“Betty and Howard’s Excellent Adventure”
(a Dream Series escapade)
by J.J. DiBenedetto
Also from the author
“Dream Student”
“Dream Doctor”
“Dream Child”
“Dream Family”
“Waking Dream”
Text Copyright © 2013 James J. DiBenedetto
All Rights Reserved
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.
Author’s Note
First things first: thank you for picking this story up! I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Second: usually a story should stand on its own, but I think this one requires a little bit of explanation, depending on how you came across it. If you’ve already read any of the Dream Series novels, then you don’t really need much explanation. You know all about Betty and Howard Barnes already. The only thing that you need to know here is that this story takes place in December, 2000, at the same time as the first three chapters of “Waking Dream.”
If you haven’t read any of those books, then let me give you a quick introduction. The Dream Series is all about Sara Barnes, who we meet in her first novel, “Dream Student,” in the winter of 1989 when she’s a junior in college. Sara’s pretty ordinary…until she discovers she can step into other people’s dreams. This newfound talent helps her meet her boyfriend (and later husband, as the series goes on), but it also causes her no end of difficulty and nearly gets her killed more than once.
Over the course of the books (there are five so far), we meet Betty and Howard Barnes – Sara’s parents. In the third book, “Dream Child,” Betty discovers that she, too, can step into other people’s dreams. And in the most recent book, “Waking Dream,” we learn that Betty and Howard are missing the usual family Christmas because they’ve gone on a trip to Europe.
And the story of that trip is what you’re holding in your hands right now. I wanted to write this for a couple of reasons. First, Betty and Howard are two of my favorite characters in the series, and they deserved some time in the spotlight. Second, it gave me a chance – for the first time in the whole series – to give readers a perspective other than Sara’s.
So, there you have it. Thank you for coming on this trip - I hope you like this glimpse into Betty and Howard’s lives, and into Betty’s thoughts!
This story is dedicated to everyone who’s supported or encouraged or helped me in my writing journey. You know who you are, and I definitely know who you are!
Dear Kat,
I know when I get home, you’re going to want to hear every detail of our trip. And I don’t want to let my best friend down, but the memory isn’t quite what it used to be. So I’m going to do something I haven’t done since – I don’t even remember when. Maybe high school? See what I mean about memory?
What was I saying? Funny, right? Anyway, I’m going to just add to this letter every day, like the diary I used to keep whenever it was that I kept one. Right now, we’re somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Fifty-five years old, and finally I’m out of the country for the first time.
According to the little computerized map, the closest land right now is Iceland, but it doesn’t look all that close. Howard is asleep, but I’m wide awake, despite two glasses of wine and two of those herbal supplements that are supposed to help you sleep. Howard took just one, and it knocked him right out. I don’t mind admitting that I’m very jealous at the moment.
The supplements were Sara’s idea, of course. She refused point-blank to prescribe actual sleeping pills; you know my daughter, always following the rules. And she’s especially careful about prescriptions, after what happened two years ago. I wish she’d been willing to play a little loose in this case, though. I’m going to be a wreck when we arrive if I don’t get some rest soon. I’m going to close my eyes right now.
***
It didn’t work. It’s fifteen minutes later, and I’m still wide awake. I don’t think we’re any closer to Iceland, if that’s what we’re heading towards. So I may as well keep writing. Did I tell you how this whole thing got started? I don’t remember. See? Memory again. That’s probably going to be a running theme.
Anyway, it was almost a year ago – back in January. I got sick of seeing the mess in Sara’s apartment – she really does try to keep things neat, but with two careers, four kids and a dog, well, things fall by the wayside. So I went upstairs to the apartment at lunch one day, and I started throwing stuff out. She had a stack of catalogs nearly a foot high, Kat! I threw them all in the garbage, but at the bottom there was her college alumni magazine, and she had a page marked. You know me – always curious. So I opened it up, and there was a big photo of a young woman, in jeans and a ratty t-shirt, wearing a floppy sunhat, looking over a rocky field with holes dug at regular intervals all across it.
I recognized her – she must have been one of Sara’s friends from her college dorm. Her name was Jane Barnaby, which I didn’t recognize, but it’s been several years, after all, and I only ever would have met her in passing. But what got my attention was – you have to promise not to laugh – the way the picture made me think of Stewart Granger. I imagined him lurking somewhere right outside the frame of the photo, making eyes at Jane.
I’m sure I’ve told you this, but you’ve probably forgotten - “King Solomon’s Mines” was the first movie I ever saw. I was six years old, and it was the most amazing, thrilling thing imaginable. For weeks afterwards, I had dreams almost every night about it. I was always Allan Quartermain’s clever, plucky daughter, right next to him exploring dark jungles, escaping from stampeding elephants, sneaking through booby-trapped ancient temples and fighting it out with bandits and tomb-robbers.
I saw it again when I was sixteen, and I had dreams for weeks afterwards then, too. But I wasn’t Allan Quartermain’s daughter anymore. Do I need to say anything more? I’m sure you can guess what those dreams were like. And, to tell you the truth, I still have them every so often. Sometimes Howard is Allan Quartermain – but sometimes it’s Stewart Granger. What can I say? You never forget your first…never mind, I’m getting off track here. I’m just glad Howard’s asleep and he can’t see how red I am right now.
Anyway, I suppose I was just enthralled by the idea of archaeology, even though there was a distinct lack of ancient temples, stampeding elephants and bandits in the article. It was still fascinating, and the most fascinating thing was that they welcomed volunteers – regular, average untrained people could come and dig with them. So I started investigating. I had to talk Howard around to the idea. He kept saying, “Why would we pay someone $2,000 for the privilege of doing manual labor for them?” Sara never said that, but I’m sure she and Brian were wondering the same thing.
I finally convinced Howard, and he even paid for the whole trip, as a combination birthday and anniversary gift to me. He won’t admit it, but I think by now he’s almost as excited as I am. The only downside is that we’re going to miss Christmas with the kids and grandkids. But they don’t mind. We live half a mile from them, after all, and we see them every day. This is the first time Howard and I have ever been out of the country, and they w
eren’t going to begrudge us the opportunity.
We’re nearly over Iceland (if that’s what it is) now. We’ll be landing in London in two hours, and then we have forty minutes to get to our connecting flight to Barcelona. I’m going to try and get some sleep again – I feel like maybe it’ll happen this time. Talk to you soon.
***
I never did fall asleep, and I almost paid dearly for it. We’re on another plane now, somewhere over southern France, and we should be landing in Barcelona in an hour or so. But it was quite the adventure getting onto this flight.
Neither of us was very alert when we got off the plane in London. Howard had just woken up and he was still groggy, and I was barely conscious. So, naturally, we followed the wrong sign and went through the customs check. Luckily, the line was short, and the kindly young man in the booth took pity on us. I assume that, dazed and lost as we must have looked, he didn’t think we were trying to smuggle anything into England.
Unfortunately, that put us outside the security area, and we had to go through the metal detectors and show our passports again, and this time there was a line. And when we got to the front, with only ten minutes before our flight, the young man waiting for us was not very kindly. I don’t enjoy being sneered at, but being sneered at in a British accent is much worse. I know how silly this will sound, but it felt like he was squeezing two hundred years of contempt - for America having the gall to rebel against Britain, I assume - into every question he asked. I was sure we were going to miss the flight, and that’s when Howard stepped up.
He leaned up to the window and started whispering to the man. Behind the window, our unfriendly passport control officer began nodding, and the sneer dropped right off his face. Then, without a word, he passed us through. As we were walking away, I heard him whisper to Howard, “Godspeed, mate.”
Once we were on the plane and in our seats, I asked Howard, “What did you say to him?”
“Do you remember what the guy – whatever his name was – what he did in that movie after they killed the girl in his apartment? We were watching it the other night, the Hitchcock movie.”
You know if it’s up to me, I’ll have an old movie on the TV every night. We were watching “The 39 Steps” last week. Howard usually doesn’t pay too much attention, but he likes spy stories so he was really watching. “Yes,” I said.
“You remember what he told the delivery guy, so that he could borrow his uniform and sneak out of the building,” Howard said. I don’t know if you know the movie, Kat. Robert Donat is a regular guy who gets mixed up with a woman who’s a British spy. The Germans kill her, and frame him for it. So, when he sees the milkman coming into the building, Robert Donat tells him that he’s just been with his mistress, and he needs to borrow the milkman’s uniform so nobody will recognize him coming out, and it won’t get back to his wife.
“Howard, what exactly did you say?”
He smiled at me. “I said that I saw one of my girlfriends right as we were coming out of the gate, and I had to get out of sight before she saw me and blabbed everything to you, so I went out the wrong exit to throw her off the trail. I told him, ‘Son, I’m asking you for a favor here, man to man.’”
I wasn’t sure whether to kiss him or slap him. I ended up just taking a deep breath and saying, “I guess he bought it.”
“From the look on his face, I think he’s been in that situation himself a time or two. He absolutely bought it.” The look on his face was so smug, I had to close my eyes and count to twenty before I felt like I could speak without saying something I’d regret.
“That was quick thinking, Howard,” I said. “But if you ever even joke about having a girlfriend again, I’m going to take the surgical kit from Sara’s office and cut your heart out.” You’d be proud; I said it with a completely straight face, and calmly as you please.
He was still smug, and he said, “That sounds a little harsh, Betty.” You know that I normally like his joking; it’s nice that he still does it, even after all these years. But I guess between fatigue, and annoyance at waiting in line, I was not in the best mood, and I just didn’t find it funny right then.
I was still perfectly calm, though. I said back to him, “No, it’s not. If I was being harsh, I’d cut something else off.” And that smug little smile fell off his face in no time at all. I’ll apologize to him later, after I’ve gotten some rest and I feel like myself again. Probably.
***
We’re here, in Barcelona. We’ve checked in at our hotel, the Le Meridien Barcelona. It’s beautiful, inside and out. Our room looks out onto the cathedral – we’re going to walk over there later. Right now, Howard is downstairs, exchanging money. It must be confusing for the people here, because they’re using both those new Euros, and their old money, the peseta.
This room, for example, costs 62,000 pesetas a night. I figured out what that works out to in dollars, but I didn’t believe the amount I came up with, so I asked Howard to double-check my math. I was right - it works out to around $400. I had no idea it was so expensive. But, like Howard said, it’s only one night, and since this is our first trip to Europe, we might as well live it up a little. We’re even going to open up the mini-bar, if you can believe that!
I just wanted to keep up with this; I can hear footsteps right outside the door, and I’m sure it’s Howard, so I’ll write more tonight.
***
It’s tomorrow morning – I know that doesn’t sound right, but you know what I mean. I never had a chance to write last night, after everything that happened. I don’t know what time it is right now. I didn’t change my watch, so it still says two-thirty, and my body thinks it’s around five in the morning.
OK, I looked. It’s seven-thirty. Howard is in the shower, so I have a few minutes to catch you up on yesterday. After Howard came back up to the room, I took a little nap, and when I woke up, I was still a little annoyed at him for his joke back in London. And I think he could tell, and he was starting to get a little annoyed at me for being annoyed.
The nice thing about being married for thirty-three years is that we know each other so well, and we both realized that we had to do something to shake ourselves out of it. And we were both starving, so we ventured out to find a restaurant. There was no shortage of choices – we’re staying right in the heart of the city. I already mentioned the cathedral – we walked by it, and it’s – I’m not sure how to describe it. “Huge” and “massive” and “enormous” don’t begin to do it justice. I remember when they had the Olympics here – I think it was 1992, maybe? – they kept showing the cathedral, but seeing it on TV is nothing compared to the reality of it. I wanted to go inside – I figured that there must be regular tours – but Howard wanted to eat first. I was all ready to argue with him, but my stomach betrayed me. It let out a growl that you could hear clear across the street, so I had to give in.
We went into the very next restaurant we saw, which (we later discovered) was one of the top ten rated restaurants in the city. There were no prices on the menu, which normally would have turned us off on the place, but, as Howard kept saying, “We’re on vacation.”
Some of the menu items turned us off as well – who ever thought of eating kidneys? They were right there on the menu – Lamb kidneys in a white wine sauce. I know how I sound, Kat, but there are just some parts of the animal you shouldn’t eat!
We both opted for less exotic dishes – I had ravioli with sausage and mushrooms (absolutely Heavenly), and Howard had the Argentine Angus steak. Of course, we both had dessert, and after all that food – and a bottle and a half of wine – neither of us was in much condition to move, let alone do any sightseeing. At least, not until the bill arrived. When Howard looked at it, it was like he got an electric shock. He showed it to me, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. 50,000 pesetas – over $300! For lunch! Now, you know that we’re far from frugal, but $300 for lunch is just out of hand. B
ut it was our own fault, and Howard – very grudgingly – pulled out his credit card and paid the bill.
It took the waiter probably twenty minutes to pick up the card, and another ten to come back with the receipt. That was just as well; we needed the time to digest our meal! Howard signed the receipt, and we waddled out of the restaurant. On our way out, the waiter actually came up to us and asked Howard if he’d made a mistake. We were both confused, and Howard asked him, “What’s the problem?”
It turns out that we over-tipped. By a lot. I’m sure there’s something about that in the Frommer’s Guide, but I didn’t read it all the way through. Obviously Howard didn’t change the amount, and his generosity made us a new friend.
At that point, Howard wanted to go back to the hotel and take a nap, but the cathedral was right there. I said, “Who knows how late the tours run?” and I started to head up the steps. He was behind me, maybe fifty feet, and that’s the only reason that what happened next happened the way it did. If he’d been next to me, he wouldn’t have seen anything, and he wouldn’t have been in a position to – sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, I was about halfway up the steps, and Howard was behind me. All of a sudden, right ahead of me, a young man started shouting, pointing at me, or past me, I couldn’t really tell. It wasn’t Spanish – I couldn’t tell what language it was. I looked up at him. I couldn’t help it – that’s what you do when someone shouts at you. It’s automatic. So while I was looking at him, and kind of startled, I didn’t notice his accomplice. I had no idea anything was going on until a leather strap fell off my shoulder and onto the stone steps.
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