A Recent Dream
I am in my old white Toyota Tercel which I sold nigh onto 20 years ago. It was a faithful and true automobile with the one exception-it went through clutches rapidly. (No I do not ride my clutch whatever you have heard--I adamantly refute that I am a clutch rider). I am dressed inexplicably in a gray t shirt and grungy pants. No coat in spite of the fact that snow is in patches on the road.
I am also back in Lynchburg, Virginia, which is logical, since I drove the Tercel primarily there where I lived in the late 80's. I also have a gray cat in tow-why I do not know. I have not now nor have I ever, owned a gray cat. An ominously silent gray cat which I am wearing around my neck like a stole.
I wind through the hills (Lynchburg is the city of seven hills) employing my clutch and brake often, only to find the car's brakes are barely working. I manage to stop with millimeters between me and the next vehicle. At one point I round a sharp curve only to find that the road crew of the city has blocked the left lane with repairs and the traffic has backed up. I barely miss slamming into the lane of traffic.
I have no destination in mind that I can recall so after some more near misses on the road, I find a hilly, nearly full parking lot and decide to park. I disembark the car and thereupon pull out a red tricycle for me and the cat who is still around my shoulders to ride through the graveled and slushy snowed parking lot of some office building in which I do not have business nor any knowledge of. It is tough going. I must say that the cat is a trooper. I enter a building only to find it is an amalgamation of office and retail space that melds from one to the other. I am looking at wares and round a corner and bam-there I am in the waiting room of a office manned by very young, very smartly dressed young women, who are sympathetic but puzzled, by this strange woman with a cat stole, riding a red tricycle (I am not making this up, it is my dream in truth).
"How do I get out of here?" I ask politely so as not to further cause any more ruckus than I already have. They tell me to keep going from one office to another. I open heavy metal doors find that I am in the hallway of an apartment building and a untroubled man is smoking a cigarette and watching a bobcat pace around the stairwell. "What are you doing with a bobcat" I shriek? He barely registers any emotion and answers that this is the last apartment building in Lynchburg that still allows exotic pets. Of course. Why didn't I think of that?
I have to pass by the pacing animal and carry the tricycle to be quicker. I enter another stairwell and there is a jaguar unattended. I yell to someone, "Help there is a jaguar," and am answered by a disembodied voice of one of the smartly dressed office workers that he won't hurt me, just walk on by. I reply I have a horrible headache and I can feel my blood sugar dipping. I have also, at some point, donned my reading glasses out of which I can't see unless I am reading.
The lady comes and gets me out of there and I am back in the maze of parking lots (I use the work 'lots' loosely, they are little more than scabby little parcels of grass with melting snow that have no order or markers). It is also nearly dark by this time. With my glasses on (which never occurs to me to take off) I can barely make out one Tercel from a Lexus. I am hauling the tricycle, the cat is holding on for dear life but hasn't emitted a growl or a purr or a meow once, I am cold in my inadequate t-shirt and lost in a maze of parking spaces without a clue what I am doing there. My dog, Boo Radley, wakes me up sniffing me in the ear because I realize I have been whimpering for some time. I am not exaggerating nor embellishing on any point. James Thurber, could not have imagined such an adventure. Any thoughts?
