'Pardon me for disagreeing, but there'll never be a better time. Think about it, for Christ's sake. We're talking top dollar here. If you wait until after Helen's Promise Helen's Promise is published, I can't guarantee that the same offer - ' is published, I can't guarantee that the same offer - '

'I know you can't,' I said. 'I don't want guarantees, I don't want offers, I don't want to talk contract I don't want to talk contract.'

'You don't need to shout, Mike, I can hear you.'

Had I been shouting? Yes, I suppose I had been.

'Are you dissatisfied with Putnam's? I think Debra would be very distressed to hear that. I also think Phyllis Grann would do d.a.m.ned near anything to address any concerns you might have.'

Are you sleeping with Debra, Harold? Are you sleeping with Debra, Harold? I thought, and all at once it seemed like the most logical idea in the world - that dumpy, fiftyish, balding little Harold Oblowski was making it with my blonde, aristocratic, Smith-educated editor. I thought, and all at once it seemed like the most logical idea in the world - that dumpy, fiftyish, balding little Harold Oblowski was making it with my blonde, aristocratic, Smith-educated editor. Are you sleeping with her, do you talk about my future while you're lying in bed together in a room at the Plaza? Are the pair of you trying to figure how many golden eggs you can get out of this tired old goose before you finally wring its neck and turn it into pate? Is that what you're up to? Are you sleeping with her, do you talk about my future while you're lying in bed together in a room at the Plaza? Are the pair of you trying to figure how many golden eggs you can get out of this tired old goose before you finally wring its neck and turn it into pate? Is that what you're up to?

'Harold, I can't talk about this now, and I won't won't talk about this now.' talk about this now.'

'What's wrong? Why are you so upset? I thought you'd be pleased. h.e.l.l, I thought you'd be over the f.u.c.king moon.'

'There's nothing wrong. It's just a bad time for me to talk long-term contract. You'll have to pardon me, Harold. I have something coming out of the oven.'

'Can we at least discuss this next w - '

'No,' I said, and hung up. I think it was the first time in my adult life I'd hung up on someone who wasn't a telephone salesman.

I had nothing coming out of the oven, of course, and I was too upset to think about putting something in. I went into the living room instead, poured myself a short whiskey, and sat down in front of the TV I sat there for almost four hours, looking at everything and seeing nothing. Outside, the storm continued cranking up. Tomorrow there would be trees down all over Derry and the world would look like an ice sculpture.

At quarter past nine the power went out, came back on for thirty seconds or so, then went out and stayed out. I took this as a suggestion to stop thinking about Harold's useless contract and how Jo would have chortled the idea of nine million dollars. I got up, unplugged the blacked-out TV so it wouldn't come blaring on at two in the morning (I needn't have worried; the power was off in Derry for nearly two days), and went upstairs. I dropped my clothes at the foot of the bed, crawled in without even bothering to brush my teeth, and was asleep in less than five minutes. I don't how long after that it was that the nightmare came.

It was the last dream I had in what I now think of as my 'Manderley series,' the culminating dream. It was made even worse, I suppose, by unrelievable blackness to which I awoke.

It started like the others. I'm walking up the lane, listening to the crickets and the loons, looking mostly at the darkening slot of sky overhead. I reach the driveway, and here something has has changed; someone has put a little sticker on the SARA LAUGHS sign. I lean closer and see it's a radio station sticker. WBLM, it says. 102.9, PORTLAND'S ROCK AND ROLL BLIMP. changed; someone has put a little sticker on the SARA LAUGHS sign. I lean closer and see it's a radio station sticker. WBLM, it says. 102.9, PORTLAND'S ROCK AND ROLL BLIMP.

From the sticker I look back up into the sky, and there is Venus. I wish her as I always do, I wish for Johanna with the dank and vaguely smell of the lake in my nose.

Something lumbers in the woods, rattling old leaves and breaking a branch. It sounds big.

Better get down there Better get down there, a voice in my head tells me. Something has taken out a contract on you, Michael. A three-book contract, and that's the worst kind. Something has taken out a contract on you, Michael. A three-book contract, and that's the worst kind.

I can never move, I can only stand here. I've got walker's block. I can never move, I can only stand here. I've got walker's block.

But that's just talk. I But that's just talk. I can can walk. This time I walk. This time I can can walk. I am delighted. I have had a major breakthrough. In the dream I think walk. I am delighted. I have had a major breakthrough. In the dream I think This changes everything! This changes everything! This changes everything! This changes everything!

Down the driveway I walk, deeper and deeper into the clean but sour smell of pine, stepping over some of the fallen branches, kicking others out of the way. I raise my hand to brush the damp hair off my forehead and see the little scratch running across the back of it. I stop to look at it, curious.

No time for that No time for that, the dream-voice says. Get down there. You've got a book to write. Get down there. You've got a book to write.

I can't write I can't write, I reply. That part's over. I'm on the back forty now. That part's over. I'm on the back forty now.

No, the voice says. There is something relentless about it that scares me. You had writer's You had writer's walk, walk, not writer's not writer's block, block, and as you can see, it's gone. Now hurry up and get down there. and as you can see, it's gone. Now hurry up and get down there.

I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I tell the voice. I tell the voice.

Afraid of what? Afraid of what?

Well . . . what if Mrs. Danvers is down there?

The voice doesn't answer. It knows I'm not afraid of Rebecca de Winter's housekeeper, she's just a character in an old book, nothing but a bag of bones. So I begin walking again. I have no choice, it seems, but at every step my terror increases, and by the time I'm halfway down to the shadowy sprawling bulk of the log house, fear has sunk into my bones like fever. Something is wrong here, something is all twisted up. The voice doesn't answer. It knows I'm not afraid of Rebecca de Winter's housekeeper, she's just a character in an old book, nothing but a bag of bones. So I begin walking again. I have no choice, it seems, but at every step my terror increases, and by the time I'm halfway down to the shadowy sprawling bulk of the log house, fear has sunk into my bones like fever. Something is wrong here, something is all twisted up.

I'll run away, I think. I think. I'll run back the way I came, like the gingerbread man I'll run, run all the way back to Derry, if that's what it takes, and I'll never come here anymore. I'll run back the way I came, like the gingerbread man I'll run, run all the way back to Derry, if that's what it takes, and I'll never come here anymore.

Except I can hear s...o...b..ring breath behind me in the growing gloom, and padding footsteps. The thing in the woods is now the thing in the driveway. It's right behind me. If I turn around the sight of it will knock the sanity out of my head in a single roundhouse slap. Something with red eyes, something slumped and hungry.

The house is my only hope of safety.

I walk on. The crowding bushes clutch like hands. In the light of a rising moon (the moon has never risen before in this dream, but I have never stayed in it this long before), the rustling leaves look like sardonic faces. I see winking eyes and smiling mouths. Below me are the black windows of the house and I know that there will be no power when I get inside, the storm has knocked the power out, I will flick the lightswitch up and down, up and down, until something reaches out and takes my wrist and pulls me like a lover deeper into the dark.

I am three quarters of the way down the driveway now. I can see the railroad-tie steps leading down to the lake, and I can see the float out there on the water, a black square in a track of moonlight. Bill Dean has put it out. I can also see an oblong something lying at the place where driveway ends at the stoop. There has never been such an object before. What can it be?

Another two or three steps, and I know. It's a coffin, the one Frank Arlen d.i.c.kered for . . . because, he said, the mortician was trying to stick it to me. It's Jo's coffin, and lying on its side with the top partway open, enough for me to see it's empty.

I think I want to scream. I think I mean to turn around and run back up the driveway - I will take my chances with the thing behind me. But before I can, the back door of Sara Laughs opens, and a terrible figure darting out into the growing darkness. It is human, this figure, and yet it's not. It is a crumpled white thing with baggy arms upraised. There is no face where its face should be, and yet it is shrieking in a glottal, loonlike voice. It must be Johanna. She was able to escape her coffin, her winding shroud. She is all tangled up in it.

How hideously speedy speedy this creature is! It doesn't drift as one imagines ghosts drifting, but this creature is! It doesn't drift as one imagines ghosts drifting, but races races across the stoop toward the driveway. It has been waiting down here during all the dreams when I had been frozen, and now that I have finally been able to walk down, it means to have me. I'll scream when it wraps me in its silk arms, and I will scream when I smell its rotting, bug-raddled flesh and see its dark staring eyes through the fine weave of the cloth. I will scream as the sanity leaves my mind forever. I will scream . . . but there is no one out here to hear me. Only the loons will hear me. I have come again to Manderley, and this time I will never leave. across the stoop toward the driveway. It has been waiting down here during all the dreams when I had been frozen, and now that I have finally been able to walk down, it means to have me. I'll scream when it wraps me in its silk arms, and I will scream when I smell its rotting, bug-raddled flesh and see its dark staring eyes through the fine weave of the cloth. I will scream as the sanity leaves my mind forever. I will scream . . . but there is no one out here to hear me. Only the loons will hear me. I have come again to Manderley, and this time I will never leave.

The shrieking white thing reached for me and I woke up on the floor of crying out in a cracked, horrified voice and slamming my head repeatedly against something. How long before I finally realized I was no longer asleep, that I wasn't at Sara Laughs? How long before I realized that I had fallen out of bed at some point and had crawled across the room in my sleep, that I was on my hands and knees in a corner, b.u.t.ting my head against the place where the walls came together, doing it over and over again like a lunatic in an asylum?

I didn't know, couldn't with the power out and the bedside clock dead. I know that at first I couldn't move out of the corner because it felt safer than the wider room would have done, and I know that for a long time the dream's force held me even after I woke up (mostly, I imagine, because I couldn't turn on a light and dispel its power). I was afraid that if I crawled out of my corner, the white thing would burst out of my bathroom, shrieking its dead shriek, eager to finish what it had started. I know I was shivering all over, and that I was cold and wet from the waist down, because my bladder had let go.

I stayed there in the corner, gasping and wet, staring into the darkness, wondering if you could have a nightmare powerful enough in its imagery to drive you insane. I thought then (and think now) that I almost found out on that night in March.

Finally I felt able to leave the corner. Halfway across the floor I pulled off my wet pajama pants, and when I did that, I got disoriented. What followed was a miserable and surreal five minutes in which I crawled aimlessly back and forth in my familiar bedroom, b.u.mping into stuff and moaning each time I hit something with a blind, flailing hand. Each thing I touched at first seemed like that awful white thing. Nothing I touched felt like anything I knew. With the rea.s.suring green numerals of the bedside clock gone and my sense of direction temporarily lost, I could have been crawling around a mosque in Addis Ababa.

At last I ran shoulder-first into the bed. I stood up, yanked the pillowcase off the extra pillow, and wiped my groin and upper legs with it. Then I crawled back into bed, pulled the blankets up, and lay there shivering, listening to the steady tick of sleet on the windows.

There was no sleep for me the rest of that night, and the dream didn't fade as dreams usually do upon waking. I lay on my side, the shivers slowly subsiding, thinking of her coffin there in the driveway, thinking that it made a kind of mad sense - Jo had loved Sara, and if she were haunt anyplace, it would be there. But why would she want to hurt me? Why would my Jo ever want to hurt me? I could think of no reason.

Somehow the time pa.s.sed, and there came a moment when I realized the air had turned a dark shade of gray; the shapes of the furniture in it like sentinels in fog. That was a little better. That was more it. I would light the kitchen woodstove, I decided, and make strong coffee. Begin the work of getting this behind me.

I swung my legs out of bed and raised my hand to brush my sweat-hair off my forehead. I froze with the hand in front of my eyes. I must have sc.r.a.ped it while I was crawling, disoriented, in the dark and to find my way back to bed. There was a shallow, clotted cut across the back, just below the knuckles.

CHAPTER FIVE

Once, when I was sixteen, a plane went supersonic directly over my head.

I was walking in the woods when it happened, thinking of some story I was going to write, perhaps, or how great it would be if Doreen Fournier weakened some Friday night and let me take off her panties while we were parked at the end of Cushman Road.

In any case I was travelling far roads in my own mind, and when that boom went off, I was caught totally by surprise. I went flat on the leafy ground with my hands over my head and my heart drumming crazily, sure I'd reached the end of my life (and while I was still a virgin). In my forty years, that was the only thing which equalled the final dream of the 'Manderley series' for utter terror.

I lay on the ground, waiting for the hammer to fall, and when thirty seconds or so pa.s.sed and no hammer did did fall, I began to realize it had just been some jet-jockey from the Brunswick Naval Air Station, too eager to wait until he was out over the Atlantic before going to Mach 1. But, holy s.h.i.t, who ever could have guessed that it would be so fall, I began to realize it had just been some jet-jockey from the Brunswick Naval Air Station, too eager to wait until he was out over the Atlantic before going to Mach 1. But, holy s.h.i.t, who ever could have guessed that it would be so loud loud?

I got slowly to my feet and as I stood there with my heart finally slowing down, I realized I wasn't the only thing that had been scared witless by that sudden clear-sky boom. For the first time in my memory, the little patch of woods behind our house in Prout's Neck was entirely silent. I stood there in a dusty bar of sunlight, crumbled leaves all over my tee-shirt and jeans, holding my breath, listening. I had never heard a silence like it. Even on a cold day in January, the woods would have been full of conversation.

At last a finch sang. There were two or three seconds of silence, and then a jay replied. Another two or three seconds went by, and then a crow added his two cents' worth. A woodp.e.c.k.e.r began to hammer for grubs. A chipmunk b.u.mbled through some underbrush on my left. A minute after I had stood up, the woods were fully alive with little noises again; it was back to business as usual, and I continued with my own. I never forgot that unexpected boom, though, or the deathly silence which followed it.

I thought of that June day often in the wake of the nightmare, and there was nothing so remarkable in that. Things had changed, somehow, or could could change . . . but first comes silence while we a.s.sure ourselves that we are still unhurt and that the danger - if there change . . . but first comes silence while we a.s.sure ourselves that we are still unhurt and that the danger - if there was was danger - is gone. danger - is gone.

Derry was shut down for most of the following week, anyway. Ice and high winds caused a great deal of damage during the storm, and a sudden twenty-degree plunge in the temperature afterward made the digging out hard and the cleanup slow. Added to that, the atmosphere after a March storm is always dour and pessimistic; we get them up this way every year (and two or three in April for good measure, if we're not lucky), but we never seem to expect them. Every time we get clouted, we take it personally.

On a day toward the end of that week, the weather finally started to break. I took advantage, going out for a cup of coffee and a mid-morning pastry at the little restaurant three doors down from the Rite Aid where Johanna did her last errand. I was sipping and chewing and working the newspaper crossword when someone asked, 'Could I share your booth, Mr. Noonan? It's pretty crowded in here today.'

I looked up and saw an old man that I knew but couldn't quite place.

'Ralph Roberts,' he said. 'I volunteer down at the Red Cross. Me and my wife, Lois.'

'Oh, okay, sure,' I said. I give blood at the Red Cross every six weeks or so. Ralph Roberts was one of the old parties who pa.s.sed out juice and cookies afterward, telling you not to get up or make any sudden movements if you felt woozy. 'Please, sit down.' He looked at my paper, folded open to the crossword and lying in a patch of sun, as he slid into the booth. 'Don't you find that doing the crossword in the Derry News Derry News is sort of like striking out the pitcher in a baseball game?' he asked. is sort of like striking out the pitcher in a baseball game?' he asked.

I laughed and nodded. 'I do it for the same reason folks climb Mount Everest, Mr. Roberts . . . because it's there. Only with the News News crossword, no one ever falls off.' crossword, no one ever falls off.'

'Call me Ralph. Please.'

'Okay. And I'm Mike.'

'Good.' He grinned, revealing teeth that were crooked and a little yellow, but all his own. 'I like getting to the first names. It's like being able to take off your tie. Was quite a little cap of wind we had, wasn't it?'

'Yes,' I said, 'but it's warming up nicely now.' The thermometer had made one of its nimble March leaps, climbing from twenty-five degrees the night before to fifty that morning. Better than the rise in air-temperature, the sun was warm again on your face. It was that warmth that had coaxed me out of the house. 'Spring'll get here, I guess. Some years it gets a little lost, but it always seems to find its way back home.' He sipped his coffee, then set the cup down. 'Haven't seen you at the Red Cross lately.'

'I'm recycling,' I said, but that was a fib; I'd come eligible to give another pint two weeks ago. The reminder card was up on the refrigerator. It had just slipped my mind. 'Next week, for sure.'

'I only mention it because I know you're an A, and we can always use that.'

'Save me a couch.'

'Count on it. Everything going all right? I only ask because you look tired. If it's insomnia, I can sympathize, believe me.'

He did did have the look of an insomniac, I thought - too wide around the eyes, somehow. But he was also a man in his mid- to late seventies, and I don't think anyone gets that far without showing it. Stick around a little while, and life maybe only jabs at your cheeks and eyes. Stick around a long while and you end up looking like Jake La Motta after a hard fifteen. I opened my mouth to say what I always do when someone asks me if I'm all right, then wondered why I always felt I had to pull that tiresome Marlboro Man s.h.i.t, just who I was trying to fool. What did I think would happen if I told the guy who gave me a chocolate-chip cookie down at the Red Cross after the nurse took the needle out of my arm that I wasn't feeling a hundred percent? Earthquakes? Fire and flood? s.h.i.t. 'No,' I said, 'I really haven't been feeling so great, Ralph.' have the look of an insomniac, I thought - too wide around the eyes, somehow. But he was also a man in his mid- to late seventies, and I don't think anyone gets that far without showing it. Stick around a little while, and life maybe only jabs at your cheeks and eyes. Stick around a long while and you end up looking like Jake La Motta after a hard fifteen. I opened my mouth to say what I always do when someone asks me if I'm all right, then wondered why I always felt I had to pull that tiresome Marlboro Man s.h.i.t, just who I was trying to fool. What did I think would happen if I told the guy who gave me a chocolate-chip cookie down at the Red Cross after the nurse took the needle out of my arm that I wasn't feeling a hundred percent? Earthquakes? Fire and flood? s.h.i.t. 'No,' I said, 'I really haven't been feeling so great, Ralph.'

'Flu? It's been going around.'

'Nah. The flu missed me this time, actually. And I've been sleeping all right.' Which was true - there had been no recurrence of the Sara Laughs dream in either the normal or the high-octane version. 'I think I've just got the blues.'

'Well, you ought to take a vacation,' he said, then sipped his coffee. When he looked up at me again, he frowned and set his cup down. 'What? Is something wrong?'

No No, I thought of saying. You were just the first bird to sing into the silence, Ralph, that's all. You were just the first bird to sing into the silence, Ralph, that's all.

'No, nothing wrong,' I said, and then, because I sort of wanted to see how the words tasted coming out of my own mouth, I repeated them. 'A vacation.'

'Ayuh,' he said, smiling. 'People do it all the time.'

People do it all the time. He was right about that; even people who couldn't strictly afford to went on vacation. When they got tired. When they got all balled up in their own s.h.i.t. When the world was too much with them, getting and spending. He was right about that; even people who couldn't strictly afford to went on vacation. When they got tired. When they got all balled up in their own s.h.i.t. When the world was too much with them, getting and spending.

I could certainly afford a vacation, and I could certainly take the time off from work - what what work, ha-ha? - and yet I'd needed the Red Cross cookie-man to point out what should have been self-evident to a college-educated guy like me: that I hadn't been on an actual vacation since Jo and I had gone to Bermuda, the winter before she died. My particular grindstone was no longer turning, but I had kept my nose to it all the same. work, ha-ha? - and yet I'd needed the Red Cross cookie-man to point out what should have been self-evident to a college-educated guy like me: that I hadn't been on an actual vacation since Jo and I had gone to Bermuda, the winter before she died. My particular grindstone was no longer turning, but I had kept my nose to it all the same.

It wasn't until that summer, when I read Ralph Roberts's obituary in the News News (he was struck by a car), that I fully realized how much I owed him. That advice was better than any gla.s.s of orange juice I ever got after giving blood, let me tell you. (he was struck by a car), that I fully realized how much I owed him. That advice was better than any gla.s.s of orange juice I ever got after giving blood, let me tell you.

When I left the restaurant, I didn't go home but tramped over half of the d.a.m.ned town, the section of newspaper with the partly completed crossword puzzle in it clamped under one arm. I walked until I was chilled in spite of the warming temperatures. I didn't think about anything, and yet I thought about everything. It was a special kind of thinking, the sort I'd always done when I was getting close to writing a book, and although I hadn't thought that way in years, I fell into it easily and naturally, as if I had never been away.

It's like some guys with a big truck have pulled up in your driveway and are moving things into your bas.e.m.e.nt. I can't explain it any better than that. You can't see what these things are because they're all wrapped up in padded quilts, but you don't need to see them. It's furniture, everything you need to make your house a home, make it just right, just the way you wanted it.

When the guys have hopped back into their truck and driven away, you go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and walk around (the way I went walking around Derry that late morning, slopping up hill and down dale in my old galoshes), touching a padded curve here, a padded angle there. Is this one a sofa? Is that' one a dresser? It doesn't matter. Everything is here, the movers didn't forget a thing, and although you'll have to get it all upstairs yourself (straining your poor old back in the process, more often than not), that's okay. The important thing is that the delivery was complete.

This time I thought - hoped - the delivery truck had brought the stuff I needed for the back forty: the years I might have to spend in a No Writing Zone. To the cellar door they had come, and they had knocked politely, and when after several months there was still no answer, they had finally fetched a battering ram. HEY BUDDY, HOPE THE NOISE DIDN'T SCARE YOU TOO BAD, SORRY ABOUT THE DOOR! HEY BUDDY, HOPE THE NOISE DIDN'T SCARE YOU TOO BAD, SORRY ABOUT THE DOOR!

I didn't care about the door; I cared about the furniture. Any pieces broken or missing? I didn't think so. I thought all I had to do was get it upstairs, pull off the furniture pads, and put it where it belonged.

On my way back home, I pa.s.sed The Shade, Derry's charming little revival movie house, which has prospered in spite of (or perhaps because of) the video revolution. This month they were showing cla.s.sic SF from the fifties, but April was dedicated to Humphrey Bogart, Jo's all-time favorite. I stood under the marquee for several moments, studying one of the Coming Attractions posters. Then I went home, picked a travel agent pretty much at random from the phone book, and told the guy I wanted to go to Key Largo. Key West, you mean, the guy said. No, I told him, I mean Key Largo, just like in the movie with Bogie and Bacall. Three weeks. Then I rethought that. I was wealthy, I was on my own, and I was retired. What was this 'three weeks' s.h.i.t? Make it six, I said. Find me a cottage or something. Going to be expensive, he said. I told him I didn't care. When I came back to Derry, it would be spring. In the meantime, I had some furniture to unwrap.

I was enchanted with Key Largo for the first month and bored out of my mind for the last two weeks. I stayed, though, because boredom is good. People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done. I ate about a billion shrimp, drank about a thousand margaritas, and read twenty-three John D. MacDonald novels by actual count. I burned, peeled, and finally tanned. I bought a long-billed cap with PARROTHEAD printed on it in bright green thread. I walked the same stretch of beach until I knew everybody by first name. And I unwrapped furniture. A lot of it I didn't like, but there was no doubt that it all fit the house.

I thought about Jo and our life together. I thought about saying to her that no one was ever going to confuse Being Two Being Two with with Look Homeward, Angel Look Homeward, Angel. 'You aren't going to pull a lot of frustrated-artist c.r.a.p on me, are you, Noonan?' 'You aren't going to pull a lot of frustrated-artist c.r.a.p on me, are you, Noonan?' she had replied . . . and during my time on Key Largo, those words kept coming back, always in Jo's voice: c.r.a.p, frustrated-artist c.r.a.p, all that f.u.c.king schoolboy frustrated-artist c.r.a.p. she had replied . . . and during my time on Key Largo, those words kept coming back, always in Jo's voice: c.r.a.p, frustrated-artist c.r.a.p, all that f.u.c.king schoolboy frustrated-artist c.r.a.p.

I thought about her long red woods ap.r.o.n, coming to me with a hatful of black trumpet mushrooms, laughing and triumphant: 'n.o.body on the TR eats better than the Noonans tonight!' 'n.o.body on the TR eats better than the Noonans tonight!' she'd cried. I thought of her painting her toenails, bent over between her own thighs in the way only women doing that particular piece of business can manage. I thought of her throwing a book at me because I laughed at some new haircut. I thought of her trying to learn how to play a breakdown on her banjo and of how she looked braless in a thin sweater. I thought of her crying and laughing and angry. I thought of her telling me it was c.r.a.p, all that frustrated-artist c.r.a.p. she'd cried. I thought of her painting her toenails, bent over between her own thighs in the way only women doing that particular piece of business can manage. I thought of her throwing a book at me because I laughed at some new haircut. I thought of her trying to learn how to play a breakdown on her banjo and of how she looked braless in a thin sweater. I thought of her crying and laughing and angry. I thought of her telling me it was c.r.a.p, all that frustrated-artist c.r.a.p.

And I thought about the dreams, especially the culminating dream. I could do that easily, because it never faded as the more ordinary ones do. The final Sara Laughs dream and my very first wet dream (coming upon a girl lying naked in a hammock and eating a plum) are the only two that remain perfectly clear to me, year after year; the rest are either hazy fragments or completely forgotten.

There were a great many clear details to the Sara dreams - the loons, the crickets, the evening star and my wish upon it, just to name a few - but I thought most of those things were just verisimilitude. Scene-setting, if you will. As such, they could be dismissed from my considerations. That left three major elements, three large pieces of furniture to be unwrapped.