© 1999 John H. Doe

In a dream I dreamed upside down, walking atop the underside of island clouds. Above me the ground became a sky looming flat and solid, one sewn so many times it was all a patchwork of green, even fields and wheat-golden acreage. I walked for miles and miles in long, gliding strides from cloud to cloud÷the steps a soul may make free from a body. When I woke up with that modern day reach reflex to silence the sharp, incessant buzzing of the alarm, I was curiously amused by the fact that I didnât fall from the height where I lay. I was gazing down at the ceiling. Then, my orientation swung back its one hundred eighty degrees right side up, and it was all normal and suspenseless again, another everyday, another Monday.

I groaned up to my feet and took a few wobbly steps to the bathroom. Who was it that sang the song "Donât Fence Me In"? He wasnât talking about me, to be sure, but did he ever imagine the kind of fences we of the gray jungle inhabit? The glass ones fitting us into tiny compartments: cars, subways, offices, apartments; the invisible ones, or near invisible÷theyâre just invisible enough to fool the caveman in each of us, but the outer cerebrum wherein we store the digits of our bank accounts knows undeniably that theyâre there. The squat window to the left of the bathroom mirror opened out to a wall, which I habitually, pointlessly peeked out of every day. A wall is not a fence. A fence you can think about, a wall you just face.

Each morning, a million÷more÷people, of their own free wills, drive honk-honk through the milling of rush hour traffic into the city, to regroup somewhere they probably hate. And each of them would probably shake their heads about the lemmings, why they shuffle off to mass suicide off their cliffs÷tsk, tsk. Oh, no, not a new thought, but consider the following: try outfitting a lemming in a suit and tie, and tell them theyâll have to trudge someplace each morning, rain or shine, just when the morningâs woken up, someplace unpleasant like where they last went and dumped, and guess what? Theyâll look at you like one flew over the cuckooâs nest, if you catch my drift. Yes, my commute÷off to smell what Iâd left behind yesterday.

"Hey, Dan," Carl said, passing by me, zigzagging to his gray cubicle as I was zigzagging to my gray cubicle, and he, like everything, was surrounded in the minor haze of the early morning pre-coffee minutes.

"Hey, Carl," I said, knowing that that was going to be the most sincere thing I would say all morning.

Iâve just had my coffee. Hello, my name is Daniel T. Smithson, and I have some great opportunities for you in the stock market today. Donât worry, Mr. or Mrs. Q. Public, we here at Tom Foundry are well aware of your economic situation, and we do our best to correlate the interests available to the certain sector of the population you represent. Dare I say, it, sir or madam, but given the catapulting of the fairly recent Internet stocks, and their potential, we may assume that the cards you place today may well turn out to be a royal flush in the not too distant future, and that retirement at forty is a not unviable possibility. And please be assured that the day in the making is today, not tomorrow, as we all know that opportunity knocks with only one knuckle and one tap if it ever knocks at all. · No, not exactly that. Definitely smarmier.

The morning passed, in other words. Lunchtime is another herd, a line of listless, slouching dress shirts waiting for their daily gravy in the cafeteria. The food wasnât that bad÷once you got used to it: upward mobility got stuck here in the rows of tables, the grid of averageness, the great, dull mean all shuffling in unison as another got served and slid his tray down to the cash register. I read somewhere that the greater majority of the average donât believe that they are. None of those people have eaten here and been happy when they were served salisbury steak, or else, they would have had to recalculate their place in the great chain of being÷which, I believe, ends just where the line of the cafeteria ends.

"Hey, Dan," Carl said, placing his tray down next to mine with one hand while sliding the chair out with the other to a well-worn precision.

"Hey, Carl," I said as he sat, as I forked another mouthful of bland and limp turkey tetrazzini.

He stroked his tie down off the table. "Whatâre you doing tonight?"

"Oh, itâs Monday, Carl. Iâm writing that Italian opera tonight."

"Hey, I got a couple of chicks visiting from out of town. We all went to college together, all of us History majors in the same class. You wanna come?"

I had been an Anthropology major, those three, endless years ago. As far as useless goes, a dead heat. "I donât know. Sort of had my heart set on reorganizing my towels."

"As I remember it, one of them was a real nympho back when. Iâll point her out to you."

The corners of my mouth edged up slightly. "Youâre going to set me up with the other one, arenât you?"

"Ah, you know me too well."

I think the nicest thing anyone could say to me, now, now that Iâve had my ideals beaten senseless out of me, is, "May all your failures be private ones." And speaking of that afternoon, letâs not. Let it be enough to say that cubicles had been created by a just God, Who deemed it so that those who threw their honor into the winds would have those winds constantly rebuffed by three and a half prefabricated walls÷no chance whatsoever itâd float back. We hurry on to five oâclock, when I saw with the eyes on the back of my head Carlâs grinning face at my aperture. "Hey, Carl," I said without turning around, gazing at no particular stock listed on my CRT.

"Hey, Dan. Are you ready to parté?" There was that end of the day little giddiness in his voice.

"My poor towels."

We went to the Hive, sort of a crawlspace of a bar a few blocks south of our office building. There was this effect going on in there: it was brightly lit enough, but the walls were all matte black÷your pupils didnât know how to adjust, exactly, whether to dilate or contract, and they lingered around the sharp outlines of everything, the people, the stools, the glasses÷it was a stark, pointless mural talking amongst itself. It made you want to drink, to blur everything out into one of the deeper shades of oblivion. We sat one of the three booths, Carl peeking out every several seconds to the door, a little anxious, a little excited, sipping his beer precisely so as not to spill it on himself.

"Alright. Yvonne likes crying her eyes raw at sad movies and is a sucker for a poem. Angela likes long, meandering walks through the city at about five a.m. in the morning, just when all the freaks have gone to bed, after a talk lasting seven hours. Believe it or not, Angela was the nympho. After a talk and a walk like that, she feels like she knows the deepest part of your being, and she puts out. Yvonne likes the romance stuff. Oh, hey, there they are."

We stood as they stepped towards us, Carl glimpsing he was still handling his beer, setting it down, giving both of them itâs been so long hugs in turn, introducing me as one of the people heâd lend his soul to if I had a need of it. He lied, of course. He had no soul. We all sat, the men offering the booth as if they owned it so the women could slide in and feel shielded (from men like us, I suppose). It was one of those scenes in a movie where your suspension of disbelief lapses, like the actors had rehearsed this just once too often.

"So, Angela," I said, of course to her, "what do you do?" I wasnât concerned with the implications of the question, and I should know. My own job suited me about as well as nightvision goggles for a bat on good days, a typewriter for a goldfish on bad. I just needed an in.

"Well," she started, eyes a little too animated, "right after I graduated college, I had this wild notion that communes were going to go back in style, so I joined one out in Iowa. I stayed there for about two months before I was bored out of my mind, and then I didnât know what to do at all. I was an administrative assistant at about five different places in the next couple of years÷I really couldnât find my bearing for the longest time. I settled in, finally, as a substitute teacher at a high school in Maryland, where Yvonne and I both live these days. I was buying a hot dog on the street one Saturday when I turned and splat! Yvonne walked right into it÷mustard and relish slathered all over this great white blouse she was wearing. I hadnât seen her since college." There must have been a bathtubfull of words pouring down an invisible funnel sticking out the top of her head, and she was merely mouthing the grammar to let the words flow out her lips in sentence form.

As far as attractive went, the thermometer registered at a little over eighty degrees for both of them÷a little hot each, but far from an Amazonian sizzle. Yvonne had dark, short hair, cut so she looked French from every angle I had seen so far. She had a thin face, gray eyes which I could imagine flashing to effect if she wished it, and lips which seemed to be in a constant purse. She sat next to me. At the far corner of our little square, ingenue-blue eyed Angela had a round face, high cheekbones and dirty blond hair. She seemed a little confused about everything if she wasnât speaking at the time, a quizzical perk in her expression.

Yvonne spoke÷she seemed more a picker of words than a batch harvest: "So, youâre in the stock market game with Carl?"

"Yeah, death was too good for me," I replied, smiling sarcastically.

Carl offered to fetch drinks for the two, a margarita for Angela and a vodka collins for Yvonne, and whisked himself the ten feet away to the bar. Yvonne whispered something in Angelaâs ear with a flit of her eyes at me, and Angela nodded. Angela whispered something back, and Yvonne shook her head.

I didnât need this, I was beginning to decide. They were already talking about me behind my back right in front of me, probably in a secret language lest I comprehend one of the faces of Eve. "So," I said to Angela again, warming up, suddenly relaxing myself so my butt slid out a little, and my back slid down, the ready position for any spectator event: "Carl tells me you used to be a real nympho." What are friends for, anyway?

There it was, that little confusion, and she was dissolving in it, deeper and deeper by the second. Her cheeks flushed, and she tried to spit out a defense, a refutation, something a few times, but it was as if she couldnât unscramble the exact word she needed to begin. Yes, I was sorry I said it. I was also a little pleased.

"Yeah. She still is," Yvonne said flatly, and she materialized a cigarette from the purse she had shed down onto the seat, by her side.

"Yvonne!" There we go.

My stomach shook in an involuntary chuckle. Carl galloped back with the drinks. "Whatâs so funny?" he said, sliding the drinks down to the women.

"Carl!" Angela cried, pelting his arm with furious little punches (in spite of myself, I thought, Squirrel Attack!).

Carl looked puzzled in that blunt way he wore his face, like a hairless bulldog sniffing something which he couldnât decide was food or not. "What, did I get the drinks wrong?" He peeked at me with a cocked eyebrow.

I shrugged my shoulders, stifling a grin with stone poker face. "So, Yvonne," I said, turning away from Carl before my face broke free from its cool, "how long has it been since old Carl here darkened your line of sight?"

She lit her cigarette with the habitual hand cupped over it, and before she could exhale, Carl broke in, "Since when do you smoke?"

With two looks connecting the dots, she answered, to me, "Three years," and to Carl, "Two years."

Angela was fuming, facing the wall, eyes fixed on a point about three feet into it, muttering, "I canât believe you said that, Carl." She crossed her arms in a pout about to burst.

"What did I say?" Carl asked plaintively, though he was more addressing the general group rather than Angela in particular.

"What did he say about me?" Yvonne asked me, and a mild curiosity wet her eye.

Under the table, I felt Carl kicking me with the side of his shoe frantically, so much so his whole body shook aboveboard÷probably to more guard the other area, the one which had already been exposed.

I made pains to ignore him. "He said you were a sucker for poetry and sad movies," I said casually, smiling as Carl wrung his face with his hands. He peeked out and did an all-teeth sheepish smile for Yvonne. Then, a clue lit in his face. Behold the dawn of man.

"Waitaminute," he said, pointing first at Yvonne, then me, then Angela. "Thatâs what sheâs talking about?"

Angela bared a tight oval of her teeth at him with a furious and frustrated, "Ooh!" and then, with little slaps on Carlâs shoulder like she didnât want to touch him (Squirrel Attack II!), "Let me out!"

A little stunned, Carl slid out and up, arms out at his sides palms up, unable to fumble past the first couple syllables of whatever he was trying to say. "But I·but I·but I·" Yeah, you always had to feel sorry for Carl.

"Iâll be at the hotel, Yvonne," Angela said to her when she was up, shouldering up the strap of her purse, with aggravation stressed in the syllable of the name. She stormed out, of course.

For a second Carl stood in a blank-faced slouch, watching her leave, and then, magically, pulled like gravity by his little general, he started walking after her, "Wait, Angela, I can explain this whole thing·"

I knew Carl. He could explain the whole thing. I slid my drink to the other side of the table, swiveling out and around to settle back in opposite Yvonne after the little show. I said in an easy voice, "So, it looks like Carlâs gonna get some tonight."

"Definitely," agreed Yvonne.

I waited an appropriate, slightly bonding moment, and I sort of slid it in: "At the point weâve reached, right now·what were you two whispering about?"

She smiled vaguely, letting me wait half a moment. "I asked her if she wanted Carl and me to leave you two alone together later, and she said yes. Then she asked me do you want him for yourself, and I said no."

So, in other words· I thought. "So, in other words·" I trailed off to a bitter little laugh. It just seemed I had too many stories of my life for one life. Thatâs what my tombstone would read: Story of My Life. I suddenly felt like hitting something and then crawling into a corner.

She sensed it, drawing back slightly. When she found the words, there was a faint compassion in her voice, as if she kept things like that stored in the attic of her brain, only climbing up there grudgingly: "The irony is not lost, Dan. I think God keeps them all up on a great wall, on the back of which He keeps all the best poetry. If you stare hard enough, you can see right on through to the other side."

That was interesting. That budged me from the cave my psyche had curled into in the two seconds after she had told me what Angela had more or less agreed to. "Hm. What about the other way around?"

She looked slightly down, more within, finger stroking the lip of her glass. She considered for a moment. "That may well be right. The ones who can see the poetry, if they choose to, can look deeper and spy a-a-ll the ironies." The stretched out "all" took in the whole world.

I crossed two fingers in my head, after soaking in that for a second÷an A+ from professor Smithson. "Your ideas fascinate me and I would surely like to subscribe to your pamphlet," I said warmly, no sarcasm, and I smiled at her. I felt something for a second, out of the hole now, a fleeting notion like a ghost of childhood blowing through me.

"Do you dream, Dan?" she asked, and in her eyes, I saw she had a point lined up directly behind the question. There was a hint of danger.

I decided to answer diplomatically, but truthfully: "In one sense, yes. I dream at night÷only unconsciously. The conscious ones expired some time ago. Their warranty was up a couple of years after college."

"I, myself, had a running dream throughout my teenage years, one of a knight with a white shield who wore around his neck a medallion. The medallionâs origin was mysterious, like the knightâs÷they both appeared at the castle gate when he was orphaned there. On the medallion was carved the image of a woman, a girl÷me. One day, I would be in the forest, lost in its darkness, when rides through the knight, and sees my face, the damsel whose face he had gazed upon since the earliest days of his childhood. He would then lift me onto his horse, and we would ride off."

She paused, extinguishing her cigarette. I said nothing, a breath a little bated to hear what was next.

"I met this knight, Dan. In real life. About two months after I graduated, I was on a camping trip. No, I wasnât exactly lost÷I was out by myself scrounging firewood÷but there he was, a beautiful man who was staring at me intensely, not wavering in his gaze for the longest time as I looked around, a little confused why he was staring like that, a little self conscious about myself, being dressed in flannel, with no makeup or anything. He said, ÎI saw your face in a dream. Here you are.â" She sniffed. Her eyes had visibly moistened, and she downed the last of her drink.

She finished, "That was it, Dan. It doesnât get any better than that. For six months I had it÷a dream. A dream real." She stopped to wipe away a tear, to catch it as it escaped.

I was obliged to ask, after the mandatory pause, in as gentle voice I could manage, "What happened?"

"Why am I telling you this, Dan?" she challenged, suddenly in full control. "Youâre just some guy who wanted to nail my nympho friend but blew it because he couldnât keep his big mouth from farting it away."

I looked down at my beer, a sip left, and I then I looked an honest eye into hers. I said, "Because I told you I had no dreams."

Matter-of-factly, resolved in her expression, "He died, Dan. What do you think happened?"

I dropped my eyes down at my glass again. At least you had it, I thought, a thought like a tumor.

"I think Hell would be a much crueler place if those headed there were first left for a day in Heaven," she said.

I paused, nodding, then I added, "And yet, those others who had not been there would envy those who had."

She smiled at that, a feline smile, almost a purr in itself. "What did the spider say to the other spider?"

"What?"

"Drink your fly. Tonight we spin a web across our dreams."

We slept together. Of course we slept together÷that was a given considering the conversation we had had, lasting four hours, exploring the whole night without ever leaving our seats. Clothes strewn along the floor of my living room trailing to the bedroom, we did it like revenge. We thrashed like animals. When it was over, we lay there sweaty, wordless, and spent. Nothing crossed my mind at all as she lit her cigarette and smoked it, no thought could penetrate the deep, deep moment. We slept.

She was gone when I woke up, the sharp buzzing of the alarm I clicked off. I expected that, too. No note, no trace of her except my general satisfaction with almost everything. Almost. Bathroom, bathroom window out to the wall÷not so different, I guessed, but different. My commute, the lemming question not as much of an issue, really, a trivial thought which had weighted down with constant askings. Into work, another day, and I knew this about it, now, realized it on the elevator up: this was nothing like a cross to bear, not so noble as that, more like the sleeve of a shirt which never lost a stain because you wiped your face with it constantly, and you did that because it was the only shirt you owned.

"Hey, Dan," Carl said, a little knowing "Dan", before I reached the cubicle gridwork this time.

"Hey, Carl," I said, surprised at myself for sounding like I did every day. I guessed what he would say next.

"Had that seven hour talk last night. I think you know what Iâm talking about," he said, a certain dance in the rhythm of his words.

"Very good, Carl," I said, and I realized why I sounded like this, why I sounded like the everyday bland.

"So·Iâm guessing you werenât quite shooting through an open goal last night, eh? I told you, man, she likes the romance. She probably told you some story to throw you off, am I right? I remember she did that if she didnât like you."

"What?"

He nodded, seeing that he had hit on, if not it, something in batting range by the look in my eye. "Yeah. She probably told you someone died or something, am I right?"

I smiled an accepting smile. I wasnât going to strike him out÷I was going to walk him. "Yeah. Something like that."

"Thatâs alright, Dan." He slapped me on the shoulder. Thanks slugger. "Thereâs fish everywhere. You just gotta know your baits."

That made it close to okay, but strangely so, almost uncomfortable, the cause of what I had realized. Sometimes you feel guilty about a dream, knowing full well it was a dream, because thereâs that caveman inside you that tells you you were there. He shows you pictures. I dreamed that I was a bird of prey soaring over a forest, and I had spotted something there in the thickets÷a prize. I winged down and became a beautiful hunter, walking towards my target. I spotted her and stared at the fresh game; I spotted Yvonne gathering firewood, all alone. I stared, carefully and silently preparing what I was going to say, the new arrow, one of hundreds I had crafted before in my mind. I waited just long enough, just before she could interrupt my aim with her own words, the line I would feed her: "I saw your face in a dream. Here you are."