Prolog: Dream the First

Somebody said...

Somebody said...

Somebody said something about...

 

 

 

 

 

Prolog: Dream the First

 

“You cannot open a book

without learning something.”

 

-Confucius

 

In which Frank sleeps.

 

September, after the equinox. This picture, out the den window: hazy, swirling Rorschach darkness punctuated by the odd spall of street-lamp light. It was still warm like summer, but the breeze carried on it the promise of a long, sinister winter to come.

Frank opened his dream journal and wrote—

 

It was a dance hall connected to an old Protestant church. There were hundreds of folding tables set out, each covered in all manner of decorative clutter. Every table was manned by a sales agent. This table had necklaces, this table had pottery, and the next table was all gold rings. It was like strolling through the marketplace in Mexico—every agent was offering the best merchandise, the biggest deals. Nothing had a price tag. Everything was negotiable.

And everything was old. Everything was an antique.

A thousand potential suckers flowed through the hall with their purses opened. Sticky fingers rifled through brooches, buttons, and porcelain figurines. Fat old ladies in flower-print shirts. Dirty old men with their hands deep in their trouser pockets. It all stunk of age and cheap cologne.

Hank Williams was singing over the intercom. Maybe it was Hank Snow.

I came in through the fire exit, out of the howling cold. I was escaping from an unnamed something, and as the warm stench hit me I forgot what it was. Monsters, perhaps, or ghosts, or both. And I was aware that this was the past, that I'd taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque, as the Bunny likes to say, and ventured back through the years. Four or five years, I figured. That meant, of course, that I was not yet married to my beautiful wife, but was still mixed up with—

 

He stopped himself there. He didn't record the rest.

He supposed that someone might get the wrong idea, if they were to read the entry. He was careful like that. He knew that people were sensitive, distrustful, and liked to snoop. He knew that everyone was Sigmund fucking Freud.

He was listening to a Lou Reed tune, oozing quietly out of the laptop computer's tiny speakers—music so sweet he thought about blowing his brains out to it.

...

 

Across the gymnasium-sized room he saw Tracy coming toward him. Her arms were full of dusty old lamps and miscellaneous crap that she'd paid too much for. She was grinning a mouthful of off-white evil. Her tits were as bare as the occasion would allow, plump and pushed-up and framed in a triangular plunge. She said, “What do you think of these?” She was talking about the lamps.

Frank told her, “We're history, lady. In the future, I'm with Gia.”

She said, “It's not the future, yet. Don't you think I've got some great buys here?”

“I shouldn't even be talking to you.”

“Relax, silly, it's not as though we're going to fuck—”

Her careless use of the F-word brought wrinkled scowls from a hundred seniors within earshot, but it wasn't like Tracy to feel shame, and so she shrugged and kept right on smiling. She wanted to know where the truck was parked so she could stash her hoard and come back for more. She wanted another fistful of dollars. She definitely wanted to fuck.

“I don't care what year I've come back to,” said Frank, “I'm not getting mixed up with you again. I learned my lesson. I'm still living under your shadow. Get lost. Get far away from me.” His words sounded dull and tinny, like he was speaking through a drum.

“Suit yourself,” Tracy said, dropping her armload onto the floor. Glass and ceramics went crash. “But you should keep in mind that I'm always just two steps away. I'm always within shouting distance. Maybe I'm just behind the next curtain. Maybe I'm hiding right behind your eyes.” She winked and turned away, slipping into the decrepit throng, off to ruin another life.

“Good riddance.”

He was four or five years in the past. He needed to locate the door that would take him home. Going out the way he came in didn't seem like an option. There was something horrible out that door, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was—

Next, another room, more tables. Fat ladies were peddling baked treats—pastries, cakes, pies and the like. Frank was approached by a freckle-faced lass, daughter of any one of the tubbies, carrying a small tray of goodies. Sample morsels. Bite-sized cakes and cubic-inch Nanaimo bars. A dozen market-goers breezed into the room, hungry for a little taste of everything. Also, the ghost of a woman, not actually dead—the lovely Miss Pamela Cockman, Frank's girlfriend from way back, his first adult relationship. To this spirit Frank spoke, inside of his mind.

I still love you.

I don't love you anymore.

Two statements, both true.

Two truths, polar opposites.

Frank had to stop and scratch his head. The instance of an itch on his dry scalp (in the dream and in real life) coincided precisely with this personal paradox, and he raked at it (the itch, not the paradox) determinedly with three clawed fingers.

Snow. Dandruff. Love and not-love.

He saw Pam standing before him. Red shorts, too short, too red, on child-bearing hips. Pendulous breasts—unsupported—with cookie-sized raw-sienna nipples pressed tight against her slight white tank-top. For the first time he realized how similar in appearance she was to Tracy and maybe four other girlfriends, and wondered if, perhaps, on some weird subconscious level, he'd selected those women as clones to replace Pam. (Thank Jezus Gia came from a completely different mould.)

She was lighting a cigarette. A ghost cigarette. She said, “Man, it's been decades, hasn't it? But you're looking good. Somebody told me you're getting married. Is that true?” She was translucent, as ghosts tend to be. Frank could see through her. He noticed two old women, directly behind her, waving ghost-smoke out of their frowny faces.

He imagined himself saying I still love you and it made him uncomfortable. He imagined saying I'm totally over you, but that didn't sound quite right, either. This place was Limbo. The time was wrong, the people were wrong, the feelings were out in left field. In waking life, Frank hadn't thought about Pam in fifteen years or better.

He popped a bite-sized Nanaimo bar in his mouth, pried the chocolate lid off with his tongue, and the yellow cream in the middle liquified almost instantly in his saliva.

I love a good Nanaimo bar.

Two are better. Three, still good. Four will make you queasy.

Tasty. Sweet. Sickening.

Frank chewed and swallowed, then rinsed his mouth with coffee. Rich and French. No sugar. Milk, lots, no cream, thanks. Pam was still waiting for him to answer the original question. “Somebody told me you're getting married. Is that true?”

This picture of the woman was wearing her streaked blond hair up in a loose bun, with thick strands hanging deliberately helter-skelter over her face and ears. He didn't think the real her had ever done that—it was more of a Gia-thing. The other details were pure Pam:

Giant candy cane-striped hoops in her ears.

Prescription glasses, tinted purple for the sun.

Pink-purple lipstick, expensive, smear-proof.

Frank finally said, “I'm not married, yet. That's still four or five years into the future. I'm all out of sorts. Tracy was here—I was just talking to her, next door. I don't think you know Tracy. And I'd like to introduce you to my future bride, Gia Marvello, but I don't know which door to step through.”

Pam nodded reflexively, disinterested. “Anyway, I'm not a whore,” she was now saying, “and how dare you think such a thing.”

“By definition, no, you're not technically a prostitute,” Frank agreed.

“I'm not a whore. Not by any definition.”

“How do you define—”

“Floozy. Slattern. Harlot.”

Her words. No, his.

Him speaking as her.

(Slattern. Good one.)

Her face was becoming blurry, like she was about to morph into someone else.

“I've really got to get going, Pam. I think I have work to do. Big ideas, important work—you might be surprised. I've got a lot on my plate, these days.” He was reluctant to make eye contact with this sexy phantom. If he could get away with it, if he could live with himself afterwards, he'd fuck her right on the hardwood dancing floor in front of God and everyone.

He closed his eyes hard and wished her away.

In no time at all he'd locate the door that would take him straight back to waking life, and Hallelujah for that because he didn't think he could bear any more of these awkward reunions. There was a chance that he'd have to meet himself and he doubted he'd survive such a confrontation.

...