I dreamt that we were driving on a highway in Massachusetts, and there was an accident.  We ended up abandoning our car and somehow commandeering an empty yellow cab, which we drove all the way home, several hours to the south.  Then, we were getting ready to go to my sister-in-law Maude Kent’s in Philadelphia, and realized we couldn’t take the cab.  What were we going to do with it?  I thought of driving the cab to a street I remembered from childhood near the Garden State Parkway in East Orange, N.J., and ditching it, but that could backfire, and we wouldn’t have a car.  I also thought about our abandoned car in Massachusetts and figured no one would trace it to us.  How would I join up with Louisa and the kids in Philadelphia?  Maybe instead of commandeering the cab, we should have stayed with our car and arranged for it to be fixed.  Sure, it would have set us back a few hours, but we wouldn’t have all these problems now.

*

I dreamt that I was walking with a friend on the sidewalk and we passed a driveway, bordered with pillars, that led to a shady estate.  The place was very similar to the corner of Ralston Ave. and Grove Rd. in South Orange, N.J., near my friend Mark Woldin’s childhood house, except there wasn’t a driveway there; the driveway for the old Board of Education building was closer to South Orange Ave.  As we crossed the gravel driveway, I perceived someone in the shade, a man.  He pointed a handgun at me and looked like he was about to fire.  Terrified, I turned and tried to run around the corner.  Two shots rang out.  I felt both hit me, in the right shoulder.  I went down.  I lay flat on my back.  It felt very natural.  I didn’t feel any pain.  My friend ran away around the corner.  I suddenly worried the gunman would walk up and shoot me in the head execution-style.  I thought about trying to get up and run away.  But my body quickly communicated that that was unthinkable.  I had been flattened by the wounds.  I just had to lie there and hope for the best.

*

I dreamt that after a college class broke up, I wandered through underground hallways in a dorm.  I had to go to the bathroom.  I entered the room of a woman student, who said I could use her bathroom.  Sadly, the bathroom door wouldn’t completely close, partly because of a laundry basket. When I came out, her boyfriend was there, sitting on the floor.  He was older than us, with gray hair.  I noticed a leather pouch near him, which I understood contained some marijuana.  There was something sensuous about the pouch.  Was it doe leather?  Suede leather?  There might have been a lighter lying next to it, creating a kind of still life on the bland carpet.  The young woman got up off her bed, stood there for a moment in her bright, flowing clothes, and then headed off to class.  I sat down to get high with the guy.  We talked.  He said his synagogue was half an hour away (from either Harvard or Brown, it wasn’t clear which campus we were on).  Was he from Rhode Island? I asked.  No, he was from “Stafford Fuckwad,” which I instantly understood to be Stafford Springs, Conn., where my father was jailed overnight as a law student in the late 1930s.  I was going to mention that, but I don’t think I did.  He seemed to hear it telepathically.  We talked about how the cops in Connecticut were unbelievably bad.  I said that they should be prosecuted under the RICO statute.  "The whole Justice Department should be considered a Racketeer, Racketeer, Racketeer Influenced Cuh Cuh," I stuttered.  I couldn't get the right phrase out: Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization.