Spin Dry

by Greg Hollingshead

  Silver was holding a microphone at the deep red lips of aguy in an evening gown who was quietly reporting his name and address.

  “OK Derek Harmsby of Grappling Claw Crescent, Village-on-the-Millpond, did your dream involve flying in the air, because if it did not, I will give you twenty dollars—” Silver snapping a crisp twenty-dollar bill high in the air above his head—”and if it did, you may choose between this twenty-dollar bill and The Mystery Box!”

  Here Rachel noticed curtains parting on a pink box the size of a dishwasher, a big red question mark on the front.

  Derek Harmsby studied his eyebrows. “Yes it did,” he said, and everybody cheered.

  “Great, Derek! Now, the choice is yours: keep the twenty or take a chance on The Mystery Box. What will it be?”

  Here repetitive music while the audience cried, “Take The Box! Take The Box!”

  But Derek’s glances at The Box were anxious. “I’ll keep the twenty,” he said finally with a soft exhalation.

  From the audience uncompromising groans of disappointment that turned to laughter when Silver did some comic business about tucking the twenty into Derek’s bodice. Then Silver’s face filled the monitors. “OK, Derek Harmsby of Grappling Claw Crescent, Village-on-the-Millpond. Let’s see, what you missed, by not choosing, The Box!”

  Here Silver’s mother—a popular feature on the show, apparently: whistles and cheers—came onstage looking somewhat boxlike herself in a sequined sack dress and matching silver heels to push aside the panel.

  “For your mother, wife, or best girl, Derek,” cried Silver, “you’d have won a complete beauty set of Elizabeth Arden Night Magic skin conditioner and perfume, a value of eighty-five dollars!”

  Oohs and aahs from the audience, a few We told yous, Derek melting in genuine chagrin.

  And then Silver was off again, to Share That Dream with a woman dressed in a bonnet, little sundress, and booties, who because she had a dream about being helpless and loved won seventy-five dollars; a man dressed as a rat, who kept ten dollars because his dream had no dark passages but if it had would have won a three-hundred-dollar garbage compactor; and a woman with a giant papier mâché change purse on her lap who, to moans of envy, won one of those Casiotone pianos with a memory, for a dream about leaving an inanimate object, excluding a hat, at the home of a friend of the opposite sex. Suddenly then, Silver was talking to a fellow in raincoat and dark glasses named Cam Wilkes, of Hillock Rise, Village-on-the-Mill-pond. When Wilkes said his name the audience broke into scattered applause. “Family and friends here, Mr. Wilkes?” asked Silver.

  “No, Alex,” Wilkes replied, twisting in his seat to see who they were. “This’ll be PAGO folk.” He half stood, Jane pulling at his sleeve, and cried, “Oh, oh, oh!” to further applause. “We’re getting out more,” he told Silver.

  While this was taking place, Rachel craned to see who was sitting on either side of Wilkes and Jane. Next to Jane was a woman wearing the whiskers of a cat. Next to Wilkes was a Victorian-looking man in a trilby, with a full beard. Leon? As Harry? Rachel strained to see the monitor.

  “OK, Mr. Wilkes. Does you dream involve a matter of life or death? Because if it does not, I will give you one hundred dollars, but if it does, you may choose between this one-hundred-dollar bill and going on to another question about your dream that could be worth much, much more to you than one hundred dollars!”

  Silence in the studio.

  “Yes, Alex. It does,” Wilkes said quietly. “I’ll take the second question.”

  Cheering.

  “OK, Cam Wilkes of Hillock Rise, Village-on-the-Millpond. Here is your second question. Did this matter of life and death take place outside, of the home? I will repeat the question.” He did. “If your answer is no, you will win five, hundred dollars. If your answer is yes, you will win a choice between five, hundred dollars and The Mystery Prize behind Curtain Number 3!”

  “Yes, Alex,” Wilkes said without hesitation. “It took place outside of the home. My home.”

  Cheering.

  “OK, Mr. Cam Wilkes of Hillock Rise, Village-on-the-Millpond, what will it be. This mint-condition five-hundred-dollar bill I hold in my hand or The Mystery Prize behind Curtain 3?”

  Reiterative music. The Prize! The Prize! Take the Prize!

  “I’ll take The Mystery Prize,” Wilkes said, and the monitor showed a close-up of his hand squeezing Jane’s.

  Bursting through Mystery Curtain 3 came Silver’s mother driving a pedal car in the shape of a Greyhound bus. Wilkes had just won a ninety-day bus tour of North America for two! The audiencewent crazy. They whistled and clapped and stamped their feet.

  But now there was very little time left in the show, and even before the excitement died, Silver was holding his microphone under the face of that bearded guy in the trilby, who was not Leon, had dreamed about his father, and refused two hundred and fifty dollars in favour of The Mystery Prize, an electric carving knife. Disappointment and perfunctory applause escalating to real end-of-show thanks-for-the-fun hand pounding.

  “OK, folks,” cried Alex Silver above the din, having leapt back onto the stage, “That’s all our time for tonight! Hope you’ve had as much fun as we did. Don’t forget, everybody: What can’t be remembered can’t be left behind!

  “I’m Dr. Alex Silver. If you think the unconscious is not a whole lot of fun, just tune in next week, right here on Village TV, and watch your very own friends and neighbours Share, That, Dream!”

  The manic in the safari jacket moved in sideways from the left, eliciting applause. Some kept their eyes on him, some on the monitors. A groundswell of waving hands pursued the panning camera.

  And then the kleigs had been doused and the studio was emptying out. Cam Wilkes had spotted Rachel and waved. Still scanning for Leon, Rachel waved back. Wilkes came over, holding tight to Jane’s hand.

  “Congratulations, Cam,” Rachel said.

  “Thanks, Rachel. What a wonderful, appropriate prize! I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it!”

  “Cam, was Leon here tonight?”

  “No, Rachel! We thought he must be with you! Did you try his office?”

  As they left the studios of Village TV, Cam said, “Listen, Rachel. I couldn’t get anywhere with Dick this afternoon. They’re going ahead.”

  “When?”

  “End of the week—”

  “But they can’t!”

  “I know—”

  “Life is shock,” Jane muttered.

  Rachel and Wilkes looked at her together. “Too true, Sweetheart,” Wilkes cried, “but has it done you any good?”

  “I want more,” Jane said quietly. “That’s all. More. M-O-R-E. More. Got it?”

  Rachel gave Wilkes and Jane a lift to The Buhrstone Restaurant in the Olde Mill, declining, when she saw true animosity flit like a bat across Jane’s face as Cam issued the invitation, to join them for a late dinner.

  Instead, Rachel drove home. She was glad she did, because who should be there but the missing Leon.

  ——

  “He came back!?” cried Alex Silver, starting in surprise and nearly knocking over that giant anthurium.

  “Briefly. Only very briefly.”

  “So there’s more.” Silver seemed disappointed. “I was kind of hoping we could finish before the weekend.”

  “Well I’m sorry, Alex. Have I been going too slow?”

  “What can we do. If there’s more there’s more. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Let’s say 11 a.m. Here.”

  Rachel sighed.

  “Hey Rachel? I have to ask you. What did you really think of the show? Ever since we started taping I’ve had this fantasy that one day somebody’d walk in off Endosperm Circle who wasn’t already a fan. What was your honest reaction?”

  “My honest reaction?” Rachel fingered the water gun in her pocket. “Alex, please believe me when I say that in my opinion a show like Share That Dream suggests that there is no hope for Western science, culture, or intelligence.
I experienced deep humiliation on behalf of everyone involved.”

  “Sure,” cried Silver, “but didn’t you love it?”

  FIVE

  No matter how fast Rachel moves, how much she takes in, she is still behind. Just that little bit late. To notice. Act. Has been scooped by an intimation neglected till this moment. Careless Rachel. Keeps failing to make it, can’t ever seem to learn. Wants, accordingly, out. This is dream deprivation, this also—as it happens—is Harry. Habitual remorse in snapbrim, three-piece, thick shoes. He is the semblance of the main version, the official line, the better one. Like a promise, like regret, like the enemy himself, mostly he is built out of air. Oh yeah, and fear. Gee, it wasn’t good enough, was it? What if I don’t even rate a mention? What if they can’t see me? Scared laughter. Ballooning shadow of the thing itself, with dust clouds. Harry is a light trick, a throwback. The friend of a friend. Somebody’s cousin’sbrother-in-law, the one who turned the family business around in six months, who shot the kingsnake in his sleeping bag, who beat cancer. Harry is innocent of doubt, mercy, presence, fails to comprehend these virtues. The bastard has no mind, knows nothing appropriate to be on one—

  Unless, unless … he does understand, everything, can know or love at will, anybody he puts his mind to, it’s easy for him, and this is the real reason he keeps his mind empty at all times, receptive, not jerky and jam-packed like Rachel’s—is a terrific guy, really, asks only to be looked at the right way—

  And what way would that be, this ‘right way’? Wouldn’t also be Harry’s way, by any chance? I mean, is this love and learn? Could be. What do you think?

  Think? Are you kidding? Got eight hours straight REM I can have? Then I’ll show you think!

  At the Dream Centre a harrowing morning. Babs’ fulsome concern for Rachel in her marital squalor, a concern already modulated by dream deprivation, had switched to outright bitchy needling after the Puff confrontation. And then, twice in one hour, she asked what Leon was up to these days, and Rachel offered to beat her senseless. After that, Rachel was outside of Babs’ field of acknowledgement. A big relief on both sides. All Babs’ energy was needed for a Grand Guignol struggle shaping up with Frankie for attention from the increasingly snappish and moody Alex Silver.

  Babs (plaintive): “Dr. Silver, could you help me with my electrodes, pretty-please? They’re not very well made, are they?” Frankie (sneering): They’d work fine if she’d stop fiddling with them all the time.”

  Silver (with clenched fists): “Would you two back off for just five minutes? You’re like a couple of two-year-olds—”

  Babs (writhing coyly): “Yes, Bully-wully—”

  Frankie (sniffing in Rachel’s direction): “And I suppose she’s not?”

  Mind you, Rachel’s version could have been a serious warpage of what was really going on at the Dream Centre. Her understanding, it seemed, had fallen into about the same condition as her powers of speech. Simple sentences were turning to rubble in her mouth. Probably just as well, because the merest gesture—Silver repeatedly pushing his big red glasses up his nose as he pored over his data, Babs’ brazen cleavage-thrusting, Frankie’s disaffected little sniff—were triggering massive rock slides of animosity in Rachel’s head. Who knows what ugliness she might have screamed into the yatter of those three by the time it was sounding like shortwave chatter on some bad frequency over a cheap amplifier with a serious feedback problem?

  As if this wasn’t enough, Puff was going through a difficult run of dunkings. She would claw her way back onto the belt, doze, shiver, scramble, and it would happen again. Poor Puff. Then again, when Rachel tried to be right there for her, the cat made as if to rip the good intentions off Rachel’s face. The thing was, Puff could take one look at this woman and know perfectly well that if she weren’t empathizing so hard she’d be loathing every particle of Puff’s feline being, even now could hardlyrestrain herself from grabbing Puff by the chest skin and giving her a good rousing now LOOK here cat LOWER those hackles DON’T spit at me when I am talking to you TAKE your claws out of my arm, the inevitable next step being Puff’s whiskers pressed for the count by a leather glove against the bottom of the tank. Rachel could only hope that before this particular scenario unfolded, one of them would be allowed to dream …

  Unable to handle the atmosphere around the Dream Centre, Rachel drove over to 201 Dell as soon as she had fed Puff—or rather, left her cowering in a corner of her chicken wire cage too busy fighting off predators to make it over to her dish. Silver said he’d put her back in her tank when she had finished. “See you at eleven, Rachel?”

  “Eleven.”

  At 201 Dell the first thing Rachel noticed was that Leon had been through to pick up clean socks and underwear. On her un-slept-in bed he had left a one-word note—”Copycat”—that she stared at more or less uncomprehending as she continued her drift through the empty house, shedding shoes, skirt, blouse, bra (rubbing a damp indented line along the underside of each breast where the fabric was stitched—pencil test? hell, she’d flunk the flashlight test), stepping out of underpants, knowing that this would banish the sadness, rage, lust, fear for all of twenty minutes—the lust, to be accurate, maybe twice that long…. Still…. An old imperative it seemed, simple, its own time and structure, a small respite, a private amusement, at adesperate time, to transform the world from sullen environ of refractory mementoes to a shopper’s choice of voluptuary delight: mirrors turning to windows on an outrageous stranger, knobs to cocks, open flames to scary crotch magnets, shower heads to vibrators; sofa, chairs, rugs to possible hasty avenues for the panting collapse.

  Off to one side thinking…. This time I refuse to rush, absolutely refuse, will do it properly, my poor pleasure centres deprived for long enough, I am tired of telling myself, ‘It’s only me,’ like not caring what you eat just because you’re eating alone, talk about self-abuse … And so it was, some time later, Rachel found herself in Leon’s little den, of all places, stretched out in his La-Z-Boy, of all things, the chair tilted all the way back, vague fingers working a breast, a leg over each chair arm, stroking slowly, ass already slippery against the leather, lubricious sensation broadcasting from the radio of crotch…. this whole delicious white-on-black lewd sprawl here vivid in her mind (legs wide, fingers working, hips finding their own eager rhythm, nipple risen hard now under the rub of palm, free breast tossing), until, until, until, until, until—

  Ahh, ahh, aahh, aaaahhhh!

  Ahh.

  Ah.

  And Rachel found herself back in Leon’s messy dope-stale den, sunk indifferent in an ugly mechanical chair with a wet rear end, sticky fingers, shivering—it was cold down here next to the damn garage. And yet she did not on that account feel sad, or even sordid. The down-car plunge to tacky was just too rapid to cause her to feel anything other than like laughing out loud. Which she did.

  The tears were freak.

  But as she heaved the old chair vertical and got up to hunt through the chaos of Leon’s desk for some Kleenex so she could mop up and get out of here, put on dropped clothes, switch on some lights, climb back on the rails, lay renewed claim to what little sanity remained, she did find herself wondering who exactly that sprawl had been for, anyway, what being of the air. This, she knew, had been no fantasy exhibitionism but fantasy voyeurism. So under whose authority could that image claim to be so absolute? Through whose eyes could watching it so arouse her? Familiar eyes or a stranger’s? Hostile eyes or sympathetic? The eyes of the maker of that scene or the eyes of its consumer? A lover’s or a beloved’s? Exactly whose knowledge had she just strapped on, anyway?

  Her own? Or Harry’s?

  And then Rachel was upstairs in the bedroom, modestly holding a towel around her with one hand while tugging at the handle of her underwear drawer, when that Harry dream from the night before last came back, all of it, at once, as memory.

  She has just boarded an old train. Out the window snow passes horizontal, bone-white trees like silhouette
s in negative; an occasional rainbow or shark, colours staggering, sometimes a word such as Bleet in Stonehenge lettering against distant hills, short crowds of gold kids eating white Popsicles, slowly waving.

  Weird train, she thinks. I’m all alone? Vague memory from the platform: her mother weaving forward through the cars, heading for the engine. Anxious, Rachel looks around. Worn plush. The aisle’s rubber matting trodden through to lino. Looks around some more. In the back of the seat in front of her is a handle, a rivetted baroque metal dangling thing. A dresser drawer handle. A deep sad drawer, in shadow. In the dream, this drawer is meant to be a suitcase, for the trip, but who is it kidding. A wooden fragrance of musty containment. On tiptoes—shrinking now—little Rachel peers inside.

  It is his drawer. Green-lensed sunglasses with tortoiseshell rims. Rare, monogrammed tie clips and cufflinks in a leather case. A dozen straight-nib pens held by a bright green string. Ace playing cards, in blue. (An intricate design, exact nature not available to memory.) Architect’s drawings in a tight roll. A pocket watch, steam locomotive on the back. A stack of silver dollars. Silk handkerchiefs in auburns and wines …

  Repository of wonder. A whole drawerful of the thing itself, of things to set the standard for all such things. Things half a child’s belief.

  The phone rang. “Your voice is funny,” her mother said. “You’re not on drugs, are you?”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Sleep and drugs are no way to handle this, Rachel. You’ve just got to comb your hair, fix your face, put on a new skirt, and get out there and wrestle another son of a bitch to the mat. Maybe this time you’ll have learned from experience.” Suddenlyher mother was talking about money. “I happened to buy some stocks that did all right, not fifty thousand all right, more like thirty-five as a matter of fact, but what’s fifteen thousand nowadays? Another nickel and dime investment. If I will the money to you, the government takes half. It’s my life. I’m the one who put in the time. I’m only telling you this because I never see you anymore since Whozits dragged you out to that subdivision in the middle of nowhere where nobody knows anybody, and the old traditions, like family and keeping in touch, are dead.”