Dream, home 9:20 am
Leaving a grocery store on FM 1960, north of Houston, I cross paths with a woman. I cannot place how I should know her. She helps a man slightly older than herself who walks with a cane. She wears bleached blond hair with a lot of hairspray. Her face is large and expressive of her frustration. She dresses as a professional, perhaps in real estate. She speaks with a loud Texas accent and is accustomed to blaring her way through obstacles. She pretends to hug me, but keeps me a half an arm’s length from her. I help her to get the mumbling man into the crowded back seat of a four-door car. I notice that there is a dashboard stereo set laying unattached on the floorboards. I offer to reconnect the sound system. Under the driver’s seat there are various disconnected cables. At last I identify two leads with unique plug shapes that fit into the back of the radio. I power it up and it scans across the FM dial, pausing at each signal for a couple of seconds of dj chatter or slice of music. The woman pretends to be pleased. She offers to drive me home.
I black-out, then wake in a motel room. I sense that I am further West of the road than I need to be, so I have lost ground. I call the front desk. The clerk tells me that I have been registered for the night – it is getting dark. My clothes have been unpacked and spread across the furniture of the suite. I gather them up. In the bath room, I discover a deep jetted bath tub with water standing in it. There is a light cloud of soap scum across the top. Despite my disgust, I test the water temperature with my right finger tips. The water is cool. I walk back into the main room, wearing only my underwear. I notice that a large window opens onto the main courtyard of the motel. I close the curtains, grateful that no one was having their breakfast. I pull on my clothes, thinking that I should call my wife, since we have the room. A door opens to that courtyard and a family of five – Mother, father, three daughters – pass through on their way to the swimming pool. They speak to me as though they know me – perhaps during the lost time when I arrived at the motel. A party breaks out. The pool has grown a channel into my room. The guests have sent for me wife. She arrives, frustrated by my disappearance and the call to come and join me. Someone puts a heavy bottomed glass into her hand. She takes it, but does not drink from it. She gives me a questioning look. Outside each of the doors, a different family cooks on an open grill. One man in a towel turns little strips of chicken, using tongs. His family chases him to a little area on the far side of some bushes to the North. His towel slips for a moment – he wears not swimming trunks – but he recovers quickly.
My point of view shifts to the drivers position in a car climbing a steep hill of a university campus. Bellingham,WA has become mixed with San Leandro, CA. Now I am the wife of a man who has lost my trust. I think back on various stories he has told – they do not dovetail. He has never given a believable explanation of how he earns money.
I pull into a narrow driveway with thick bushes growing on either side. A man walks toward me from the house. His gestures are threatening. He recognizes the car, if not the driver. I think that this man came into some money when his son was killed – somehow my husband has conned him out of that money. I back out of the drive, damaging a rose-bush to my left side (Southeast). The hood of the car is white, strangely narrow and tube-shaped.
I drive down the hill, then change my mind. I will return and speak to this man and learn the whole story. When I turn, the hill has become to steep to climb. The car almost flips over backwards as I point it up the near-vertical street. I give up and back into a parking space on the right side of the road. My husband walks up. He looks suspiciously like Norman (my waking self) and he will not look me in they eye. We climb down the hill by passing through a campus building. In the stairwell, he evades my questions. I think that he is not only stealing, but having at least one affair. The blond woman who checked him into the motel? The stairs have been replaced by a white fiberglass slide. He opens a bottle of green mouthwash and pours it onto the side. A thin stream of green liquid spirals out of sight.
normanlgreen 
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