“Are you alone in the gym?”
“At first. It’s very still and peaceful. I think somebody wants me to do something, but I don’t know what.”
“Does not knowing worry you?”
“I’m not worried at first. And then she appears.”
The saw whined and shut off. Its silent aftermath added drama to my question: “Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” he was quick to say. He held his breath for a moment and added, “Just the sight of her scares me.”
“What does she look like?”
“Sometimes she’s blonde. Kind of, you know, sandy blonde hair like my wife. But she’s not my wife. Sometimes she has black hair, but it’s the same shape. You know, the same hairdo.”
“Long hair?”
“No. More like a helmet. She’s wearing a dress, a long print dress, but it has no top.”
“So it’s a skirt?”
“No. It isn’t. I don’t know how to explain, but it’s a dress with the top off.”
“So she’s bare-breasted?”
“Yeah.”
“What do they look like?”
“They’re huge. I mean, you know, like Playboy centerfold breasts, only they’re not pretty. The nipples are big and hard and very brown, sticking out at me.”
I wrote down — nipples/penises. Gene noticed and frowned. Anyway, it was silly to take notes. I opened my drawer and put the yellow pad inside.
“Does it excite you?”
“No.” The no was said defensively, fast and too loud. I said nothing.
Gene glanced at me, brushed his bang, although it hadn’t fallen back across his face. He took a breath and said, “She walks toward me and opens her mouth wide.” He stared at nothing. The skin under his eyes was darkened by fatigue; and the eyes were bloodshot.
“Un huh. And does she say something?”
“I think she’s going to.”
“What do you think she’s going to say?”
“What?”
“What do you think she’s going to say?”
“She never says anything.”
“I know.”
“You do? How?”
“You would have said already. What do you think she’s going to say?”
“Something nice. I don’t know what.”
“Something about her breasts?”
“Her breasts are gone now.”
“Gone? Or she’s clothed?”
“No. I don’t notice them. She spits at me.” Gene looked down at his lap. He fit the fingers of both hands together and twisted. “She doesn’t say anything. I’m sure she’s going to be nice, but she spits at me.”
“What happens to the spit?”
Gene looked up. He cracked his knuckles so hard that the noise made me queasy. “What?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well, I don’t know. I guess — No!” Gene sat up, fingers separating, eyes up toward the ceiling. “I scream—‘Go away!’” Gene blinked fast and said in a rush, “I don’t wake up. I thought I woke up when I yell, ‘Go away,’ but actually the room disappears before the spit hits me. That’s what happens. I couldn’t remember why I didn’t think the dream wakes me up. It’s the second part that wakes me up. They’re connected.”
“I see. What’s the second part?”
A pause. Gene interlocked his fingers again. I hoped he wouldn’t crack them. “I’m at my terminal,” he said finally, as if he were making a judgment.
“Your terminal?”
“Yeah, before the spit lands I’m at my terminal, going over the board design for the, well it should be Black Dragon, but it’s not. I’m still working on Flash II. Black Dragon is the—”
“Don’t explain now,” I cut him off sharply. “You’re at a terminal …?”
“Yeah. Mine.”
“And …?” I was urgent.
He answered quickly, “The specs don’t make any sense to me. They should. They’re simple stuff. Just the memory chip locations and — well, it doesn’t matter. I should be able to understand them, but I don’t. And then I realize all I have to do is hit Escape — That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“Well, I use a mouse — you know, I mean, in reality. I don’t hit keys when I’m touring the machine.”
“Un huh. But in the dream you think about hitting Escape …”
“Escape. Pretty obvious, huh?”
“Maybe. Go on.”
“Okay, so I realize if I hit Escape, the screen will clear and I’ll understand everything, I’ll understand the whole machine, in one clear image, you know, I’ll have it all and we’ll be golden.”
“Do you hit Escape?”
“Yeah,” he said sadly.
“What happens?”
“The garbage freezes on screen, the whole machine freezes. So I go crazy. Do something you’re not supposed to. I make a terrible mistake.” He stopped, panting breathlessly.
I waited. Gene rubbed his chin, then frowned. “What do you do?” I prompted.
“I turn it off. That would erase all the garbage — but it would also erase the answer.”
“And then you wake up?”
“No. Not yet. I turn it off, but it doesn’t go off. The screen clears, though.”
“And that’s what you wanted.”
“Yeah—”
“You made a terrible mistake and got what you wanted.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. A message comes up, like one of Skip’s practical jokes.”
“Who’s Skip?”
“One of the hackers at Flash. He liked to play practical jokes. Bug your program so you think it’s malfunctioning and, just when you think you’ve got it licked, he’d have a message come up in Calligraphy letters. Very elegant and obscene.”
“What’s the message in the dream?”
He said the words slowly, with portent and doom in his voice: “You are a son of a bitch.” Gene nodded and spoke to himself, “They’re connected. Not different dreams but the same.”
“After you see the message, you wake up?”
Gene nodded. “They’re connected,” he said in a mumble. “I wonder how many times I’ve had this dream.”
“Me too,” I said.
Gene smiled. “Aren’t you supposed to know?”
Again the hostility at my all-knowingness. I had failed him — that was the message. But he couldn’t say it straight out and the judgment was uncertain or else why had he returned to see me? Unless he had come for a refund. “No,” I said. “You know everything. There’s only one expert on Gene Kenny and you’re it.”
“Then I’m in deep shit.” Gene sat forward, lowered his head and rubbed his cheeks, pulling the skin down so I saw more of his red, exhausted eyes.
“Are you under a lot of pressure now?”
“Yeah, that’s why I took the job.”
“You took the job to be under pressure?”
“No, no.” He was impatient. “That’s stupid,” he said. He looked up abruptly, shocked at himself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t mean you’re stupid. That’s one of my problems. I keep snapping at people. Saying things I mean.” He snorted. “I mean, saying things I don’t mean.” He banged the side of his head with his right palm. “I’ve gotta get some sleep.” Now he looked at me, imploringly, a child asking for desert. “My wife thinks I should get some sleeping pills.”
“Let’s go through a typical day, Gene. Let’s go through your schedule.” I had to coax him into taking this inventory seriously. He repeatedly tried to summarize. His summaries, when we tracked each hour carefully, turned out to be wrong. He felt he was selfishly wasting time. In fact, Gene was busy at work (I couldn’t judge then how productively) and always doing things for other people. His wife complained so often and repeatedly of how early their son, Peter, woke up that Gene took it upon himself to rise with him, usually about six A.M. Gene made breakfast for Peter, dressed him for school, packed his school bag, made his bed (although there was a cleaning woman who came two times a week), and brought a cup of coffee to his wife before leaving for his office at seven-thirty. There he worked without a break — often without lunch — until at least six in the evening. During crunch time he would work until midnight. That period would be coming up in a year or so on the new machine — Black Dragon was its in-house nickname. On Flash II, working right through until dawn was common. When he came home, he summarized that he did nothing but sit around like a zombie. Zombie was his word. In fact, he cleaned up the dinner dishes, gave Peter a bath and played a game with him, read him bedtime stories, and then returned to studying specs or other matters related to work.