Time Travel

I am at a big convention with lots of people around. I am struggling to get to where I'm supposed to be. I know I have a room somewhere, but I don't know where, and all the room doors are outside the building, like a motel. It's dark, it's pouring down rain, and I am carrying a large load that is very heavy. I walk to the end of the block and don't see my door, so I shout at the top of my lungs. I turn back and realize that I have a bari sax in its case, and a tenor out of it's case about to have its pads ruined because it's unprotected in the rain. As I approach the brick stairs to the promenade my sister Brooke stands up from above me, and I realize that she has been the one yelling, not me. I find her and set the saxes down. We head up the stairs together, and that's when I run into Megan B. (now W) from high school. She looks exactly like she did back then, with braces and blondish hair. I look over at Brooke, anxious to see how the former friends would get along since Megan hadn't seen Brooke since she was as meek as a farm mouse and mentally checked out to God Camp 24/7. They both say, "Hey!" and hug and air kiss, but that's all. The reunion just peters out because Megan cups her little hands around a little bump on her belly and says, in vintage Megan style, "I made somethin', y'all!!!" I realize that she's been pregnant before, and now that she's outside in the downpour, pregnant, that something might be amiss, and I need to take care of her. I look down and all the people who had been milling around have disappeared, and the downpour has become a torrent. I notice a big, brown, expensive-looking bari case on the sidewalk with a brushed-brass tenor sax propped against it. The color of the tenor is darker than usual, and I long to play it, and feel the craving for it physically. I think that because of the color it will have a darker, warmer, plumper sound. Then I realize it's my tenor and I'm the jackass that left it sitting in the pouring rain. Then I hurry Megan away with me. Brooke has gone.

There is a scene in a rainy parking lot at night that is chaotic. It's as if a concert at an arena has just let out, and we're ass-deep in a sea of humans. There is much fumbling with keys, and slickers, and people all around me are trying not to step in puddles - but the whole ground is a puddle. Yet, when they do step in it, they stomp their feet against the pavement, and water jets up and makes big wet splotches on their chinos and dress shirts, and I wonder why they're pissed because they did it intentionally. I understand that there is a group of us together, and we're trying to divide people between cars to get somewhere important. I try to get in the car with Brooke, but she leaves without even looking at me, lost in a conversation with other people. I get in a car with Megan and her husband, and they make me drive. I'm pulling around in circular parking lots looking for her room. She's talking about something very positive in her life, and about how things just keep working out for her. I finally find it, and some person escorts us to the door and gives us a key. "Now, since you're pregnant," the doorperson says, "you get a whole apartment, instead of a room, that is guarded by wolves." Megans mouth opens and she turns to look at me excitedly, as if to confirm her theory that good things keep happening. But I look down and there is a rabid-looking wolf at my feet, who seems to think I'm the only person around. He is jumping and snipping and a couple of times he locks down on my thigh, but it feels like he has no teeth. I see that his "yard" is a little wooden fence built in the foyer to the apartment that is no more than three feet high. The gate pushes open and has no latch. I wonder how the hell that's supposed to work. Then we're in the apartment and Megan's on the couch, squirming in excitement and looking back and forth. "Do you see what I mean? Getting an apartment like this when everybody else just gets a room?" I start looking around like her husband is doing. "Oh, this place has everything," she says, as I open a tall armoire. It is lined with shelves, and those shelves are lined with samples of sex lotions and oils. There are trinkets and outfits hanging all around like a store. I start fiddling through the sex lotions and realize most of them have been used. "I put on these outfits before I go to the clubs," she informs me, pointing to the designer underwear and accessories. I am trying to look more closely at a bottle with a purple, glittery gel inside when I realize that the armoire is rocking forward and back and is about to fall on me. I try to hold it steady, but also to keep browsing the lotions. But it's impossible, and the tiny bottles keep falling over. I begin to get irritated because it's very important that I keep them all lined up in a straight line with their labels facing out, but the armoire rocking around on its legs is not making it easy.

Then Megan is standing and the walls have disappeared and it's daylight. "We're gonna miss it!" she screams, and I turn to see what she's pointing at. It appears that I was supposed to have acquired a monster truck with bales of hay in the back so that I could drive through a sphere of light, inside which a laser beam would strike my truck and transport us back in time. Other monster trucks with bales of hay in the back are doing so, and Megan is looking at me like, "And just why the hell aren't we?" I realize, with a crashing sense of horror, that I was supposed to be taking care of her and ushering her back in time, but I'd become enamored by sex lotions and buggered the whole thing up. I am running in the general direction of the laser, and I hear a committee that has been appointed to observe the time-traveling. One person says, "I'm here adjudicating every year." Another says, "That one had nice form." Then, I realize, our window of time has almost elapsed. "Come on!" I yell to Megan, and jump in a monster truck that I must've had all along. I careen down the hillside, bouncing and bumping, toward the dirt road between the two trees where the laser will send us back in time.

And then Jeff kisses me goodbye and I'm awake.