Two Dreams

I.

My Time with Sawyer

I was at Julie F's old house in Frostburg on 53 Broadway. The house was empty and I felt a little spooked out until she called me to tell me that she was on her way. When I was closing my cell phone, I looked right into the face of "Sawyer" from Lost.

Sawyer said, "Hi, pretty lady, what are you doing here?"

I stumbled on my own feet. He made me nervous. I knew who he was, but I also knew that he was "up to no good." He was both a real person and a dream character and a movie star at once, and he gave me funny feelings in my stomach.

"I was just leaving," I said.

"I'll come with you, I could use a walk," Sawyer told me.

He looked into my face with big eyes and smiled a toothy grin. He was handsome, but in a bad cowboy way. We walked out the door together and proceeded down the street. Sawyer and I stopped in the alleyway behind the library. We sat on a ledge and dangled our feet.

"I like you and I want to talk to you again," he said.

I smiled and told him that I needed to go back to my friend's house (I wasn't entirely sure what he was doing there in the first place).

"Give me your phone number and e-mail address," he demanded as he pulled a notebook out of his back pocket. He ripped a sheet of paper out and handed it to me.

I took the paper and tried to write everything out with the paper balanced on my knees. I kept thinking, "I shouldn't give him my real contact information. He's going to break my heart or steal something or get me involved in something I don't want to be involved in." I thought this over and over again as I tried to write out my name and e-mail address. My handwriting was all funny and I couldn't get it straight. I kept misspelling my name and scratching it out.

"I'm usually not like this," I told him, "I can usually write."

"It's okay," he said, "take your time. I like looking at your face."

I finally gave up and handed him the piece of paper.

"This is as good as it's going to get," I told him.

II.

BBQ

Melissa Daniels and I were sitting in two chairs in the living room of her parents' farm house on Pocahontas Road. I told her I had a headache and she began massaging my temples.

"This will get it out," she said.

Her little brother Jeffrey came in the room with an eyepatch on his eye, and blood spilling out.

"Jesus, what happened?" I asked him.

"Got shot."

Her other brother, Shawn, looked at him in disbelief as if Jeffrey was stupid for getting shot, as if he could help it.

I told Shawn that it wasn't his fault, and S. took me up to his bedroom. It was a blue room with a twin bed. Melissa's third brother, Timothy, was in the room. I thought that he looked kind of short since the last time that I saw him.

Shawn said, "Look, he could have helped it." And I believed him.

Melissa's mom was preparing a large indoor picnic for everyone. She was grilling corn and chicken. There was a long table that was set with a colorful tablecloth. I heard some kind of ruckus and knew that my mom was there. I told Melissa that I'd better go get her, and we walked to an elevator that took us to a bathroom. My mom came out of the bathroom, drunk.

She said, "What's with the grilling corn? Why would she grill corn?" And I tried to hush her.

We went outside and got into a derby car that my mom drove. We drove down country roads and stopped at a vegetable stand. I was worried about her driving drunk. When we got to the stand Meghan Tutolo and Kelly Scarff were there. They were buying big bags of potatoes for Melissa's mom's BBQ.

Two attractive men got into the derby car and drove us back.

When we walked into the house, Kelly gave me a potato. I ate it raw and thought it was delicious.