His first day in the store, he came to me, ebullient and overpowering and supremely positive. He asked my opinion, he discussed business and geography and entertainment, he offered me cigarettes, he thumped my shoulder. “We’ll get along, Ronald!” he told me. “Just keep moving those shirts!”
“Yes, Mr. Miller.”
“And let me have an inventory list, by style and size, tomorrow morning.”
“Sir?”
“Any time before noon,” he said carelessly, and laughed, and thumped my shoulder. “We’ll have a great team here, Ronald, a first-rate team!”
Two nights later I dreamed for the first time of Delia.
I went to bed as usual at eleven-forty, after the news on Channel 6. I switched out the light, went to sleep, and in utter simplicity and clarity the dream began. In it, I was driving my automobile on Western Avenue, out from the center of town. It was all thoroughly realistic, the day, the traffic, the used car lots along Western Avenue all gleaming in the spring sun. My six-year-old car was pulling just a little to the right, exactly as it does in real life. I knew I was dreaming, but at the same time it was very pleasant to be in my car on Western Avenue on such a lovely spring day.
A scream startled me, and my foot trod reflexively on the brake pedal. Nearby, on the sidewalk, a man and girl were struggling together. He was trying to wrest a package from her but she was resisting, clutching the package tight with both arms around it, and again screaming. The package was wrapped in brown paper and was about the size and shape of a suit carton from Willis & DeKalb.
I want to emphasize that everything was very realistic, down to the finest detail. There were none of the abrupt shifts in time or space or viewpoint normally associated with dreams, no impossibilities or absurdities.
There was no one else on the pavement nearby, and I acted almost without thinking. Braking the car at the curb, I leaped out, ran around the car, and began to grapple with the girl’s attacker He was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a black leather jacket and he needed a shave. His breath was bad.
“Leave her alone!” I shouted, while the girl continued to scream.
The mugger had to give up his grip on the package in order to deal with me. He pushed me away, and I staggered ineffectively backward just as I would do in real life, while the girl kicked him repeatedly in the shins. As soon as I regained my balance I rushed forward again, and now he decided he’d had enough. He turned tail and ran, down Western Avenue and through a used car lot and so out of sight.
The girl, breathing hard, still clutching the package to her breast, turned to smile gratefully upon me and say, “How can I ever thank you?”
What a beautiful girl! The most beautiful girl I have ever seen, before or since. Auburn hair and lovely features, deep dear hazel eyes, slender wrists with every delicate birdlike bone outlined beneath the tender skin. She wore a blue and white spring dress, and casual white shoes. Silver teardrops graced her graceful ears.
She gazed at me with her melting, warm, companionable eyes, and she smiled at me with lips that murmured to be kissed, and she said to me, “How can I ever thank you?” in a voice as dulcet as honey.
And there the dream ended, in extreme close-up on my Delia’s face.
I awoke the next morning in a state of euphoria. The dream was still vivid in my mind in every detail, and most particularly did I remember the look of her sweet face at the end. That face stayed with me throughout the day, a day which otherwise might have been only bitter, as it was on that day Mr. Miller gave the two-week notice to my friend and co-worker Gregory Shostrill of the stockroom. I shared, of course, the employees’ general indignation that such an old and loyal worker had been so summarily dismissed, but for me the outrage was tempered by the continuing memory of last night’s wonderful dream.
I never anticipated for a second that I would ever see my dream-girl again, but that night she returned to me, and my astonishment was only matched by my delight. I went to bed at my usual hour, went to sleep, and the dream began. It started precisely where, the night before, it had ended, with the beautiful girl saying to me, “How can I ever thank you?”
I now functioned at two levels of awareness. The first, in which I knew myself to be dreaming, was flabbergasted to find the dream picking up as though no day had elapsed, no break at all had taken place in the unfolding of this story. The second level, in which I was an active participant in the dream rather than its observer, treated this resumption of events as natural and inevitable and obvious, and reacted without delay.
It was this second level which replied, “Anyone would have done what I did,” and then added, “May I drive you wherever you’re going?”
Now here, I grant, the dream had begun to be somewhat less than realistic. That I should talk with this lovely creature so effortlessly, without stammering, without blushing, with no worms of terror acrawl within my skull, was not entirely as the same scene would have been played in real life. In this situation in reality, I might have attacked the mugger as I’d done in the dream, but upon being left alone with the girl afterward I would surely have been reduced to strained smiles and strangled silences.
But not in the dream. In the dream I was gallant and effortless, as I offered to drive her wherever she was going.
“If it wouldn’t be putting you out of your way—”
“Not in the least,” I assured her. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” she said. “Summit Street. Do you know it?”
“Of course. It’s right on my way.”
Which wasn’t at all true. Summit Street, tucked away in the Oak Hills section, a rather well-to-do residential neighborhood, was a side street off a side street. There’s never any reason to drive on Summit Street unless Summit Street is your destination; it leads nowhere and comes from nowhere.
Nevertheless I said it was on my way — and she accepted, pleasantly. Holding the car door for her, I noticed my car was unusually clean and I was glad I’d finally gotten round to having it washed. New seat covers, too. Very nice-looking; I couldn’t remember having bought them but I was pleased I had.
Once we were driving together along Western Avenue I introduced myself: “My name’s Ronald. Ronald Grady.”
“Delia,” she told me, smiling again. “Delia Wright.”
“Hello, Delia Wright.”
Her smile broadened. “Hello, Ronald Grady.” She reached out and, for just a second, touched her fingers to my right wrist.
After that, the dream continued in the most naturalistic manner, the two of us chatting about one thing and another, the high schools we’d attended and how odd it was we’d never met before. When we reached Summit Street, she pointed out her house and I stopped at the curb. She said, “Won’t you come in for a cup of coffee? I’d like you to meet my mother.”
“I really can’t now,” I told her, smiling regretfully. “But if you’re doing nothing tonight, could I take you to dinner and a movie?”
“I’d like that,” she said.
“So would I.”
Our eyes met, and the moment seemed to deepen — and there the dream stopped.
I awoke next morning with a pleasant warm sensation on my right wrist, and I knew it was because Delia had touched me there. I ate a heartier breakfast than usual, startled my mother — I have continued to live at home with my mother and older sister, seeing no point in the additional expense of a place of my own — startled my mother, I say, by singing rather loudly as I dressed, and went off to work in as sunny a mood as could be imagined.