Real Estate Dreams

J is just about to leave New York, but the day before her departure, I find her sitting at my kitchen table. It is a huge, medieval ten-seater oval table, much like the ones that encourage interaction between strangers at Le Pain Quotidien. Her posture suggests lamentation, but there is a tenor in the air around her that suggests hope. She is reading a card. It is an invitation from her mother to the annual garden party of some society whose name I cannot clearly discern. On the invitation her mother’s name is written in at least two ways: her email address is nancyckurtz@yahoo.com but her name is Nancy C. Kovash. Much later in the dream, I ask J about this discrepancy, and J says that both are correct ways to refer to her mother. J says she is saying. “What do you mean, staying?” I ask, in surprise. I’m holding back the effusion of delight until my hopes have been confirmed. She says, I found a place here. Someone offered me something. It’s real cheap, compared to this place. In my head I say, “But you aren’t paying rent!” but my mouth doesn’t make a sound. I’m just so happy she’s staying.

Laura and I go to the garden party together. There are many hundreds of people walking around what seems like the lead-up to the Taj Mahal. That is, there are no marble onion domes, but there are manicured lawns surrounding deep pools. Everything is not as pretty, however; the lawns are overwatered and muddy and the pools are crudely dug with steep sides with no supports keeping the banks from sliding into the water. It seems like the right thing to do is to encircle the pools with a long, slow walk, as everyone else crowds around the massive potluck table for a chance at fruit salad and beef shreds. God only knows what’s actually be served. I walk with Laura, picking my way through the crowd. J is in front of us, but she is talking with someone else—Alexandra? Lexi? Beth?—and doesn’t give us much of her time.

Finally, I catch up with her and say, “Hey, J, where’s your new apartment?” She says it’s not so close to us. “Where?” I ask. On 117th Street, she says. “We’re neighbors!” I exclaim, full of delight. Well, 92-23 117th Street, halfway in Harlem. Not too far.

I am so happy for her because she is going to live in New York. I envision her rise to prominence, fame, riches in the city. She hints at having another invitation card, this one not from her mother, but from a big shot who has important things to tell her.

She describes the apartment to me it and it seems to have long wooden struts holding up the windows and extremely tall ceilings, and it gets lot of light but it comes in concentrated slanted shafts through the windows. The light hits the floor of the apartment in perfect rectangles. It sounds like a cloister. I start talking to Laura about getting a new place a little further north in Harlem. “We’ll get a three bedroom for $2500—no, for $2000—then rent out one of the extra rooms for $800, then pay $1200 for two of us!” Laura rolls her eyes and discounts my suggestion. J takes off ahead of us, but I keep my eye on her.

We finally circumscribe the pools and are ready to eat. Laura and I approach the potluck table. The spread is huge, constituting about a hundred individual steam trays and deep baking pans, but somewhat disgusting. I go nowhere near the entrée dishes, the pastas and meats that have mostly been picked clean anyway. I head to the fruit salads while Laura attempts to spoon some pasta onto her plate. I look over and she is laughing maniacally at her seat at a picnic table. I go over and hiss a warning to her about her looking like a fool, and she shoots me a dirty glance. “What’s so funny?” I say. She is laughing at her pasta, which has retained the shape of the Tupperware container it was poured out from, and now looks like a small, perfect hillock on her paper plate. I find this embarrassing and not funny, so I take my partitioned plastic plate over to the fruits and segregate the honeydew, cantaloupe, and strawberries on my plate by color. I come back and eat.

J comes over to us and tells us that this party isn’t as awkward as the other garden parties for this society that she has been to. She says there is usually a lot more cheek pinching, and she feels more grown-up now. I am hungry for scraps and I like to hear her speak with confidence. There’s a moment that suggests an impasse, but it passes and we all clean our plates with mechanical efficiency. Someone suggests going back for seconds, but at that moment, Boo presses his nose into my face and wakes me up from my twitching sleep. No more dreams for me.

Eh, a dull blog post, and a non-licentious dream. Next time: my X-rated dreams of Michael J. Fox's couch, circa 1986; my R-rated dreams about climbing ladders to bookshelves; my PG-13 dreams about leaving a good kisser on a bad Perugian bus; my PG dreams about coconut husks;, and my G-rated dreams about my dog turning into a trout. Beheadings, amputations, and open-mouthed kissing...stay tuned.