Collected Stories

The Girl of My Dreams

Yesterday I bought a gun.

I’m very confused; I don’t know what to do.

I have always been a mild and shy young man, quiet and conservative and polite. I have been employed the last five years — since at nineteen I left college due to a lack of funds — at the shirt counter of Willis & Dekalb, Men’s Clothiers, Stores in Principal Cities, and I would say that I have been generally content with my lot. Although recently I have been finding the new manager, Mr. Miller, somewhat abrasive — not to overstate the matter — the work itself has always been agreeable, and I have continued to look forward to a quiet lifetime in the same employment.

I have never been much of a dreamer, neither by day nor by night. Reveries, daydreams, these are the products of vaulting ambition or vaulted desire, of both of which I have remained for the most pan gratefully free. And, though science assures us that some part of every night’s sleep is spent in the manufacture of dreams, mine must normally be gentle and innocuous, even dull, as I rarely remember them in the morning.

I would date the beginning of the change in my life from the moment of the retirement of old Mr. Randmunson from his post as manager of our local Willis & DeKalb store, and his prompt replacement by Mr. Miller, a stranger from the Akron branch.

Mr. Miller is a hearty man, cheeks and nose all red with ruddy health, handshake painfully firm, voice roaring, laugh aggressive. Not yet thirty-five, he moves and speaks with the authority and self-confidence of a man much older, and he makes it no secret that some day he intends to be president of the entire chain. Our little store is merely a stopover for him, another rung on the ladder of his success.

His first day in the store, he came to me, ebullient and overpowering and supremely positive. He asked my opinion, he discussed business and geography and entertainment, he offered me cigarettes, he thumped my shoulder. “We’ll get along, Ronald!” he told me. “Just keep moving those shirts!”

“Yes, Mr. Miller.”

“And let me have an inventory list, by style and size, tomorrow morning.”

“Sir?”

“Any time before noon,” he said carelessly, and laughed, and thumped my shoulder. “We’ll have a great team here, Ronald, a first-rate team!”

Two nights later I dreamed for the first time of Delia.

I went to bed as usual at eleven-forty, after the news on Channel 6. I switched out the light, went to sleep, and in utter simplicity and clarity the dream began. In it, I was driving my automobile on Western Avenue, out from the center of town. It was all thoroughly realistic, the day, the traffic, the used car lots along Western Avenue all gleaming in the spring sun. My six-year-old car was pulling just a little to the right, exactly as it does in real life. I knew I was dreaming, but at the same time it was very pleasant to be in my car on Western Avenue on such a lovely spring day.

A scream startled me, and my foot trod reflexively on the brake pedal. Nearby, on the sidewalk, a man and girl were struggling together. He was trying to wrest a package from her but she was resisting, clutching the package tight with both arms around it, and again screaming. The package was wrapped in brown paper and was about the size and shape of a suit carton from Willis & DeKalb.

I want to emphasize that everything was very realistic, down to the finest detail. There were none of the abrupt shifts in time or space or viewpoint normally associated with dreams, no impossibilities or absurdities.

There was no one else on the pavement nearby, and I acted almost without thinking. Braking the car at the curb, I leaped out, ran around the car, and began to grapple with the girl’s attacker He was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a black leather jacket and he needed a shave. His breath was bad.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted, while the girl continued to scream.

The mugger had to give up his grip on the package in order to deal with me. He pushed me away, and I staggered ineffectively backward just as I would do in real life, while the girl kicked him repeatedly in the shins. As soon as I regained my balance I rushed forward again, and now he decided he’d had enough. He turned tail and ran, down Western Avenue and through a used car lot and so out of sight.

The girl, breathing hard, still clutching the package to her breast, turned to smile gratefully upon me and say, “How can I ever thank you?”

What a beautiful girl! The most beautiful girl I have ever seen, before or since. Auburn hair and lovely features, deep dear hazel eyes, slender wrists with every delicate birdlike bone outlined beneath the tender skin. She wore a blue and white spring dress, and casual white shoes. Silver teardrops graced her graceful ears.

She gazed at me with her melting, warm, companionable eyes, and she smiled at me with lips that murmured to be kissed, and she said to me, “How can I ever thank you?” in a voice as dulcet as honey.

And there the dream ended, in extreme close-up on my Delia’s face.

I awoke the next morning in a state of euphoria. The dream was still vivid in my mind in every detail, and most particularly did I remember the look of her sweet face at the end. That face stayed with me throughout the day, a day which otherwise might have been only bitter, as it was on that day Mr. Miller gave the two-week notice to my friend and co-worker Gregory Shostrill of the stockroom. I shared, of course, the employees’ general indignation that such an old and loyal worker had been so summarily dismissed, but for me the outrage was tempered by the continuing memory of last night’s wonderful dream.

I never anticipated for a second that I would ever see my dream-girl again, but that night she returned to me, and my astonishment was only matched by my delight. I went to bed at my usual hour, went to sleep, and the dream began. It started precisely where, the night before, it had ended, with the beautiful girl saying to me, “How can I ever thank you?”

I now functioned at two levels of awareness. The first, in which I knew myself to be dreaming, was flabbergasted to find the dream picking up as though no day had elapsed, no break at all had taken place in the unfolding of this story. The second level, in which I was an active participant in the dream rather than its observer, treated this resumption of events as natural and inevitable and obvious, and reacted without delay.

It was this second level which replied, “Anyone would have done what I did,” and then added, “May I drive you wherever you’re going?”

Now here, I grant, the dream had begun to be somewhat less than realistic. That I should talk with this lovely creature so effortlessly, without stammering, without blushing, with no worms of terror acrawl within my skull, was not entirely as the same scene would have been played in real life. In this situation in reality, I might have attacked the mugger as I’d done in the dream, but upon being left alone with the girl afterward I would surely have been reduced to strained smiles and strangled silences.

But not in the dream. In the dream I was gallant and effortless, as I offered to drive her wherever she was going.

“If it wouldn’t be putting you out of your way—”

“Not in the least,” I assured her. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” she said. “Summit Street. Do you know it?”

“Of course. It’s right on my way.”

Which wasn’t at all true. Summit Street, tucked away in the Oak Hills section, a rather well-to-do residential neighborhood, was a side street off a side street. There’s never any reason to drive on Summit Street unless Summit Street is your destination; it leads nowhere and comes from nowhere.

Nevertheless I said it was on my way — and she accepted, pleasantly. Holding the car door for her, I noticed my car was unusually clean and I was glad I’d finally gotten round to having it washed. New seat covers, too. Very nice-looking; I couldn’t remember having bought them but I was pleased I had.

Once we were driving together along Western Avenue I introduced myself: “My name’s Ronald. Ronald Grady.”

“Delia,” she told me, smiling again. “Delia Wright.”

“Hello, Delia Wright.”

Her smile broadened. “Hello, Ronald Grady.” She reached out and, for just a second, touched her fingers to my right wrist.

After that, the dream continued in the most naturalistic manner, the two of us chatting about one thing and another, the high schools we’d attended and how odd it was we’d never met before. When we reached Summit Street, she pointed out her house and I stopped at the curb. She said, “Won’t you come in for a cup of coffee? I’d like you to meet my mother.”

“I really can’t now,” I told her, smiling regretfully. “But if you’re doing nothing tonight, could I take you to dinner and a movie?”

“I’d like that,” she said.

“So would I.”

Our eyes met, and the moment seemed to deepen — and there the dream stopped.

I awoke next morning with a pleasant warm sensation on my right wrist, and I knew it was because Delia had touched me there. I ate a heartier breakfast than usual, startled my mother — I have continued to live at home with my mother and older sister, seeing no point in the additional expense of a place of my own — startled my mother, I say, by singing rather loudly as I dressed, and went off to work in as sunny a mood as could be imagined.

Which Mr. Miller, a few hours later, succeeded in shattering.

I admit I returned late from lunch. The people at the auto store had assured me they could install the new seat covers in fifteen minutes, but it actually took them over half an hour. Still, it was the first time in five years I had ever been late, and Mr. Miller’s sarcasm and abuse seemed to me under the circumstances excessive. He carried on for nearly an hour, and in fact continued to make reference to the incident for the next two weeks.

Still, my hurt and outrage at Mr. Miller’s attitude were not so great as they might have been, had I not had that spot of warmth on my wrist to remind me of Delia. I thought of Delia, of her beauty and grace, of my own ease and confidence with her, and I weathered the Miller storm much better than might have been expected.

That night I hardly watched the eleven o’clock news at all. I stayed until it ended only because any change in my habits would have produced a string of irrelevant questions from my mother, but as soon as the newscaster had bid me good night I headed directly for my own bed and sleep.

And Delia. I had been afraid to hope the dream would continue into a third night, but it did, it did, and most delightfully so.

This time, the dream skipped. It jumped over those dull meaningless hours when I was not with Delia, those hours as stale and empty as the real world, and it began tonight with me back at Summit Street promptly at seven, and Delia opening her front door to greet me.

Again the dream was utterly realistic. The white dinner jacket I wore was unlike anything in my waking wardrobe, but otherwise all was lifelike.

In tonight’s dream we went to dinner together at Astoldi’s, an expensive Italian restaurant which I had attended — in daylife — only once, at the testimonial dinner for Mr. Randmunson when he retired from Willis & DeKalb. But tonight I behaved — and felt, which is equally important — as though I dined at Astoldi’s twice a week.

The dream ended as we were leaving the restaurant after dinner, on our way to the theatre.

The next day. and the days that followed, passed in a slow and velvet haze I no longer cared about Mr. Miller’s endless abrasion. I bought a white dinner jacket, though in daylife I had no use for it. Later on, after a dream-segment in which I wore a dark blue ascot, I bought three such ascots and hung them in my closet.

The dream, meanwhile, went on and on without a break, never skipping a night. It omitted all periods of time when I was not with my Delia, but those times spent with her were presented entirely, and chronologically, and with great realism.

There were, of course, small exceptions to the realism. My ease with Delia, for instance. And the fact my car grew steadily younger night by night, and soon stopped pulling to the right.

That first date with Delia was followed by a second, and a third. We went dancing together, we went swimming together, we went for rides on a lake in her cousin’s cabin cruiser and for drives in the mountains in her own Porsche convertible. I kissed her, and her lips were indescribably sweet.

I saw her in all lights and under all conditions. Diving from a tacketa-tacketa long board into a jade green swimming pool, and framed for one heartbeat in silhouette against the pale blue sky. Dancing in a white ball gown, low across her tanned breasts and trailing the floor behind her. Kneeling in the garden behind her house, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless pale green blouse, wearing gardening gloves and holding a trowel, laughing, with dirt smudged on her nose and cheek. Driving her white Porsche, her auburn hair blowing in the wind, her eyes bright with joy and laughter.

The dream, the Dream, became to me much finer than reality, oh, much much finer. And in the Dream there was no haste, no hurry, no fear. Delia and I were in love, we were lovers, though we had not yet actually gone to bed together. I was calm and confident, slow and sure, feeling no frantic need to seduce my Delia now, now. I knew the rime would come, and in our tender moments I could see in her eyes that she also knew, and that she was not afraid.

Slowly we learned one another. We kissed, I held her tight, my arm encircled her slender waist. I touched her breasts and one moonlight night on a deserted beach, I stroked her lovely legs.

How I loved my Delia! And how I needed her, how necessary an antidote she was to the increasing bitterness of my days.

It was Mr. Miller, of course, who disrupted my days thoroughly as Delia soothed and sweetened my nights. Our store was soon unrecognizable, most of the older employees gone, new people and new methods everywhere. I believe I was kept on only because I was such a silent enduring victim for Mr. Miller’s sarcasm, his nasal voice and his twisted smile and his bitter eyes. He was in such a starved hurry for the presidency of the firm, he was so frantic to capture Willis & DeKalb, that it forced him to excesses beyond belief.

But I was, if not totally immune, at least relatively safe from the psychological blows of Mr. Miller’s manner. The joyful calm of the Dream carried me through all but the very worst of the days in the store.

Another development was that I found myself more self-assured with other people in daylife. Woman customers, and even the fashionably attractively newly hired woman employees, were beginning to make it clear that they found me not entirely without interest. It goes without saying that I remained faithful to my Delia, but it was nevertheless pleasurable to realize that a real-world social life was available to me, should I ever want it.

Not that I could visualize myself ever being less than fully satisfied with Delia.

But then it all began to change. Slowly, very very slowly, so that I don’t know for how long the tide had already ebbed before I first became aware. In my Delia’s eyes — I first saw it in her eyes. Where before they had been warm bottomless pools, now they seemed flat and cold and opaque; I no longer saw in them the candor and beauty of before. Also, from time to time I would catch upon her face a pensive frown, a solemn thoughtfulness.

“What is it?” I would ask her. “Tell me. Whatever I can do—”

“It’s nothing,” she would insist. “Really, darling, it’s nothing at all,” and kiss me on the cheek.

In this same period, while matters were unexpectedly worsening in the Dream, a slow improvement had begun in the sore. All the employees who were to be fired were now gone, all the new employees in and used to their jobs, all the new routines worked with and grown accustomed to, Mr. Miller seemed also to be growing accustomed to his new job and the new store. Less and less was he taking out his viciousness and insecurity on me. He had, in fact, taken to avoiding me for days at a time, as though beginning to feel ashamed of his earlier harshness.

Which was fine but irrelevant. What was my waking rime after all but the necessary adjunct to the Dream? It was the Dream that mattered, and the Dream was not going well, not going well at all.

It was, in fact, getting worse. Delia began to break dates with me, and to make excuses when I asked her for dates. The pensive looks, the distracted looks, the buried sense of impatience, all were more frequent now. Entire portions of the Dream were spent with me alone — I was never alone in the early nights! — pacing the floor of my room, waiting for a promised call that never was to come.

What could it be? I asked her and asked, but always she evaded my questions, my eyes, my arms. If I pressed, she would insist it was nothing, nothing, and then for a little while she would be her old self again, gay and beautiful, and I could believe it had only been my imagination after all. But only for a little while, and then the distraction, the evasiveness, the impatience, the excuses, all once more would return.

Until two nights ago. We sat in her convertible beneath a swollen moon, high on a dark cliff overlooking the sea, and I forced the issue at last. “Delia,” I said. “Tell me the truth, I have to know. Is there another man?”

She looked at me and I saw she was about to deny everything yet again, but this time she couldn’t do it. She bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Ronald.” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear the words. “There is.”

“Who?”

She raised her head, gazing at me with eyes in which guilt and pity and love and shame were all commingled, and she said, “It’s Mr. Miller.”

I recoiled. “What?”

“I met him at the country club,” she said. “I can’t help it, Ronald. I wish to God I’d never met the man, he has some sort of hold over me, some hypnotic power. That first night, he took me to a motel, and—”

Then she told me, told me everything, every action and every demand, in the most revolting detail. And though I squirmed and struggled, though I strained and yearned, I could not wake up, I could not end the Dream. Delia told me everything she had done with Mr. Miller, her helplessness to deny him even though it was me she loved and him for whom she felt only detestation, her constant trysts with him night after night, direct from my arms to his. She told me of their planned meeting later that very night in the motel where it had all begun, and she told me of her bitter self-knowledge that even now, after I knew everything, she would still meet him.

Then at last her toneless voice was finished and we were in silence once again, beneath the moon, high on the cliff. Then I awoke.

That was two nights ago. Yesterday I arose the same as ever — what else could I do? — and I went to the store as usual, and I behaved normally in every way. What else could I do? But I noticed again Mr. Miller’s muted attitude toward me, and now I understood it was the result of his guilty knowledge. Of course Delia had told him about me, she’d described all that to me during her confession, relating how Mr. Miller had laughed and been scornful to hear that “Ronald the sap” had never been to bed with her. “Doesn’t know what he’s missing, does he?” she quoted him as saying, with a laugh.

At lunchtime I drove past the motel she’d named, and a squalid place it was, peeling stucco painted a garish blue. Not far beyond it was a gunsmith’s; on the spur of the moment I stopped, I talked to the salesman about “plinking” and “varmints,” and I bought a snub-nosed Iver Johnson Trailsman revolver. The salesman inserted the .32 bullets into the chambers, and I put the box containing the gun into the glove compartment of my car. Last evening I carried the gun unobserved into the house and hid it in my room, in a dresser drawer, beneath my sweaters.

And last night, as usual, I dreamed. But in the Dream I was not with Delia. In the Dream I was alone, in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed with the gun in my hand, listening to the small noises of my mother and sister as they prepared for sleep, waiting for the house to be quiet. In last night’s Dream I had the gun and I planned to use it. In last night’s Dream I had not left my car in the drive as usual but a street away, parked at the curb. In last night’s Dream I was waiting only for my mother and sister to be safely asleep, when I intended to creep silently from the house, hurry down the pavement to my car, drive to that motel, and enter room 7 — it’s always room 7, Delia told me. always the same room — where it was my intention to shoot Mr. Miller dead. In last night’s Dream I heard my mother and sister moving about, at first in the kitchen and then in the bathroom and then in their bedrooms. In last night’s Dream the house slowly, gradually, finally became quiet, and I got to my feet, putting the gun in my pocket, preparing to leave the room. And at that point the Dream stopped.

I have been very confused today. I have wanted to talk to Mr. Miller, but I’ve been afraid to. I have been unsure what to do next, or in which life to do it. If I kill Mr. Miller in the Dream tonight, will he still lie in the store tomorrow, with his guilt and his scorn? If I kill Mr. Miller in the Dream tonight, and if he is still in the store tomorrow, will I go mad? If I fail to kill Mr. Miller, somewhere, somehow, how can I go on living with myself?

When I came home from work this evening, I didn’t park the car in the drive as usual, but left it at the curb, a street away from here. My mind was in turmoil all evening, bur I behaved normally, and after the eleven o’clock news I came up here to my bedroom.

But I was afraid to sleep, afraid to Dream. I took the gun from the drawer, and I have been sitting here, listening to the small sounds of my mother and my sister as they prepare for bed.

Can things ever lie again as they were between Delia and me? Can the memory of what has happened ever be expunged? I turn the gun and look into its black barrel and I ask myself all these questions. “Perchance to Dream.” If I arranged it that I would never awake again, would I go on Dreaming? But would the Dream become worse instead of better?

Is it possible — as some faint doubting corner of my mind suggests — even remotely possible, that Delia is not what she seems, that she was never true, that she is a succuba who has come to destroy me through my Dream?

The house is silent. The hour is late. If I stay awake, if I creep from the house and drive to the motel, what will I find in room 7?

And whom shall I kill?