Is this some kind of setup? Lil asks. Is this some kind of joke?
The Dreamer says, I like this show. You were good on it.
I don’t watch it anymore, she says.
Paul pats the bench. She sits.
Sotto voce, Paul says, We really should wait for a commercial.
On the screen there’s a man. Old, with silver hair. In business wear, but he means business too. Sleeves rolled up. Suspenders, thick and brown. A pile of dirt, a shovel. The sky behind him is swirls of paint, normally bursting with red and purple (the woman knows that matte painting well), but on the Dreamer’s television screen it’s a sea of gray. The man picks up the shovel and begins to dig. A voice, tinny and distant, begs him to stop. It’s her voice.
That’s a clip from three years ago, she says. Paul hisses at her. She nudges him with her elbow. The bench wobbles under them.
Yes, the Dreamer says. When Savannah was in that old bomb shelter where the gang had her cornered, and they decided to lock her in. I remember those words, that tone. Tell me something.
Yes?
Do you have a lot of the same outfit?
Excuse me?
When you’re doing something like that. Does wardrobe take back whatever you’re wearing every day and clean it, then dirty it up again so it’ll match, and you wear that suit every day? Or is there a rack full of identical pantsuits, with identical tears and identical smudges and burn marks, and you wear a new one every day? You were in that bomb shelter for three months, ten minutes a day.
They have a few outfits. We have girls who take digital pictures and they try to match the amount of dishevelment, Lil says. I think we had three of that outfit for that story arc.
That’s why I like The Cove of Love. I can tell that the director really cares about the show, the Dreamer of the Day says. The other soaps don’t even try anymore.
A commercial for vegetable oil. A world where people in a room can look out the windows, where women stare off into space and hold up bottles and confide in the universe that some things are tastier than others.
Why’d you bring her here, Ron? the Dreamer asks.
I want my husband—the words stick in her throat.
Ron.
Ron opens his mouth. She is tired of being married to her husband.
The Dreamer turns to look at her, to look at Ron too.
Aren’t you a women’s libber?
Lil laughs at that. Who even says women’s libber anymore?
You can get a divorce.
Maybe he doesn’t deserve a divorce. You want the gory details? Paul told me you’re a no-questions-asked kind of guy.
Ron, the Dreamer says.
She looks at the man next to her.
Here, he says, I’m Ron.
Savannah—
Call me Lil, she says.
Savannah, the Dreamer repeats, I am a no-questions-asked kind of guy. I can’t say I like women’s libbers very much. I don’t care why you want your husband dead, but women like you, Savannah, you want to talk about it.
I’m not a woman like Savannah, she says. That was a character I played on the show.
And the show starts again. There’s a hospital. A man turns on his heel and walks off frame. A close-up of a woman’s face. All redheads and blonds look alike. The Dreamer tells them the character’s name is Trista and that she has something horrible inside her. Then two kids bouncing on a couch, too enthusiastic when the man who meant business walks in after burying Savannah alive. A restaurant scene is next, the rhubarbrhubarb of the crowd scene like the Dreamer’s labored breaths. Then a commercial for people who want to fill a bag with gold and mail it away.
The Dreamer says, Ron, go downstairs and get us some coffees. Ron gets up and squeezes past the rubbish into the next room.
Lil puts her hand in her hair, combing it with her fingers. I want my husband dead because he’s been cheating on me.
Bullshit. Pardon my French. I don’t get many female visitors. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. I know I haven’t kept up my apartment. I’m embarrassed. Ron should have told me you were coming. That you were coming. We could have met in the diner.
I thought you never leave.
Maybe I’d make an exception, the Dreamer says. He looks at Lil. His dentures are heavy like two rows of tombstones.
He is cheating on me. This is his third or fourth little whore.
That’s not why you want him dead. If you wanted him dead, you would have put out a hit two or three whores ago.
I used to have a career, something to occupy my own days. Now I’m home all day, or at the gym. I can feel her sweat on the sheets of my own bed when I lay down at night. It’s humiliating.
Humiliating, the Dreamer echoes.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get another role. I’m forty-one years old. I never crossed over to movies, not even to prime time.
You’re not the bitch-goddess type, the Dreamer says. Not the part for you.
I want to know that there’s something more to the world than what I’ve already lived through.
The Dreamer extends a finger and turns off the television set. A single pixel burns in the middle of the screen.
There’s a lot more. Worlds within worlds. You are having an affair with Ron.
The irony doesn’t escape me, Lil says.
You ain’t escapin’ it either, the Dreamer says.
What?
Ron told me that you were together. I feel for him. His wife, the big C. In her breasts, and now her brain. But it’s not just that—he loves you, more than he ever loved her.
He’s a good man, Lil says.
What’s your husband’s name?
Whatever happened to no questions asked?
The Dreamer smiles. I do have to ask one question. Not a personal one. Well, it’s about preferences, not information.
Answer mine first, Lil says.
Anything for you, Miss Savannah.
Why do they call you the Dreamer of the Day?
All men dream, but not equally, the Dreamer says. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.
That’s beautiful.
That’s T. E. Lawrence.
Who?
The Dreamer of the Day shivers, visibly disgusted. Finally, he lets . . . of Arabia extrude from his mouth like sludge. And you got two questions out of me, Savannah. More than anyone ever has. I have a weakness for you.
I apologize, Lil says. I’ll collect another envelope from the foyer on my way out. She says foyer like a Frenchwoman. What’s your question?
Kill him fast or kill him slow?
Kill him slow.
The Dreamer gets up and leaves the room. Lil hears some clatter in the kitchen and gets up. The Dreamer has cleared off the stove. He has a teakettle out. She almost trips over the junk on the floor.
Pau—uh, Ron. He’s getting coffees from the diner.
Ron’s not getting us any fucking coffee, the Dreamer says, gravel in his teeth. Paul’s not getting coffees. He puts his hands on the stove, a little electric number, squeezes his fingers in the gaps between counter and stovetop on either side, and gives it all a shake. A red light blinks to life.
No apologies for your French this time, monsieur?
This is how it’s gonna go, the Dreamer of the Day says. He looks up and off to the side, at some random piece of paper up atop a teetering pile in the living room. Ron’s down at the diner, see. He knows the one. It used to be Greek; it’s Russian now. Your husband’s fourth little whore is there. Blond, milkmaid type. Her upper lip curls when she smiles. He likes that kind of thing. You can do it too.