Within a Dream - a Short Story (2 page)

I sighed. “I woke up.”

She blinked in astonishment. “What? You’re
some sort of a super-spy, guns and everything, with a god for a
husband, and you
woke up
?”

I shrugged, stabbing my fork into my own
salad. Low-fat dressing. No cheese. “I woke up,” I repeated. “Still
stuck in my hometown of Grafton. Same old gazebo on the common.
Nothing ever changes. Nothing exciting ever happens.”

Maria crossed her arms. “Hey, I took you out
to dinner, didn’t I?”

I smiled. “I appreciate it. And I love our
shop. I really do. But you know what I mean. I wish
Hank
would take me out sometimes.”

Maria nudged me. “Maybe you should dream
more often. That dream-Hank seems quite a winner.”

I giggled. “I should, shouldn’t I? I’d bet
that rippled-muscle guy would do something in bed instead of
snore.”

My phone buzzed and I glanced down at it.
“Surprise, surprise. Hank is working late again tonight. He says
not to wait up.”

Maria’s brow creased. “Isn’t that the fourth
time this week? Hun, I know you love him and all, but don’t you
think you should at least check up on him? He does have that hot
new blonde secretary, after all.”

I shook my head. “We’ve been together seven
years. He wouldn’t do that to me.”

An eyebrow arched. “You know what they say
about the seven year itch.”

I took down a drink of chardonnay. “But if I
followed him around it would seem like I don’t trust him.”

Her face was serious. “Hun, trust but
verify. Remember that. Besides, his office is right down the
street. Take a spin by on your way home.” Her mouth quirked up.
“Order him that tiramisu he loves. He’s there and alone? You ply
him with sweets? You might get some of what that dream lover
offered.”

My heart lifted, and I nodded. Maybe that’s
what our relationship needed. A little more excitement. Maybe
that’s what these dreams were telling me.

A short while later I was driving up to the
brick mill building which held his office, the neatly packaged
dessert sitting on my Prius’s passenger seat. I grinned. It could
be like we were teenagers again, me sneaking him into the back door
of the bar, and him flashing that grin -

The office was dark.

I looked around the parking lot, but his car
was nowhere to be seen.

Shadows overtook my golden mood and I pulled
out my phone. My finger hovered over his icon - and then I went to
Google instead. I looked up the name of his secretary, adding
Grafton, Massachusetts to the query. A moment later and my phone’s
GPS was guiding me down the quiet streets. And five minutes later I
was sitting outside her neat blue colonial house.

His car was parked in the driveway.

My heart hammered against my ribs and for
long minutes I couldn’t move. At last I forced myself to open the
door and step out. Maybe they were just working here for some
reason. Maybe, if I peered in a window, I could see them hunched
over files, earnestly striving to solve an issue. Maybe, if I just
peered over these bushes -

Maria blinked in surprise as she answered my
secure-line video call. Her voice was low. “God, Suz, you look like
hell. I told you to take the day off.”

I shook my head. “We have to find him.”

She pressed her lips together. “I assume
Hank’s not in the apartment?”

I leaned back against the bed’s headboard
and settled the laptop more securely across my legs. “He’s gone out
for a run. We’ve got a full half hour. I need to know what’s going
on.”

She sighed. “Have you even gotten any sleep
yet?”

The corner of my mouth quirked up. “I had
something better than sleep. It’s given me fresh energy.”

She chuckled at that. “All right, well, I
bet you won’t sleep until you at least get an update.”

“
That’s for sure.”

“
OK, here’s the situation. We don’t know
why Kevin Gallo bailed on his meet with you. It doesn’t look like
your cover is blown. He still thinks you’re a Boston madam looking
for underage girls to add to your stables.”

My shoulders eased. “That’s good. And he
hasn’t done anything with those poor Chinese girls he took off the
ship and warehoused somewhere?”

She shook her head. “We haven’t heard a peep
about them. So we’re still on with the operation. We just have to
arrange a fresh meet between you and him. Set up the payment for
the girls. As soon as we get them safely into our hands, we can
take the whole operation down.”

“
But why did he ditch the meet we had set
up?”

“
We don’t know. He was there, heading
toward you, when he just kept going. And you know the rest. You
went after him and he had vanished.”

“
That’s for sure,” I growled.

“
So we’re just going through the
surveillance footage –”

“
Put it up.”

Her lips pressed down. “Hun, you need to
sleep. Really.”

“
When Hank gets back, I’ll take a nap
with him. I promise. A real nap. But run the footage. Maybe I’ll
spot something that you’ll miss.”

Maria looked as if she might refuse, but at
last she sighed and hit a button. “Just fifteen minutes.”

It looked like an ATM camera from diagonally
across the street. A stream of Bostonians moved past in their
autumn finery, Red Sox jackets and cell phones glued to their ear.
And there, crossing the street -

* * *

I bolted awake in my bed, tears streaming
from my eyes. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 3:01am.

Hank’s side lay empty.

I shook my head, wiping at my face. It
wasn’t bad enough the bimbo was sleeping with my husband in real
life. Now she was in my dreams, too?

I grabbed up my cell phone, drew on my
jacket, and went out to the balcony. It overlooked a rolling
stream. When Hank and I had moved in here it had seemed wonderfully
romantic. Now it made me think of drowning that secretary of his –
repeatedly – until this whole nightmare just went away.

Maria’s voice sleepily answered. “Suz, girl,
it’s after three in the morning.”

My voice shot out of me. “Hank’s cheating on
me.”

She shrieked, and I heard the mumble of her
husband in her background. Some footsteps and after a moment she
spoke again. “I’m in the bathroom. We can talk. What the Hell
happened?”

I slumped against the wall of the balcony.
“I took him that tiramisu, like you said. But he wasn’t at the
office. I found his car at the secretary’s house. And when I looked
in the window, I saw her crimson-red lips locked around his cock.”
Tears bubbled up fresh.

“Oh, Suz, Suz, I’m so sorry. He’s a jerk.
He’s slime. He’s sewage.”

“I came home to wait for him – but I must’ve
fallen asleep. And then Barbara was in my FBI dream, too!”

Maria sighed. “Suz, that slut secretary
being in your dreams makes sense. You had just seen that awful
sight. She’s probably burned into your brain right now. It’s lucky
you didn’t dream she was a psychotic vampire out to kill you
all.”

I shook my head. “This seemed real. I dreamt
she was involved in my FBI case. That she is the one who met up
with the guy I was chasing, Kevin, and tried to disrupt my sting to
catch him.”

Confusion traced through her voice. “What? I
thought you were chasing after this guy because you liked him!”

“It doesn’t seem so. He’s some sort of a
child trafficker and I’m trying to bring him down. I’m working to
rescue the girls. But Barbara is somehow screwing everything
up.”

Maria snorted. “Barbara
is
screwing
everything up,” she pointed out. “She’s screwing up your entire
life.”

I shook my head. “It’s not just Barbara
that’s at fault here,” I pointed out with resignation. “Hank is
guilty, too. He’s a part of it.” I sat down, staring out at the
river. “He’s just as involved.”

I was parked in the far corner of the
underground garage beneath Boston Common, The place was packed with
cars but the only sign of life was a tourist couple in matching
Miami Dolphins jackets and thick fur hats waiting in the far
distance by the elevator.

A black car slowly drove down the aisle and
pulled in alongside mine.

Maria stepped out, glanced around, and then
slipped in the car with me.

Her voice was tight. “Suz, are you sure this
is necessary? We don’t want to blow your cover. Not after all these
months of effort.”

I found it hard to say the words. “Hank’s
involved.”

Maria blinked at me in shock. “What? You’re
kidding. Hank’s a decent guy. And he’s a civil lawyer, handling
insurance fraud. How could he possibly be involved in a Chinese
prostitution ring?”

I gave a low shrug. “He is.”

Her frown deepened. “Did you see him on the
tapes? How did we miss that?”

I shook my head. “No. But I saw
Barbara.”

Confusion shone from her gaze. “Who’s
Barbara?”

I took in a deep breath. I knew it would be
hard to explain this, but I had to try.

“
Maria, I’ve been having dreams.”

She settled into her seat, watching me. “OK,
that’s not surprising, with the stress you’ve been under.”

“
Dreams that I never left Grafton. That
you and I opened up a gift shop on the common. That I married Hank,
but that he was a quiet insurance agent.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “Well, we
all have dreams about what might have been. About the path not
chosen and so on.”

I leaned forward. “But dreams also tend to
integrate scenes from our real world. Things we might not even have
noticed consciously, but that our brain is trying to sort out. It’s
why someone who’s stressed about deadlines might keep dreaming
about missing an important test at school. The mind’s trying to
cope with the stress by presenting it in a setting with familiar
images.”

She nodded. “Right, it’s why dream journals
are so popular. The dreamer can review their journal and look for
common themes. Try to get a handle on what is causing stress for
their brain.”

“
Exactly. And I dreamed about
Barbara.”

She bit her lip. I could see she was trying
to be patient with me. “Who is Barbara?”

Even though it was just a dream, I had
trouble saying it. “In my dream, Barbara was sleeping with my
husband.”

Maria’s eyes shadowed. “Hun, it’s just a
dream. You’ve been under a lot of stress.”

I shook my head. “But the dream is based on
reality. It’s based on things I’ve seen and heard, even if I wasn’t
fully aware of them at the time.”

Uncertainty creased her brow. “How do you
know this Barbara is not just a dream?”

I let out a long breath. “Because I saw her
in the video.”

Her eyes went wide. “In the ATM tapes?”

I nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her
before in real life – but clearly I had. And clearly my mind knew
it was important, even if my conscious self didn’t.”

“
So what was Barbara doing in the
tape?”

“
She seemed to just be casually walking
down the sidewalk – but when she passed Kevin, it appears that she
said something to him. He takes the next left and slips away up an
alley. Whatever she said, it’s why Kevin skipped the meeting with
me.”

Maria’s face paled. “You said that, in your
dream, Hank was having an affair with Barbara?”

I nodded. “In my latest dream I had just
caught the two in the act.”

Disbelief creased her brow. “And you think,
because Hank is cheating with Barbara in your dream, that maybe he
is in real life, too?”

Tension knotted in my shoulders, but I
forced myself to speak. “I know it sounds a bit silly. But what
else could it mean? How come I dreamed about her last night and
then suddenly today I see her on that video? And it’s clear she’s
interfering with our investigation?”

Maria ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe …
Maybe …”

I raised an eyebrow. “Do you think I’m
getting magical premonitions from the future now?”

She blew out her breath. “Of course not. You
had the dream first, and then you saw her on the video after that.
That must mean –”

“
That must mean I’d seen her before,” I
finished. “Sometime with Hank. At the time I probably didn’t even
notice, consciously. Maybe I was busy thinking about my case or
something else. But my subconscious noticed. It paid attention to
the way they looked at each other or their body language. And my
dreams bubbled that information back up to the surface. They were
trying to tell me something.”

Maria frowned. “Your dreams could be wrong,
you know. They could just be dreams.”

I tapped my cell phone. “I have that video
on here. I’ve watched it a hundred times. Barbara is the woman from
my dreams. The woman who is cheating with Hank. And she’s the one
trying to interfere with the sting.”

Maria held my gaze. “I trust you, Suz.
You’re our best field agent. What do you want to do?”

I gave her a wry smile and reached into my
pocket. “I’ve got some tranquilizers here which will knock me out
in seconds flat. The best way to remember a dream is to have
someone wake you up part-way through it and then listen. That way
I’m still deep in the dream and I don’t have to think or write or
anything. I can just tell you what I see.”

She nodded. “If you think it’ll help, I’m
willing to give it a try.”

I took up the water bottle from the center
console, doled out two pills into my hand, and then swallowed.

I concentrated. I had kept a dream journal
for many years in high school, and I knew the techniques. I knew
how to, at least temporarily, snap into a ‘lucid state’ while
dreaming so I could be aware of the dream.

I closed my eyes.

* * *

I looked around the shop, holding my Bruins
mug between my hands. Maria looked up from the counter and her brow
creased. “Are you all right, Suz?”