“I understand. Maybe you should lie down.” I helped her to bed. She was not right. I could see that she was not right.

I really wanted my car now. I knew there was something wrong with Eigen and that if I could only get her away from Sill she would become herself again. And then I thought that maybe I was all wrong. Anyone else seeing her might have thought that she was simply relaxed and happy. It was all so confusing.

“Have you talked with Gloria at all?” I asked.

“Who is Gloria?”

“We had lunch with her in Corsica. She’s tall. She did have big hair, but not now. Now it’s pulled back.”

“Where is fat face?” she asked.

I was happy to have a glimpse of my friend, but it was terribly brief as she was now asleep. Her head fell back and her mouth opened. She snored. It was the way a person sleeps, nothing extraordinary, but for some reason I found it endearing and it was then that I suspected, though I had little against which to measure it, that I had feelings for Eigen.

5

I left my friend to sleep and returned to my room. I showered and put on clean clothes. I bathed Trigo as well. He always loved that kind of attention. He especially enjoyed lying on his back and soaking. I was letting him do that while I sat beside the tub. I felt the weight of the drive and the morning settle on me and my eyes felt weak, heavy.

“You know,” Trigo said, his doggie chin resting on the side of the tub. “Hegel had it turned around. One doesn’t start with a thesis. One starts with the antithesis. Everyone always underestimates negation.”

“Why are you talking about Hegel?” I asked.

“Kant you see?” he said.

“It’s too early in the dream for this, Trigo.” I ate from a bowl of ridged potato chips, offered one to my friend. He declined. “What do you think of Sill?” I asked.

“Who?”

“John Sill. The reason we’re here.”

“Here, now that’s a concept.”

“Stop, Trigo. I think something is wrong with Eigen.”

“Which one is she?”

“The one who calls you fat face.”

“Oh, I like her. I don’t like being called fat face, but I like her. And she’s fucked. Gone. Not right. What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You know what I want to know?” Trigo asked.

“What’s that?”

“Why do people hate melodrama?”

“What?”

“Is it because they see it as primitive, as not using our sophisticated processes of aesthetic sublimation to manage our fears, needs, and desires, because it works by implementing Manichaeistic strategy? Must our default always be a surrender to our belief in individual psychological complexity?”

“Why do I bother talking to you?”

“It’s your dream, human.”

“Do you think I need to get her out of here?”

“Are you asking if you should carry out a daring, intrepid, heroic escape? A risk-filled, dangerous, perilous chase where there are unknowns at every turn and straightaway? A shameless, nerve-rattling, out-of-control slide down some treacherous, trigger-taxed, time-sensitive tunnel?”