Yet, just as in the dream, one of the TV People is on the television screen. The same guy I passed on the stairs to the office. No mistake. The one who first opened the door to the apartment. I’m 100% sure. He stands there—against a bright, fluorescent white background, the tail end of a dream infiltrating my conscious reality—staring at me. I shut, then reopen my eyes, hoping he’ll have slipped back to never-never land. But he doesn’t disappear. Far from it. He gets bigger. His face fills the whole screen, getting closer and closer.

The next thing I know, he’s stepping through the screen. Hands gripping the frame, lifting himself up and over, one foot after the other, like climbing out of a window, leaving a white TV screen glowing behind him.

He rubs his left hand in the palm of his right, slowly acclimating himself to the world outside the television. On and on, reduced right-hand fingers rubbing reduced left-hand fingers, no hurry. He has that all-the-time-in-the-world nonchalance. Like a veteran TV-show host. Then he looks me in the face.

“We’re making an airplane,” says my TV People visitant. His voice has no perspective to it. A curious, paper-thin voice.

He speaks, and the screen is all machinery. Very professional fade-in. Just like on the news. First, there’s an opening shot of a large factory interior, then it cuts to a close-up of the work space, camera center. Two TV People are hard at work on some machine, tightening bolts with wrenches, adjusting gauges. The picture of concentration. The machine, however, is unlike anything I’ve ever seen: an upright cylinder except that it narrows toward the top, with streamlined protrusions along its surface. Looks more like some kind of gigantic orange juicer than an airplane. No wings, no seats.

“Doesn’t look like an airplane,” I say. Doesn’t sound like my voice, either. Strangely brittle, as if the nutrients had been strained out through a thick filter. Have I grown so old all of a sudden?

“That’s probably because we haven’t painted it yet,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll have it the right color. Then you’ll see it’s an airplane.”

“The color’s not the problem. It’s the shape. That’s not an airplane.”

“Well, if it’s not an airplane, what is it?” he asks me. If he doesn’t know, and I don’t know, then what is it? “So, that’s why it’s got to be the color.” The TV People rep puts it to me gently. “Paint it the right color, and it’ll be an airplane.”