Dream Me(28)

I love the honky tonk atmosphere of the two-lane highway that runs alongside the beach in Sugar Dunes. Traffic slows to a crawl during the summer months, everyone trying to get their fill of everything the glittering gulf has to offer. The craziest miniature golf courses you’ve ever seen. Water parks, sea life aquariums, huge beachwear markets, and southern style fast food. All of it is endlessly fascinating to me but so ordinary for Mai. But she’s always up for checking out places she’s probably been to a thousand times before.

Comments:

Sweetness: but is this still the dream or was perry really there? i feel for him too so i’m glad he didn’t know zat was hiding although maybe zat shouldn’t have been spying on your argument with perry.

Babe: It’s in my dream so I have no control over what happens, and Zat exists in my dreams so it’s not exactly like he can leave if I’m the one who’s creating him.

Sandman: Hey y’all. How r u doing Sweetness and Babe? Ever make it to the beach on the weekends? Maybe we can all meet up or something

Babe: Ya, maybe. Sometime. I’m busy a lot on the weekends with work.

These50States: Hi there. I’m a friend of RoadWarrior’s and she mentioned your blog. Could you give me some suggestions for a nice place to get great seafood? We’ll be coming down in November for the first time. We’re newly retired snowbirds from Canada. I’ll check back later.

Babe: I actually haven’t been to any fancy places but I can ask my friend and if she has any suggestions I’ll post it next time.

RoadWarrior: Did you ever get your headaches checked out, dear? I’m very worried about you. Make sure to tell the doctor about your recurring dreams too.

Babe: I’m fine. I’m good. Thanks for your concern.

DreamMe: Trust Mai.

Babe: I do. What do you mean?

DreamMe: Do you?





Zat


He was worried. Would he ever understand these people? Babe wasn’t always forthcoming about the events in her life. Not that she was trying to deceive him, but the way the human mind functioned in dreams didn’t guarantee that relevant issues would always surface. No wonder the brain had adapted over all those years to eliminate the necessity for dreaming. The idea was so intriguing that, just once, he wished he could experience a real dream, although he cherished the simple dreams he’d had of Babe.

He was learning to interpret Babe’s dreams and their larger significance. For instance, recently she dreamed of falling down a staircase and of course he was there to catch her. But why had she dreamed about this? Something was bothering her, but what? And how could he help her if she didn’t tell him?

When he asked her about it, she admitted to a disturbing event with an older man named Mr. Buell. This was something Zat would never be able to understand. That type of behavior was cause for expulsion from his community. No one would even consider it. Perhaps his peers could be indifferent to each other at times, but one would never cruelly impose his power over another.

There was so much he had to learn. Small things he couldn’t possibly have absorbed during his investigation of life in this place and this time. He had to go slowly and let Babe show him the way. He couldn’t impose his standards on her. He could only be there to help to the extent it was possible.

He wished it could be so much more.





Nine


Alonso and LeGrand were together again. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. I also wasn’t sure why LeGrand even bothered with the program, he seemed so genuinely uninterested. With his family contacts, I was pretty sure he didn’t have to worry about getting into the college of his choice. He probably had a spot reserved for him at Yale or Princeton or Duke, something that came along with a generous donation from his father to the school of LeGrand’s choice. But when I thought about it, Alonso and LeGrand were the perfect match—both equally contemptuous of the Friends Across the Bay program.

At the beginning of the second week, Alonso showed up with his ankle wrapped with a compression bandage, claiming an injury, which I seriously doubted. It seemed to suit both of them just fine. They spent a lot of time in the tennis clubhouse with me serving them cokes that LeGrand signed for on his father’s account. They didn’t exactly have deep conversations, but they seemed to be having fun.

In a strange way, those times the three of us spent together helped to create a bond. And somewhere along the way, the bond turned into an actual friendship. LeGrand asked a lot of questions about life in California, almost fixated on the subject. I told him what I knew about the real California—life and the people outside the country club gates. If he wanted to know about country club living, he had to look no further than Crystal Point. He asked me if I surfed (which I didn’t). If Californians did a lot of drugs (no more than anywhere else from what I could tell). If everyone there was a vegetarian and a hippie. He was pleased to learn I was a former vegetarian, confirming at least one of his California stereotypes. The fact that I’d lapsed after moving to Florida only reinforced it in his mind.

“If you only eat vegetables, you’ll turn into a vegetable,” he warned me.

“So what happens if I only eat animals?” I came back at him.

“You’ll be an animal,” Alonso said with downcast eyes and a wicked grin.

LeGrand laughed so hard, I had to join in. It was unusual, but gratifying, to see Alonso come out of his shell around us.