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past five, thanks to this arrangement. I just want to know what's going
through your mind, that's all."
She seemed to find it hard to put into words. "I I dunno. It's been growing on
me, maybe for months. It's some vague sense of
pattern
. Hell, that's not the right way to put it, so maybe I am going nuts. I've
just had this vague but building feeling that something's wrong, something's
building up, something's gonna happen. That the more together we are here, the
more together we'll be after whatever happens hap-pens. Oh, that sounds
crazier than ever! Maybe maybe it was that trip to Sterling's
early-twentieth-century Carmel col-ony. I'd been in lots of groups like that
in my own life and growing up, but never seen them outside, kind of objective,
like a detached observer. I lived 'em, didn't visit 'em. They were all so so
self-confident, self-assured, full of them-selves! So absolutely right in
everything, from literature to the arts to politics. And I started to feel
sorry for them! They all seemed so so lonely, somehow, like that, that colony,
those people, were the only family they really had. Almost a tyranny of free
thinking, if that makes any sense. You were only one of them, one of the
advanced, the superior minds, if you thought just like they did."
I didn't know what to say, or whether I should say any-thing at all. I didn't
understand what was coming through, but I understood that somebody I
thought I knew inside and out wasn't at all who I thought she was, and that
the real one was emerging. Somebody not nearly as tough, as self-assured, and
a lot lonelier than I would have suspected.
"Well, let's both sleep on it, then we'll see," I told her as gently as I
could.
"If you still feel that way when we both aren't dead to the world and sweating
off an adventure, we'll do it."
She squeezed my hand but said nothing.
Riki took a mild sedative, but I found that all I needed was a couple of
Advil. By now all the pumped-up excitement of the night before and all the
mystery of today had faded into the aches and pains of my sports car
suspension on that dirt road. This time I went out like a light.
I didn't normally dream, as a rule. Oh, I know that's im-possible, that what
I should say was that I almost never remembered my dreams, but I'd once had a
kind of in-between anesthetic for some serious dental work that didn't really
knock you out but made you forget the whole experience, and it was good
enough. If I didn't remember dreaming, then whether I did or not was
semantics.
This time, however, very slowly, I did dream, in a kind of weird and unearthly
way. I mean, I knew it was a dream, knew that I was out cold there in the
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infirmary bed, and so I kind of watched the dream as if, like
Riki in the Carmel Sim, I were not a participant but an observer even though I
was both.
A wedding
. Well, yes, that would make sense, considering the conversation. Everything
surrealistic, some of it slow mo-tion, some of it as real as if I were
experiencing it, all rolled up into one.
Church wedding
. Hmmm ... Not what I figured. Generic church; nice little
neighborhood one, with a stone exterior, interior kind of early Holiday Inn
decor, chapel nice with wood grain, exposed beams, and very pretty stained
glass revealed as the doors were opened. The congregation stood, and sort of
half turned to look as I came down the aisle on some-body's arm.
They were all there in the pews, not quite as I remembered them, but close
enough to recognize with just a little effort. Rob Garnett and Lee Henreid in
matching paisley dresses, Al Stark totally in black, Dan Tanaka, Les Cohn,
Rita Alvarez, Alice McKee, and many other faces vaguely seen here and there or
even from that first contact meeting at the mansion. Not quite them, as I
said, but close, in a dream kind of way.
I suddenly realized that I wasn't quite me, either. As the organ hit the
familiar tune, I became acutely aware that I wasn't the groom at all; I was
the bride! And I was all in white...
I turned and looked at who had hold of my arm and felt a twinge of complete
disorientation and panic. It was Walt Slidecker, and he was in a tuxedo,
Reeboks, and wearing a Mariners baseball cap.
We got down to the front without Walt saying a word, and then the organ rose
again and everybody turned and in came Riki, the same as ever only more so,
dressed in just as elab-orate a wedding dress and looking, well, twenty years
young-er and even fuller of figure.
Somehow, Walt Slidecker had made his way back to her and was escorting her
down the aisle now, but this time he was wearing cleated boots and a
Seahawks helmet.
When Riki reached me, we looked briefly into each others' eyes, then turned
and faced the preacher as Walt moved away.
The preacher, in full robes and vestments, was Cynthia Matalon.
"Hi, y'all!"
the brassy woman greeted us, but I had the idea she was speaking almost
entirely to me.
"Y'all don't r'membah this soaht o'thing, do ya? Well, don't you worrah yoah
l'il ol' head one minute about it. The impoahtant thing is that you done seen
all the folks heah befoah, ain't ya?
You'll nevah git all yoah ol' mem'ries back, but every little ol' bit helps.
You'n me, we was a team once, like you and herh ahre now. Guess one time or
'nothah most all of us been. Mah mem'ries don't go back fahr
'nufffoah that kinda shit to get togethah in my head myself."
"You're only in my dream this time, Matalon, or whatever your name is,"
I
responded, my voice sounding very odd in my ears.
"Why can't you just leave us be?"
The big woman laughed.
"Leave you be? Don't be absuhd
, dahlin'! And this heah's both a dream and a mem'ry o' soahts, the way most
dreams really ahre. Couldn't leave neithah o' you be if I wanted. That's not
the way it wohks, y'see. So long as deah Al's got the powah up, I can walk
into yoah dreams and whatevah. Wehren't that the neatest l'il ol' chase we had
yestahday, dahlin'? Lots o' fun. Too bad you didn't come down. If y'had,
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you'd know what all this is about now. But, no, y'went scahmprin' back to deah
ol' Al. Get outta theah, doll! Things ahre gonna stahrt poppin' any time now!
Get on out or learn to shoot straight! Bye, now!"
The dream didn't end with that exchange, but any sense of direct interaction
did. It did not, however, go on long enough for me to find out if my
subconscious really enjoyed this kind of a relationship.
It wasn't the only dream, either, but the rest were flashes, moments, almost
tableaus, and most of them made no sense at all. Finally one of them took
place in an old, dark house or some kind of enclosure, not as a true scene
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