La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 66: April 1971

The triangle

During a meal, we are exchanging good crossword clues, particularly a film title.

J.L. takes me aside to give me a word of advice: I should stop working at the laboratory; I should get up at noon, go to the movies each day from 2 to 4, and make my crossword puzzles afterwards.

“But I can’t make a living off my crossword puzzles,” I tell him.

Yes I can, he tells me, I’ll be able to place them and everything; I just have to spend two hours, not three days, on each.

A bit later, J.L. puts a record on the turntable: it’s barely modern music, more like modern music aping its classical influences. Everyone says it’s lovely.

“These are,” says J.L., “ ‘Musical recommendations to the Radio Luxembourg Orchestra,’ by Lolita von Paraboom.” Someone makes a crack about the fact that it’s a “commissioned work”; someone specifies that it’s from 1968 or 1969.

There are three of us in the room. J.L. on the stairs in the back, near the record player; me standing near a long wooden table, and a stranger (male or female?) who is equidistant from me and from J.L. We trace between the three of us a right triangle whose long side is J/me, whose short side is J/the stranger (m/f), and the hypotenuse the stranger (m/f) and me …