Lee looked at the flickering images in front of him. Planes in the air. Bursts of anti aircraft fire. Then—he had been there that day!—all the new DH 4s with Liberty engines coming out of their hangar.

The next image was of Leland. There was his face, in close-up, six feet tall of pure silver nitrate. He showed off the band of bullets, and then put his hands on the Marlin as if firing it. Then he was gone.

“Hey,” Leland said. He looked around the room—he was the only one paying attention. He pointed at the screen. “That was …” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. That was me. That was my dream. My dream just happened.

He wanted to see himself again; he stayed through the newsreel and the travelogue and the beginning of the two-reel comedy, trying to recall how he had looked onscreen. He felt a fading disappointment that he couldn’t dissect. He wasn’t sure if it was seeing himself that was so sad, or if it was that he’d had such a small dream all his life. Who could he tell he’d fulfilled it? He yawned.

The comedy was a Mack Sennett, On His Wedding Day. A bride and groom were racing from room to room. A great deal of tripping was involved. There was a bad splice after the first minute, and then there were men in striped shirts and domino masks skulking outside a hotel room.

Leland reasoned that the thieves were after the bride’s engagement ring, or perhaps her dowry, but between them and their goals were banana peels, workmen who carried ladders on their shoulders and who turned 180 degrees to answer questions from cops who were suspicious of the groom for reasons likely to have been explained in the missing few minutes. Nonetheless, he could fill in possible causes himself: a twin brother; an innocent action, misconstrued; a jealous rival; whatever was necessary.

He began to doze, and the action of the movie started to fuse with his dreams, which seemed to involve large, soft pillows filled with cash, and then he was jolted awake by laughter. Onscreen, the groom had dressed his dog as a ghost. Since he had previously tucked a soup bone in the thieves’ satchel, they were now being pursued from room to room by a romping four-footed sheet with eyeholes and holes for his witch-hat ears.

“Hey,” Lee said. Then “Hey”—this time to a private in front of him—“what kind of dog is that?”

“I’m sleepy.”