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Entering into a dream is the passing from one eternity, that of life and death in the physical universe, into that of another, the infinity of impulses and synapses of the human mind, those that we have formed through our experiences and those we have inherited through ancestral memory – the reptilian brain, if you will. Below the threshold of Havelock’s consciousness was a world seething with life, like a tranquil pond betraying no movement, though once you looked under its placid surface there were unimaginable little creepy-crawlies, slimy, hellish flesh-eating monsters with mandibles, antennae and bulging eyes, lying in wait of a passing victim of opportunity into whom they would inject their paralyzing toxin, and once the terrified but still alert prey was immobilized, to tear into it with jaws and teeth, ripping its limbs from its body and eating its still conscious and feeling flesh and organs.
Or maybe they would swallow it whole, and the last experience of the fully alert victim would be the dark interior of his aggressor’s organs; the throbbing, pulsing functions of its digestive tract and the corrosive acid effects of its enzymes gradually dissolving him as he choked and writhed in ineluctable agony.
Havelock dreamed he and Paulette were in Coral Gables, at the Venetian Pool. It was a wonderfully bright cloudless day as they swam through the grottos and under the teasing cascade of the tropical waterfall. Life could not have been sweeter; they were in love, robust and healthy and flush with cash. Paulette, her rich wet mane hanging down over her shoulders, droplets of water glistening on her perfectly classical face, shoulders and breasts invoked in Havelock the image of Aphrodite formed from the foam of the blue Aegean Sea and washed onto the sun-bleached sands of Mykonos. Havelock swam to the edge of the pool and, muscles bulging, lifted himself out. He climbed onto the five-meter diving platform. From that height he could survey the whole area. At the coral rocks that bordered the far end of the pool there were photographers, fashion models and assistants holding reflectors preparing to shoot a swimsuit layout for Italian Vogue. Havelock could not have been more exhilarated – this was a world away from the obscure, shabby life he knew as a kid in Newfie, or the grasping, petty, nickel-and-dime chiseling of Seventh Avenue. Miami was the Real Deal, The Glistening Pearl of The Caribbean, The Blooming Tropical Orchid of Desire. Below him in the water, his stunning, rich, sophisticated girlfriend waved to him in adoring admiration.
“Watch this, Paulette!” He dived off the platform, executing a perfect jackknife. He felt the surge of power that one experiences from succeeding an exacting athletic technique, touching his toes, swinging the legs behind and up, a perfect vertical plunge.
In the split second he was suspended in air, all the water drained out of the pool, revealing its blue-tiled bottom. He felt the bones in his face crunch as it smashed into the enamel, followed by his ruined, crumpled body.
He awoke emotionally devastated, panting as though he had run up a flight of stairs. The dream with the gorilla had already been eclipsed by this latest horror, though he was aware that he was having a very traumatic night. He was trembling in his bed. The only time he could remember having passed a night like this was one time he had eaten some spoiled antipasto salad and gotten food poisoning. The dreams and the stomach pain had been agonizing, with sweating and monstrous mental horrors. Then there was one time he had eaten some rancid onion soup in Paris and had come down deathly sick.
Maybe a glass of milk would calm him down. He rose from the bed, poured himself some skim milk and sat on the couch in his darkened living room. The sweet taste had a sedative effect. He forced himself not to think at all. Some people have to train themselves for years to sit there blank-minded and unthinking, but Havelock, as has been previously noted, was not a reflective individual. He was a dork. In fact, thinking was something he disliked, preferring rather to stare beady-eyed in a neutral state of imbecility if it were at all possible. Most people did not realize this about him. If they thought about him at all it was in terms of what they wanted from him but Paulette, for whom not the smallest vibration passed unappreciated, was of course perfectly attuned to his true moronic nature. It was a comfort to her in that it validated her contemptuous evaluation of men in general and allowed her to do all the thinking. Her father Jack had been a nit-wit but a good provider, and Havelock captured her imagination in that way, as a sort of post-modern imbecile who would be acceptable to her social set, the same as Jack had been to the Oyster Bay ladies. Havelock was a kind of cipher that you could read anything you wanted out of. He embodied for Pops an idealized version of his own youth. It was peculiar how this gentile guy from the far reaches of the Canadian outback could excite the imagination of a bunch of New York Jews.
After sitting in the dark in a perfect flat-line state for a while, he went back into the bedroom, threw himself onto the bed, and in a matter of seconds was out like a light. His dream transported him to the maternity ward where Paulette was giving birth to their first child. When the nurse led him to her bedside, she was beaming with pride, her newborn bundle of joy swathed in a pink blanket at her breast. She glowed with maternal fulfillment as she removed a corner of the blanket to reveal its face, the face of a perfectly formed baby - gorilla!
“How adorable!” cried Havelock. “We’ll call her Vaati. I ain’t bringing into the world another Brittany, Whitney, Jitney or Shitney.” As he spoke, Havelock noticed a rustling commotion which seemed to be disturbing the bedcovers between Paulette’s legs. The noise emitting from it was a kind of chuckling and high-pitched barking. He threw off the covers to discover a family of rats frolicking in Paulette’s bloody afterbirth, which had not been cleaned away and was serving as a kind of jungle gym for the rodents, their fur glistening in menstrual blood.
Paulette, cuddling the gorilla at her breast, exalted “Aren’t they cute? I’m going to adopt them and we can all live together.”
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Posted on 4/21/2006
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