RITA’S WAS THE first dream I’d ever built. She had just started working at a new law firm, liked classical music and evening jogs at the park near her house. According to her report, she had spent the entire day in the office and got into a fender bender on her way home. At home, she watched the news and fell asleep on the couch. That was it. I jotted down a few ideas on the page and came up with a pretty strange dream. I had her jogging in the hallway of her office; then a car crashed into the wall and a news anchor stepped out of it. Bruno said it was one of the lamest dreams he ever saw. That the whole bit with the car crashing into the wall was preposterous even for a dream. I asked him if he was going to scrap it for a new dream, but he sighed, switched on the washing machine, and said, “Fat chance.” A week later he used the same dream again.

I continued to build dreams even though I wasn’t good at it. For every dream I got a thirty-shekel bonus, and Bruno was just happy he could go home an hour early. He asked me why I insisted on working so hard, and I told him that I needed the money to buy my Debby a house. That it was Debby’s dream, that ever since she was a little girl, all she wanted was a place where she could scribble on the walls without looking over her shoulder. Bruno said she must be something special if I was willing to work so hard for her, and I told him he had no idea. It was around that time that Debby started interning for some interior designer, said he was a true artist and that she was learning a lot from him. I was happy for her, even though it was hard, barely seeing each other. She finished work every day at seven in the evening, so I only got to see her for an hour in the morning. I didn’t bring it up, since it wasn’t easy for her either. The problem was that even with us both working, we still weren’t making ends meet. To have enough for a down payment on a mortgage, we would have to keep working like that for another decade.

I asked Bruno if there wasn’t a way to move up.

“Nightmares are a hundred shekels a pop, but don’t go there. You’re a sensitive guy, it’ll mess with your head.”