Ready?”

“Ready,” she says, laughing at his comic expression.

“I am not a psychotherapist and I do not charge for this work. What I think a particular dream means may not be what somebody else thinks the dream means. Or put another way, what you will get from me is my personal response to what you give me. I hope I help you, but I make no promises.”

“Do you need my personal history?” asks Leona, her voice trembling. “To give you a context for the dreams?”

“No,” says Herschel, wishing she’d take off her glasses. “But I’d like to know anything you want to tell me.”

Leona squints at Herschel. “You don’t want to know about my childhood or my marriage or my… sexual history?”

“Only if you want to tell me. Your voice and how you tell your dream and the dream itself will give me plenty of information to work with.”

Leona looks at her hands. “I’m afraid to tell you my dreams.”

“So maybe this isn’t something you want to do,” says Herschel, nodding. “Or maybe we need to have a few more visits before you decide whether you want to tell me your dreams or not.”

“You mean just… visit?” She looks at him, fighting her tears. “Just… have tea and talk?”

“Yeah,” says Herschel, nodding. “Tea and talk.”

So that’s what they do. They drink tea and talk about the weather and gardening and Leona’s daughter Sylvia and cats and Leona’s job editing doctoral theses and what brought Leona and her parents to Carmeline Creek thirty-five years ago when Leona was fourteen.

And after a pleasant hour of such talk, Leona takes off her glasses and curls up in her armchair and asks, “How did you become a dream interpreter?”

“Long story,” says Herschel, getting up to put a log on the fire. “Shall I start at the beginning or cut to the chase?”

“The beginning,” she whispers, liking him more and more.

Herschel resumes his chair. “I was born in Los Angeles in 1948, Herschel Moses Steinberg, the middle of three children. My mother Naomi was a seamstress, my father David a bookkeeper. My younger brother Larry and my older sister Ruth were both excellent students and both became successful academics. I might have been an excellent student, too, except I was obsessed with playing baseball and basketball, so that’s where I put most of my energy.”

He pours himself a bit more tea. “However, despite my thousands of hours of playing those games, I did not make the basketball or baseball teams in high school, which was a source of great sorrow to me because I didn’t care about much else. Then a week before my senior year, I fell in love with Myra Liebowitz, a gorgeous brainy gal who aspired to be an actress, and my infatuation with her was so strong, I signed up for a Drama class just to be near her, and lo and behold I turned out to be a pretty good actor. I was in two plays with Myra, and miracle of miracles she fell in love with me. We got married two years after high school, had two kids, and lived unhappily together for nineteen years. We divorced when we were both thirty-eight. She remarried a year later, I remarried seven years later, divorced again after three years, married one more time after I moved here, that lasted four years, and I have been single with occasional girlfriends for seventeen years now.”

“Are you still in touch with Myra?” asks Leona, her eyes full of tears.

“Oh yes,” says Herschel, wistfully. “The children and grandchildren keep us connected. Otherwise I’m fairly certain Myra wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Did she become an actress?”

“No,” says Herschel, shaking his head. “She became a legal secretary.”

“And what did you become?”

“I became many things,” he says, thinking of the dozens of jobs he’s had over the course of his life. “All preparation for becoming an interpreter of dreams.”

Leona smiles bravely and says, “Speaking of which, I’d like to tell you my dream now.”

“Please,” he says, closing his eyes to listen.

I am standing beside a fast-flowing river. I’m wearing a luxurious brown fur coat that nearly touches the ground, and my hair is down. I am neither sad nor afraid, yet I’m about to jump in the river and drown.

Now a raven wings by and makes a sound I hear as Sylvia, so I turn away from the river and go in search of her.

I enter a palace and stand at the entrance to a large ballroom where couples are waltzing to a live orchestra, the women wearing ball gowns, the men fancy suits. Now someone touches my left shoulder and I turn in that direction and behold a handsome man wearing an elegant white suit.

He bows to me and says, “May I have this dance?”

And I reply, “I cannot dance with you because I’m wearing nothing under this coat, and I cannot dance in this coat.”

“Then let’s dance naked,” he says, offering me his hand.

Now I am standing by the river again, my beautiful robe turned to rags, and I am about to throw myself into the torrent when I hear laughter and turn to see a man and woman sitting at a table under a flowering cherry tree. The woman has short brown hair and is dressed as a toreador. The man has long brown hair and is wearing a scarlet evening gown. They are drinking wine and eating grapes and talking and laughing.

The man gives me a quizzical smiles and says, “You realize, don’t you, that nothing they’ve ever told you is true.”

The woman nods in agreement and says, “Took me the longest time, but once I stopped believing them, I was free.”

“But what made you stop believing they would kill you if you tried to leave?” I ask, falling to my knees.

“Oh that’s not what I stopped believing,” says the woman, helping me to my feet. “I stopped believing I was weak and helpless and stupid, and discovered I was strong and resourceful and brilliant, and everything followed from that.”

Now I’m wading across the river, determined to reach the other side.

Herschel opens his eyes and gazes at Leona.

“I know what my dream means,” she says, unknotting her bun and giving her head a shake to loose her long brown hair. “Pretty obvious, huh? I guess I just needed to tell someone.”

“How quickly you found me out,” says Herschel, his eyes twinkling.

“May I have a glass of wine?” she asks, meeting his gaze.

“Of course,” he says, delighted she no longer fears him. “Red or white?”

“Red, please,” she says, seeing herself on the other side of the river, raising her arms to the sky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Egsdp9DXw&list=PL7A2gJzg9TABWCexjtnwCuCksuLuxI6ma

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Gig’s Baby

Todd's Elk Breakfast

Lucinda, a breakfast waitress at the Backwoods Cafe in Yakima Washington, a roly-poly brunette in her forties, her hair in a bun, her nametag pinned to her black vest, saunters over to the window table where Gig Antonelli is having a muffin and coffee, refills his coffee cup, gives him a sparkly smile, and says in a friendly way, “Would you mind telling me how old you are?”

“I’m fifty,” says Gig, smiling sleepily at Lucinda because he is sleepy, having spent the night dozing fitfully in the driver’s seat of his faded bronze 2000 Camry parked on the side of a dirt road thirty miles north of Yakima. “May I ask why you want to know my age?”

Gig’s nose is slightly aquiline, his eyes are greenish brown, his voice is pleasantly gruff, and he always sounds a little stoned, though he hasn’t had a puff of pot in three years. For most of his life he was a beefy stoner with lots of extra beef and long hair, and now he is trim and muscular, his graying brown hair cut short for the first time since he was on the high school football team in Mountain Home Idaho.

Lucinda gives Gig a wrinkled-nose smile and says, “Sara and I… Sara’s the other waitress here… we had a little bet. She said you were one of those guys in his sixties who takes really good care of himself, and I bet you were fifty-three.” She shrugs. “Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry,” says Gig, sipping his coffee. “How much did you win?”

“A dollar,” says Lucinda, deciding to flirt with Gig. “You in town for long?”

“No, I’m on my way to Idaho,” says Gig, and just saying Idaho brings him close to tears.

Gig rarely picks up male hitchhikers, but he always gives female hitchhikers rides because he worries about them being picked up by dangerous men. However, on this rainy day in March, he really wants to talk to somebody, needs to talk to somebody, so he stops for the scruffy blond guy with a wispy goatee standing at the south end of Yakima with a cardboard sign saying Boise.

“Thank you so much,” says the guy, getting in the car and holding his bulky black knapsack on his lap, his orange jacket badly frayed, his blue jeans about to tear at the knees. “Stood there all day yesterday and slept in a ditch last night.” He shrugs philosophically. “Not a bad ditch, but not one of your better ditches, and then just as I was falling asleep a couple coyotes came sniffing around so I hardly slept thinking they might come back with their pals and have a feast, not that there’s much on these bones to eat.”

“I’m Gig,” says Gig, offering the fellow his hand. “What’s your name?”

“Biz,” says the fellow, allowing Gig to grip his hand, but offering no resistance, no matching grip.

Gig releases Biz’s hand feeling mildly disappointed—the quality of a handshake important to him.

“You spell that B-I-Z?” asks Gig, looking at Biz’s knapsack. “You can throw that in the backseat if you want to. Long way to Boise.”

“Didn’t see much room back there,” says Biz, glancing back at the sum total of Gig’s earthly possessions, not counting the five guitars in the trunk.

“Oh it can ride on top of that stuff,” says Gig, waiting for Biz to get the knapsack situated before pulling back onto the highway. “Nothing breakable.”

“Thanks,” says Biz, settling into his seat and sighing with relief to be moving again. “So yeah, I spell it B-I-Z. Just one Z.”

“Short for business?” asks Gig, smiling curiously at Biz. “Which business would that be?”

“Show business,” says Biz, looking out the window at the passing scenery. “I was a regular on two TV shows and I was in nine movies. Long time ago.”

“Couldn’t have been that long,” says Gig, not believing him. “You’re what… twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?”

“Guess again,” says Biz, closing his eyes. “Man, this is a comfortable car.”

“Thirty?” says Gig, thinking Biz might be as young as twenty-seven and as old as thirty-five.

“I wish,” says Biz, keeping his eyes closed. “Try forty-seven.”

“No,” says Gig, making a disparaging face.

Biz opens his eyes and looks at Gig. “I played high school kids until I was thirty-five, and when I couldn’t play high school kids anymore, nobody wanted me.” He closes his eyes again. “Cut to twelve years later. Biz, a former actor now a homeless recovering crack addict, waits two days at the south end of Yakima freezing his ass off until a guy named Gig mercifully gives him a ride.”

“I’m homeless, too,” says Gig, deciding to believe everything Biz tells him from now on. “Though I do have a mother with a nice house who says I can come live with her.” He nods to confirm this. “So now the only question is, can I get over my shame about being such a humongous failure and go back home with nothing.”

“I know of what you speak,” says Biz, nodding. “I have a sister in Ogden. That’s where I’m going. Hoping she’ll let me stay with her for a while.”

“In the meantime,” says Gig, rolling down his window and breathing deeply of the rain-washed air, “here we are.”

“Yeah,” whispers Biz. “Okay with you if I sleep for a while?”

“Sure,” says Gig, yawning. “I’m pretty tired, too, so don’t be surprised if I pull off the road for a snooze.”

“No worries,” murmurs Biz. “I trust you.”

They stop for gas in Kennewick and Gig treats Biz to a couple hot dogs from the little grocery attached to the gas station; and because Biz hasn’t eaten anything in two days, the hot dogs and buns are gone before Gig can pay.

“You were hungry,” says Gig, unwrapping his granola bar when they get back to the car. “Guy in there told me about a good organic grocery store just up the road here. We’ll get foodstuffs for the rest of the day.”

“I don’t have any money,” says Biz, smiling painfully. “So you just get what you need for you.”

“No, no,” says Gig, shaking his head. “We’ll get food for both of us. I got enough for that.”

“Thank you,” says Biz, bowing his head. “Thank you so much.”

Speeding along the interstate, a bulging bag of groceries onboard, Biz says, “So where you coming from Gig?”

“Tacoma,” says Gig, eager to talk, but not wanting to seem too eager. “My wife and I moved there from Idaho five years ago, moved into a beautiful house on Puget Sound, right on the water. I owned a big music store. Power House Music.” He glances at Biz. “You mind if I tell kind of a long story?”

“No, I don’t mind,” says Biz, gobbling fig bars. “Happy to listen.”

“I appreciate that,” says Gig, on the verge of tears. “So before I met my wife seven years ago, I had a three-bedroom house and a guitar shop in Mountain Home, and I owned a duplex I rented out, too. That’s where I grew up. Mountain Home. About an hour from Boise. You know it?”

“No,” says Biz, shaking his head, “but I’ll bet it’s beautiful with all those mountains. I assume there’s mountains if they call it Mountain Home.”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful, if you like small towns, which I do. Mountains all around. Some people say it’s too windy there, but I don’t mind the wind, so… I had a good life there. Lots of friends, my sister and her family and my mom nearby. My dad died when I was thirteen.” He clears his throat. “Anyway… I liked buying and selling guitars and giving lessons, but I was missing something. You know what I mean? I thought it was a woman, only I couldn’t find anybody who fit me. I went out with some nice gals, but they didn’t get me. You know what I mean?”

“I do,” says Biz, nodding. “Somebody who understands how you see things, and likes how you see things, and you understand them and like how they see things.”

“Yeah, exactly,” says Gig, near tears again. “So there I was, forty-three and thinking I’d never find anybody, and one day I’m picking out a watermelon at the farmers market, and this gorgeous Mexican gal wants to buy one, too, and she smiles at me and I nearly faint because nobody that beautiful has ever smiled at me like that, and she says, ‘You know how to pick a good one?’ And I say, ‘Yeah. You thump’em. And if they sound like a bass drum they’re probably pretty good.’ So she asks me to pick one out for her and I carry it to her car and get her number, and four months later we were married.”

“What was her name?” asks Biz, thinking of his first wife Alicia who was half-Mexican and half-Swiss.

“Celia,” says Gig, taking a deep breath. “Celia Luisa Alvarez. Most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Hard to believe she would ever marry somebody like me. But she did.”

“Did she get you?” asks Biz, guessing she probably didn’t.

“Not even a little bit,” says Gig, laughing and shaking his head. “But I didn’t care because she was so beautiful and she let me love her, and we were madly in love. Or I was anyway.”

“Strong drug,” says Biz, speaking from experience. “Sex with a beautiful woman.” He forces a smile. “So were you happy?”

“For those four months before we got married I was happier than I’ve ever been,” says Gig, nodding. “Non-stop love. But then just a couple weeks after the wedding she got real moody and said she’d made a mistake and shouldn’t have married me, and I was just crushed. I mean… I loved her so much, and I thought she loved me, but she kept saying I wasn’t who she thought I was.”

“Who did she think you were?” asks Biz, frowning at Gig. “And who did you turn out to be?”

“She said she thought I was rich.” Gig frowns gravely. “But she knew what I had. We went over it a hundred times before we got married. I owned the guitar shop and the building it was in, and that was worth about three hundred thousand, though I sold the business and the building to Beckman for one-seventy-five. Beckman was a guy who worked for me. And I rented the other store in the building for eight hundred a month. I made about five hundred bucks a week selling guitars. My house was worth about three hundred thou, my duplex about two-fifty. Had about ten thousand in the bank. But Celia said she thought I was so rich she could quit her job. She was a cocktail waitress. Made huge tips. She was movie star stuff, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” says Biz, wistfully. “Married two of that species myself.”

“They really are another species, aren’t they?” says Gig, thinking of Celia and how every time they made love he could hardly believe she was letting him inside her. “And I told her, ‘Well, you don’t have to work, honey, not if you don’t want to. We won’t live in luxury, but you don’t have to work,’ and we were planning to have kids anyway, so…”

“How old was she?” asks Biz, guessing twenty-something.

“Thirty-six. Seven years younger than me. But she looked about twenty-five.” Gig sighs. “And then she tells me she doesn’t want kids, which was totally bonkers because before we got married that’s all she talked about, how desperate she was to have kids, and I said I wanted them, too. Which was true.”

“No offense,” says Biz, scrunching up his cheeks, “but she sounds a little psycho.”

“Oh she was more than a little psycho,” says Gig, giving Biz a frightened look. “Turned out to be mega-psycho.”

“So you sold everything you owned,” says Biz, guessing the general plot of Gig’s story, “and you moved to Tacoma and gave her everything she said she wanted. But it wasn’t enough.”

“Seemed to be at first,” says Gig, wishing he could pinpoint the exact moment when everything fell apart, though he knows there was no exact moment, only a vast chasm between them from the beginning, a chasm bridged by his enormous desire to love her and be loved by her. “We had kind of a second honeymoon for a few months after we got there, and then…”

Biz looks out the window at a dense forest blurred by the speed of the car, and he thinks of his second wife Leslie, and how she tried to save their unsaveable marriage by booking the same honeymoon suite in the Las Vegas hotel where they honeymooned after their wedding and conceived their first child, and how he got tired of waiting for her to get dressed for dinner—she kept changing her outfit—so he snorted a few lines of coke and went down to the casino and had a few drinks and succumbed to a young woman who recognized him from Meet Ya After School, the sit-com in which Biz played Riley Caruthers, a likable idiot; and when he got back to the honeymoon suite the next morning, his wife was long gone.

“…she said the real problem was I was fat,” says Gig, going on with his story. “She said the problem had never been about money or where we lived, but about her not being attracted to me physically because I was fat and she’d been afraid to say anything about it.”

“But you’re not fat,” says Biz, looking at Gig. “You’re in great shape.”

“Yeah, but I was fat,” says Gig, nodding. “So I gave up sweets and fatty foods and started working out every day, and voila… I became the Adonis you see before you. But then she said the problem was that I smoked dope. So I stopped smoking dope. And then it was beer. So I stopped drinking beer.”

“When did it finally dawn on you that it didn’t matter what you did?” asks Biz, remembering his favorite rehab counselor, an ex-con who would proclaim Catch-22 whenever Biz elucidated one of his many dilemmas from which there was no escape because every escape route brought him back to the cause of the dilemma. “When did you realize she was the problem, and not you?”

“Nine months ago,” says Gig, recalling that critical moment as if watching a crystal-clear movie. “We go out to dinner and I try to pay with a credit card and the waitress comes back with the bill and the card and says, ‘Sorry but your card was rejected.’ So I give her another card, and that one’s no good either. So I give her a third card, and that’s kaput, too. Luckily, I have enough cash to pay the bill, and on the way home, Celia says, ‘You need to get us another card or get us more credit. It’s embarrassing when the cards get rejected.’ And I say, ‘Honey, these cards have twenty-five thousand dollar limits. Are you telling me you knew they were full? We don’t have seventy-five thousand dollars in play money. What’s going on?’ And she says, ‘I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’m too upset. I hate it when you yell at me.’ And I say, ‘But we have to talk about it right now. We’re in a very delicate financial position. The business is finally starting to make some real money and I can’t default on my loans or…’ and she shouts, ‘I don’t care about your fucking business. I want a divorce.’ And when we get home she jumps in her car and goes to her sister’s house and when I get home from work the next day the house is empty. She came with movers and took everything. And then I find out she got three more credit cards in my name without telling me and maxed them out getting cash, and she’s been getting cash from our cards ever since we moved to Tacoma. And then I find out she bought a fuckin’ condo with her sister. And before I can stop the bleeding I default on the big loan carrying my business and I lose everything. Everything!”

“You should pull over,” says Biz, speaking quietly. “You’re pretty upset, Gig. Pull over for a little while until you calm down.”

When they get to Pendleton Oregon mid-afternoon, Gig says to Biz, “I can’t drive any more today. I need to sleep. I’m gonna get a motel room. If you want to share it with me, I’ll get a room with two beds. But if you’re not comfortable with that, you’re welcome to sleep in the car and I’ll take you to Boise tomorrow.”

“A motel room sounds great,” says Biz, looking out at the rain. “Be nice to take a shower and get some sleep. Sounds great.”

“If I had a cell phone I could find the cheapest place,” says Gig, pulling into a gas station. “But in lieu of that, I’ll ask a human being.”

They are directed to a Motel 6 where Gig pays cash for a room with two single beds, and while Biz takes a shower, Gig sits cross-legged on the bed furthest from the bathroom, his back against the headboard, and calls the front desk.

“Hi, this is Gig Antonelli in Room 26. I don’t have a cell phone and I want to call Mountain Home Idaho. That’s not a local call, and since I didn’t put this room on a card I can’t make that call from this phone, so what do I have to do to make a long distance call from here?”

“You can come to the office and use my phone,” says the desk clerk. “Five bucks?”

“Okay,” says Gig, embarrassed not to have his own phone. “What’s your name?”

“Greg,” says the man. “Anything else?”

“No, that’s it,” says Gig, clearing his throat. “I might see you down there.”

Gig hangs up and closes his eyes, and he is so weary he falls asleep sitting up and doesn’t wake when Biz comes out of the shower and gets into the other bed and falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

After an hour of sleeping sitting up, Gig wakes with a crick in his neck, takes off his clothes, and crawls under the covers.

He dreams he still owns Gig Music, the guitar shop he used to own in Mountain Home. He is standing behind the counter of the cluttered shop, unable to get the cash register open. His sole employee, Beckman, a very tall slender man, is sitting on one of the two ratty sofas playing The Beatles’ song ‘Blackbird’ on a small Martin guitar while Gig’s mother Sophia, wearing her red party dress and her faux diamond necklace, her long gray hair in a braid, sings the words. Her voice, usually high and quavering, sounds exactly like Paul McCartney.

Gig comes out from behind the counter and sings harmony with his mother, and as they sing together, his mother becomes a young African American woman and the song turns into ‘Moon River’ and Gig takes the young woman in his arms and they dance to the old love song until they begin to sink into the floor that turns into a deep pool of water and Gig begins to drown and wakes with a shout, gasping for breath.

At midnight, Biz and Gig dine on avocadoes and goat cheese and olives and seed bread and green protein drinks.

“So where were you coming from when I picked you up?” asks Gig, enjoying Biz’s company and appreciating his candor.

“Seattle,” says Biz, relieved to be gone from that crazy city. “Lived there for nine months. I was staying with a guy I went through rehab with, but I couldn’t find a job and he needed a roommate who could help with the rent so… here I am.”

“Where were you before Seattle?” asks Gig, never having given much thought to how homeless people survive until he became homeless a few months ago.

“Portland for a year,” says Biz, loving the food. “Worked in a pizza parlor. Slept in a little trailer behind the place. Me and two other guys. Juan from El Salvador and Diego from Mexico. They were both sending money home to their wives and parents, but I couldn’t save a dime. I like to go to movies and out for coffee and pastries and Mexican food and Chinese food and… Portland is food heaven if you’ve got money. But Juan and Diego made do with crappy pizza and never went anywhere, except Diego went to a massage parlor for sex every couple weeks.”

“And before Portland?” asks Gig, wondering what Biz does for sex, wondering if he’s ambidextrous, as Gig’s mother likes to call bisexuals.

“Santa Fe,” says Biz, sighing. “Lived with a woman I met in rehab. Diana.” He nods, remembering. “For two years. She lived in a little cottage behind her daughter’s mansion. Her daughter was a socialite married to a hedge fund guy.” Biz grins. “Diana’s in her sixties, but man, talk about a sexual dynamo. Fucked me silly.”

“Why’d you leave?” asks Gig, never having had sex with a woman older than he.

“What’s that expression?” says Biz, yawning. “Smothered with love?” He nods. “That’s how I felt with Diana. Couldn’t hardly breathe after a while.”

“Did you have a job?” asks Gig, thinking about looking for work in Mountain Home if he can get up the nerve to go back.

“Kind of,” says Biz, smiling wistfully. “I was writing screenplays. Hoping for a big break.” He raises his green protein drink. “Here’s to the gods of Hollywood. You never know what might happen.”

After their midnight feast, Biz falls asleep again, but Gig is wide awake, so he goes for a long walk, the night cold and clear.

When he gets back to the motel, he sees the motel office brightly-lit, a woman standing behind the counter, so he goes into the office, identifies himself, and says he wants to make a phone call in the morning and wonders if he can make an arrangement with her similar to the one he had with Paul.

“I’m here until eight and I have unlimited calling on my phone,” says the woman. She has a small nose and gray blue eyes and short blonde hair. She’s wearing a blue down jacket over a black Portland Trailblazers T-shirt, and Gig guesses she’s thirty-seven and descended from Scandinavians. “But you don’t have to pay me anything. And then Justin comes on after me and I’m sure he’ll let you use his phone for free.” She shakes her head. “That Greg. Never misses a chance to make a little extra. Can’t blame him, but… yeah, you get here before eight, no problem.”

“May I know your name?” asks Gig, liking her.

“Florence,” she says, reddening at the intimacy of telling him her name. “But everybody calls me Flo.” She arches an eyebrow. “What’s Gig short for?”

“Not really short for anything,” says Gig, remembering when he was next in line to cross the stage of the Mountain Home High School multi-purpose room to receive his diploma, and how when Mr. Frederickson leaned close to the microphone and said Lawrence Antonelli, Gig didn’t recognize his given name and just stood there waiting to hear Gig until Glenna Barnes shoved him from behind and hissed, ‘That’s you, Gig. Go!’

“Where you traveling to?” asks Flo, something in her voice suggesting to Gig that she would rather not be having this conversation.

“Mountain Home,” says Gig, stepping back from the counter. “I appreciate the future use of your phone. I’ll try to get down here before eight.”

“You want some tea?” she asks, nodding hopefully. “I was just about to make some black tea for me, but I could make you some chamomile. Help you sleep.”

“That’s very kind of you,” says Gig, smiling at the inaccuracy of his intuition. “I would love a cup of chamomile tea.”

So Flo makes their tea and Gig sits on a not-very-comfortable armchair, and Flo rolls her office chair out from behind the counter and sits a few feet away from him.

“The hardest thing about this job,” says Flo, glad to have someone to talk to, “is I’m so not a night person. As soon as Justin or Greg quits, I’ll get an earlier shift and get my life back.”

“How long have you been working graveyard?” asks Gig, noting her wedding ring.

“Almost two years,” she says, nodding wearily. “I keep thinking I’m gonna get used to it, but I never do. I get home at eight-fifteen and go to bed and sleep for a few hours. If I’m lucky. Then I get up around noon, my kids come home from school at three-thirty, we have dinner at six, I do the dishes and watch television and go to bed about eight, get up three hours later, leave the house at eleven-forty, and I’m here from midnight to eight. My days off I just drag around and try to catch up on shopping and housework and… I can’t wait for somebody to quit or get fired, but Justin’s not going anywhere and Greg keeps saying he’s moving to Portland, but he never does, so I don’t know.” She shrugs. “It’s a job. Better than no job, that’s for sure.”

“What does your husband do?” asks Gig, starting to feel the relaxing effects of the chamomile. “Assuming that’s a wedding ring on the official finger.”

“He works in a hardware store,” says Flo, her voice full of sadness. “We’ve been separated for two years. He says he wants to get back together, but I don’t. He’s a horrible pessimist. The world is out to get him. Everybody’s a crook except him. Everybody’s out to get him. I can’t live like that.”

“How old are your kids?” asks Gig, feeling a kinship with her.

“Fourteen and twelve,” she says, smiling at the thought of her children. “Boy and a girl. Aaron and Sheila.”

“Fourteen and twelve,” says Gig, feeling something shift inside him, something being released, a recalcitrant knot unfurling. “That can’t be easy. Puberty times two.”

She laughs. “They’re good kids. Thank goodness they’re smart and healthy and… but, yeah, it’s one thing after another at that age. Never a dull moment. That’s why I wish I could get on a day shift and be there for them more.”

“I believe in you, Flo,” says Gig, looking into her eyes. “And I thank you for this tea and your company. I’ll be back around seven-thirty.”

“Okay,” she says, getting up with him. “Thanks for helping me pass the time.”

“My pleasure,” he says, handing her his mug.

“Mine, too,” she says, blushing. “You’re a good person, Gig.”

Biz is sleeping soundly when Gig gets back to their room and undresses and crawls into bed.

And though Gig fears he won’t be able to sleep, he drifts into a dream of playing frisbee with Beckman in an orchard of newly planted apple trees, their exuberant game a celebration of the planting. Beckman throws the frisbee way over Gig’s head, and as Gig turns to chase the whirling disk, he realizes the frisbee is destined to slow as it meets the oncoming breeze and return to exactly where Gig is standing. With this in mind, he relaxes and waits for the disk to come to him, and as he waits, he hears his mother calling from afar, “Gee-ig. Gee-ig. Time for supper.”

At seven-thirty that morning, Gig goes to the office and Flo lends him her phone. He steps outside the office, the day dawning sunny, and after hesitating for a moment, he enters his mother’s phone number and listens to the dial tone until Sophia answers in her usual way. “Antonelli’s. Who’s calling, please?”

“It’s your erstwhile son,” says Gig, his eyes filling with tears. “Wondering if…” He can’t continue, his urge to cry too strong.

“I had a dream about you last night,” says Sophia, knowing Gig is crying. “When will you be here?”

“Mid-afternoon,” says Gig, struggling to speak. “You… you sure it’s still okay?”

“Don’t be silly, Gig,” she says, trying not to cry, too. “I’m making chicken and potatoes and salad.”

“Might bring a friend,” says Gig, thinking of Biz. “Nice guy I met. Maybe not, but…”

“That’s fine, honey. Drive safely. See you when you get here.”

Gig tries to say I love you, Mom, but he can’t stop sobbing.

He takes Biz out to breakfast at the Main Street Diner and Biz has a mushroom omelet, a stack of buttermilk pancakes, and a fruit smoothie. Gig has two eggs over easy with sausage and hash browns, and gives his toast to Biz.

“So this guy Beckman was in both your dreams,” says Biz, sipping his coffee and feeling pretty damn good. “Must be an important person in your life.”

“Yeah, he was,” says Gig, nodding. “We worked together six days a week for sixteen years, and we liked each other. He was quiet and friendly and a great guitar player. I can’t remember him ever missing a day of work. I used to get sick three or four times a year, but he never did. And you know what I just realized? Along with my mother and my sister, he was the only constant person in my life. The only constant man for sure.”

“And you’ll be seeing him soon,” says Biz, never having had a constant man in his life.

“I guess I will,” says Gig, imagining going into Gig Music again for the first time in five years. “Unless he’s not there anymore. We didn’t stay in touch so… we’ll see.”

“I think your first dream was about the past,” says Biz, nodding to the waitress as she comes to refill his coffee cup. “And I think your second dream was a prophecy of the future. A new beginning that’s coming to you.”

They reach the northern outskirts of Boise in the early afternoon, and Gig says, “So Biz, would you like to meet my mom? Hang out in Mountain Home for a few days? I asked her if that would be okay and she said it was fine with her.”

Biz forces a smile. “That’s really kind of you to offer, Gig, but my sister is expecting me, and with good luck I’ll get to Ogden tonight, and with bad luck I’ll get there tomorrow or the next day. I appreciate everything you did for me.”

“I’d like to stay in touch,” says Gig, nodding hopefully. “If you want to.”

“Yeah, I do,” says Biz, with little force. “I’ll see how things go in Ogden and then… I’ll give you a call. Your mother in the phone book?”

“Only Antonelli in town,” says Gig, feeling pretty sure he’ll never hear from Biz again. “Well, listen, now that I know I’ve got a place to live and I don’t have to worry so much about running out of money, how about I give you a little something? Get you to Ogden without starving to death.”

“That would be wonderful,” says Biz, sighing with relief. “You may not know it, Gig, but you’re some kind of angel.”

Gig drives by Gig Music on his way to his mother’s house and is startled to see the old Gig Music sign, big blocky black capital letters on a dirty white background, replaced by a much classier Gig Music sign, burgundy cursive, all lower case letters on a peach background, the new sign half the size of the old, yet much more eye-catching and intriguing.

Indeed, Gig finds the new sign so eye-catching and intriguing, he can’t resist parking in front of the shop, getting one of his guitars out of the trunk to sell for some quick cash, and hurrying to see what other changes have been made.

The front door is new, the funky glass door now solid wood painted the same burgundy as the cursive letters in the sign. And before Gig can reach out to turn the doorknob, the door opens inward automatically, a most convenient innovation for people who might be carrying guitars.

But these exterior changes are nothing compared to what awaits within. The old dark wood floor, treacherously warped, has been replaced by sunny bamboo flooring, the darkness of the high-ceilinged room no longer dispelled by fluorescent lights, but by seven large skylights and tasteful track lighting.

And the wall between Gig Music and what used to be Sylvia’s Hair Salon is now gone, the guitar shop merging seamlessly with an elegant art gallery with large paintings and photographs, landscapes and portraits, adorning the walls.

“Wow,” says Gig, awestruck. “Incredible.”

The two dilapidated sofas have been replaced by three handsome armless chairs with cushioned seats, and the wall where Gig used to display banjos and mandolins and fiddles is now a wall of guitars, each guitar spot-lit, suggesting These are works of art, too. And the big ever-cluttered counter has been replaced by a beautiful oak worktable, the cash register out of sight.

“May I help you?” asks someone calling from the art gallery; and Gig turns to behold an attractive woman wearing delicate red-framed glasses and blue jeans and sandals and a scarlet dress shirt, her long brown hair in a ponytail.

“Hello,” says Gig, waving to her. “Does Beckman still own this place?”

“Yes, he does,” she says, crossing the room to him, her accent thickly Spanish. “I recognize you. You are Gig. I’ve seen pictures of you with Julian.”

“Julian?” says Gig, half-smiling and half-frowning. “Oh, yeah. Julian. Sure. Beckman. Who are you?”

“I’m Portia,” she says, studying his face. “Julian’s wife.” She laughs. “Beckman’s wife. We invited you to our wedding three years ago, but we never heard from you, so then we sent you pictures of the wedding and our honeymoon in Spain. You didn’t get them?”

“No,” says Gig, knowing with absolute certainty that of all the things he might have forgotten in the last five years, he never would have forgotten an invitation to Beckman’s wedding and photos of the ceremony he missed. “I would have had to be in a hospital on life support not to come to Beckman’s wedding if I’d known about it.”

“You didn’t get the letters Julian wrote to you?”

“No,” says Gig, grimacing. “I don’t know why, but I didn’t.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Portia, placing a hand on her heart. “But you are here now, so we can celebrate. I’ll go get Julian. He’s just finishing up a lesson. Please, have a seat.”

So Gig sits down on one of the comfortable armless chairs and gazes around the big room at the many guitars, and he is filled with joy by the splendid transformation of this place he gave birth to.

        fin