While Hackett recounted the dream, sitting upright in a chair instead of lying on a couch, Krull fidgeted. This new shrink was a man about Hackett’s age, and he was dressed casually in khakis and a polo shirt with a reptile on the pocket. He was clean-shaven and had a crew cut. Loebner had looked the way a psychiatrist was supposed to look.
“Well, what do you want to do now?” Hackett asked when he’d finished. “Should I try to figure out what the dream means or do you want to suggest what the dream might mean or what?”
“Who cares?”
Hackett stared at him.
“Really,” Krull said, “do you honestly give a damn what your dream means?”
“Well, I—”
“I mean,” said Krull, “what’s the problem here? The problem’s not that you’re in love with your raincoat, the problem’s not that they potty-trained you too early, the problem’s not that you’re repressing your secret desire to watch My Little Margie reruns. The problem is you’re not getting any rest. Right?”
“Well, yes,” Hackett said. “Right.”
“You have this ditsy dream every night, huh?”
“Every night. Unless I take a sleeping pill, which I’ve done half a dozen times, but that’s even worse in the long run. I don’t really feel rested — I have a sort of hangover all day from the pill, and I find drugs a little worrisome, anyway.”
“Mmmm,” Krull said, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair. “Let’s see now. Is the dream scary? Filled with terror?”
“No.”
“Painful? Harrowing?”
“No.”
“So the only problem is exhaustion,” Krull said.
“Yes.”
“Exhaustion that’s perfectly natural, because a man who drives five hundred miles every night when he’s supposed to be resting is going to be beat to hell the next day. Does that pretty much say it?”
“Yes.”
“Sure it does. You can’t drive five hundred miles every night and feel good. But” — he leaned forward — “I’ll bet you could drive half that distance, couldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean,” said Krull, “is there’s a simple way to solve your problem.” He scribbled on a memo pad, tore off the top sheet, handed it to Hackett. “My home phone number,” he said. “When the guy calls and tells you to go to Cleveland, what I want you to do is call me.”
“Wait a minute,” Hackett said. “I’m asleep while this is happening. How the hell can I call you?”
“In the dream you call me. I’ll come over to your place, I’ll get in the car with you, and we’ll drive to Cleveland together. After you deliver the briefcase, you can just curl up in the backseat and I’ll drive back. You ought to be able to get four hours’ sleep on the way home, or close to it.”
Hackett straightened up in his chair. “Let me see if I understand this,” he said. “I get the call, and I turn around and call you, and the two of us drive to Cleveland together. I drive there, and you drive back, and I get to nap on the drive home.”
“Right.”
“You think that would work?”
“Why not?”
“It sounds crazy,” Hackett said, “but I’ll try it.”
The following morning he called Krull. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.
“It worked?”
“Like a charm. I got the call, I called you, you came over, and off we went to Cleveland together. I drove there, you drove back, I got a solid three and a half hours in the backseat, and I feel like a new man. It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of, but it worked.”
“I thought it would,” Krull said. “Just keep doing it every time you have the dream. Call me the end of the week and let me know if it’s still working.”
At the week’s end, Hackett made the phone call. “It works better than ever,” he said. “It’s gotten so I’m not dreading that phone call either, because I know we’ll have a good time on the road. The drive to Cleveland is a pleasure now that I’ve got you in the car to talk to, and the nap I get on the way home makes all the difference in the world. I can’t thank you enough.”
“That’s terrific,” Krull told him. “I wish all my patients were as easily satisfied.”
And that was that. Every night Hackett had the dream, and every night he drove to Cleveland and let the psychiatrist take the wheel on the way home. They talked about all sorts of things on the way to Cleveland — girls, baseball, Kant’s categorical imperative, and how to know when it was time to discard a disposable razor. Sometimes they talked about Hackett’s personal life, and he felt he was getting a lot of insight from their conversations. He wondered if he ought to send Krull a check for services rendered and asked Krull the following night in the dream. The dream-Krull told him not to worry about it: “After all,” he said, “you’re paying for the gas.”
Hackett’s health improved. He was able to concentrate better, and the improvement showed in his work. His love life improved as well, after having virtually ceased to exist. He felt reborn, and he was beginning to love his life.
Then he ran into Feverell.
“My God,” he said. “Mike Feverell.”
“Hello, George.”
“How’ve you been, Mike? Lord, it’s been years, hasn’t it? You look—”
“I look like hell,” Feverell said. “Don’t I?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You weren’t? I don’t know why not, because it’s the truth. I look terrible and I know it.”
“How’s your health, Mike?”
“My health? That’s what’s ridiculous. My health is fine, perfectly fine. I don’t know how much longer I can go on before I just plain drop dead, but in the meantime my health is a hundred percent.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s too stupid to talk about.”
“Oh?”
“It’s this recurring dream,” Feverell said. “I have the same dream every goddamned night, and it’s driving me nuts.”
The room seemed to fill up with light. Hackett took his friend’s arm. “Let’s get a couple of beers,” he said, “and you can tell me all about your dream.”
“It’s stupid,” Feverell said. “It’s an adolescent sex fantasy. I’m almost ashamed to talk about it, but the thing is I can’t seem to do anything about it.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, it’s the same every night,” Feverell said. “I go to sleep and the doorbell rings. I get up, put on a robe, answer the door, and there are three beautiful women there. They want to come in, and they want to have a party.”
“A party?”
“What they want,” said Feverell, “is for me to make love to them.”
“And?”
“And I do.”
“It sounds,” said Hackett, “like a wonderful dream. It sounds like a dream people would pay money to have.”
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” said Feverell, “is that it’s too much. I make love to all three of them and I’m exhausted, drained, an empty shell, and no sooner do I drift off to sleep than the alarm clock’s ringing and it’s time to get up. I’m too old for three women in one night, and these aren’t hasty encounters. It takes the whole night to satisfy them all, and I’ve got no strength left for the rest of my life.”
“Interesting,” said Hackett, in a manner not altogether unlike the late Dr. Loebner’s. “Tell me, are they always the same women?”
Feverell shook his head. “If they were,” he said, “it’d be a cinch, because I wouldn’t keep getting turned on. But every night it’s three brand-new ladies, and the only common denominator is that they’re all gorgeous. Tall ones, short ones, light ones, dark ones. Blondes, brunettes, redheads. Even a bald one the other night.”