The Dream Operator

by Mike O'Driscoll

  And even though I want to believe, it doesn’t feel right. How can she have known I’d come back? How can she know anything? I want to ask her but my doubt causes the dream to fall apart and I’m looking down on the same room, at the same two bodies on the bed. I try to force myself back to Lacey but just as with the other girl, that dream has gone for now. I feel something collapse, some hope or expectation and as I watch, the flesh of the world falls away like the skin of an overripe fruit.

  *

  When he woke, Shannon was gone. Pale sunlight washed the centre of the room. He felt disoriented, his head full of thoughts clamouring like voices in a badly dubbed movie. He struggled to separate them from what he remembered of the dream and tried to work out how much had been real. At the window he lit a cigarette, holding down the smoke from the first drag as though the nicotine might clear his head. It hadn’t felt like his own dream, despite Lacey’s presence. He hadn’t thought about her in years.

  They had found each other in the Orpheum. She was the one who’d introduced him to Reverie and helped him realise his own lucidity. They used to dream together, good dreams in which they became lovers long before they did in the waking world. The dreams revealed the life they could have. He thought he could make it real, but Lacey said it would never be as good. She was content to hold onto that same dream, but Moon wanted more. He wanted to do for them both what he was paid to do for others.

  Drake arranged the assignations. He’d introduce Moon to the clients an hour or two in advance, so he could talk to them about what they wanted to dream. After he’d been briefed, they’d take the Reverie together and Moon would lay it out for them while they were going under, his words lending shape and substance to their dreams. For all that he had gotten inside their heads, he had never really been able to control the dreams. They had merely been responding to desires they’d already revealed. They were so primed and receptive that things hardly ever went wrong. And if they did, that was the risk they took and it was Drake who took care of loose ends.

  The last dream he’d shared with Lacey had involved a client, an associate of Astorbilt’s named Despern. Despern was an experienced dreamer looking for something new. What he wanted was to experience someone else’s dream—not the random, unstructured dreams of a novice, nor the carefully constructed and contained scenarios that Moon would create. He wanted something in between—the wilder, less circumscribed dream narrative of an experienced Rev user. Drake had suggested Lacey. At first Moon had been against it, but then he had figured it might be a way to help her expand her ability and realize her full potential.

  She jumped at the chance when he told her. He told Drake she’d do it but he had one condition. He would be there with them, tracking the narrative, maintaining a link that would allow him to guide Lacey back to consciousness if anything went wrong. Despern had seemed bored as Moon explained how they would proceed. He questioned the need for Moon’s presence, suggesting it would corrupt the purity of the experience. But Moon was insistent, and by the time the Reverie began to sharpen his lucidity, he was aware of Despern’s presence in Lacey’s dream. At first, the world she inhabited was familiar, one that she and Moon had shared many times. Despern seemed taken with its peculiarities, its illogical promise and spirals of fulfilment.

  Moon sensed the effort Lacey had put into her creation. She was making this for him more than for the client, he felt, demonstrating a self-belief that perhaps she’d only just discovered. He was happy for her and reached out with his mind, wanting to let her know how well she was doing. What he touched wasn’t real. No thoughts or emotions were reciprocated. He withdrew in horror from the simulacrum, his consciousness flailing as he tried to reconnect with the real Lacey. A strand of thought led him to her, and showed the extent to which Despern had infiltrated her dream and corrupted it. She was entirely caught up in his web of depravity, and almost out of Moon’s reach. He tried to retrieve the situation by slipping into Despern’s unconscious but it was too late. In trying to control and reshape his dream, he’d caused it to collapse in on itself and disappear inside another dream. One from which neither Lacey nor Despern had emerged.

  The memory was too painful. He thought about the other girl in the dream, sure that it had been Shannon. It felt like he had intruded on her dream, and when he’d become aware of it, it had rattled him. He didn’t think she’d been aware of his presence, not until he’d slipped out of that dream and into one where he’d been able to watch her dream beside him. He wondered if that was why she’d left. Maybe she’d seen him as he really was, seen that his reasons for returning to the hotel had nothing to do with her.

  Light rain had begun to fall on Hennepin Road. The traffic was sparse as he headed towards the station, still troubled by the girl’s absence. She’s nothing to you, he told himself. Nothing but aggravation you don’t need. The lie didn’t make him feel any better.

  Through what was left of the morning, he sold the last of his drugs and in the early afternoon he went to see his connection in Korby. Arctor operated his own lab, had a chemistry undergrad who produced cheap Rev. Low-grade stuff, but then, Arctor wasn’t affiliated to Drake. After stocking up, he called into a Safeway store and brought groceries, meat and beer.

  Back at his apartment he got an Anchor Steam from the fridge, and flicked through the onscreen guide. Nothing he saw listed on the mainstream channels appealed and he found it hard to focus. The truth was he couldn’t stop thinking about the girl, about where she was and how things would work out for her. Not good, if she stuck with Lucas, and he doubted she’d make it on her own. It depressed him to think about it, took the shine off what remained of the dream. Another beer failed to keep his mood from taking a downturn. He streamed Out of the Past. Chances were, watching Nick Nolte fuck himself up over Melanie Griffith would take his mind off things. Instead, as Nolte’s Jeff Baily played out the mistakes that would kill him, Moon found himself thinking about the lies that made up his own life and how, given one opportunity to do the right thing, he had messed that up too.

  *

  Moon was reaching in his pocket for cash when he saw a squat, heavyset man climb up out of the basement stairwell at the south end of the Orpheum. He told the driver to keep moving and watched through the rear window as the man walked to a sedan parked in the driveway.

  “Pull over here.” Moon indicated a space just past the north end of the hotel. The sedan joined the northbound traffic and moved towards the taxi. As it slid past, Moon saw the thickset man in the front, and in the back, a man called Milo Landry. Struck by a sudden sense of unease, he paid the driver and got out.

  In the gloomy foyer a dreamer stumbled out of a room and stared intently at him, his head leaning over to one side as though there was something abstract about Moon’s appearance. “They don’t got to be real if you don’t wan’ ‘em to be,” the man said. “You just gotta close yer eyes and make them go away.” Moon pushed past him and searched the corridors leading off the foyer, stumbling across derelict junkies and hookers giving head to dead-eyed johns. In the quieter rooms, he saw men and women sprawled across rotting furniture, their eyes twitching as they chased impossible dreams. Some didn’t move at all. On the second floor he went to Shannon’s room and found it empty. He searched the other rooms along the corridor, trying to stay on top of the growing sense of panic. He was breathing hard by the time he got back to the main staircase, and bad thoughts skittered around his head like sugar-crazed flies.

  Milo fucking Landry. He’d been Drake’s conduit to Astorbilt back when Moon still dreamed for a living. It had been Milo who introduced Despern to Drake. He had a knack for recognising the secret desires of men with the money to indulge them. Although he was still working for Drake, Moon had heard he had a sideline in catering for clients with more esoteric tastes. He wondered if it was Landry that Lucas was working for, and felt his anxiety slide towards dread.

  He continued up to the attic floor where he found Shannon sleeping. A beam of sunligh
t fell through the crack in the curtains. At the window he smoked a cigarette and stared through the glass. Instead of looking down on Hennepin, he saw a courtyard full of trees that hid the ground from view. He heard the cries of animals and birds from beneath the canopy. It occurred to him that he might be dreaming. Or witnessing someone else’s dream. He wondered if it was one of Shannon’s. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her a while. Despite the dirt and grime etched into her face he saw a sullen beauty there. Her breathing was shallow and irregular, as though her sleep was troubled. Small, indecipherable sounds slipped out of her mouth, like she was talking to someone in her head. Her eyes moved beneath the lids.

  He wondered what it was she had run away from but he drew back from that line of thinking, not wanting to be reminded of his own mistakes. He lay down and touched her back, feeling the hard knobs of her spine through the thin fabric of her jacket. She moved in her sleep and rolled on to her back, her mouth falling open slightly. He leaned over and kissed her, surprised at how it made him feel. He lay with one arm stretched across her stomach, closed his eyes and went searching.

  *

  The glasshouse is full of the incessant chatter of birds and insects I don’t recognise. I cut a path through the dripping vegetation, aware of the presence of chimerical creatures that have no wish to reveal themselves. The clouds above the canopy have been slashed and their blood streaks across the sky. I press my face against a cracked, dirty pane and the face I see on the other side is red and slick, something not yet fully formed. Dark shapes ripple along the floor and slide beneath the glass with a sound like mercury. My mouth tastes of ash.

  I step through into an arboretum of leafless trees. In place of greenery, naked bodies dangle from the branches, pale skin glistening with dew. Their lifeless eyes and hard, unyielding flesh makes them seem like dolls. Only for the odd, humming sound that comes from their heads, I would not believe them to be alive. As a hush settles on the room I feel an inchoate pressure in my belly as these strange fruits start to twist and turn on the vine. Their mouths are suddenly unzipped and smaller creatures emerge, pulling themselves out of unhinged jaws, as though enacting some obscene parturition.

  “Can you make them real?” says a voice from nowhere. I look around but it’s not her dream. It seems as though this is a dream embedded in the very fabric of the room. I have no use for it, so I make the world spin and carry me away. Later, in the space between one dream and another, the past breathes secrets into my ear, reminding me what is still possible.

  I am pointed in the right direction, towards a small house on the edge of a small town where I find Shannon dreaming of another, older girl, eyes like sunshine and a smile big enough to hide inside. Listen to me, says big sister. Do what I do but only when I say. When I don’t say, when my mouth doesn’t move, don’t you move. This is how we are safe. She hears the words but they make no sense to her. No matter—the sunshine eyes and the smile are what count. Those, and being still. Being still will carry you a long way.

  All

  the

  way

  from

  there

  to

  here.

  But here is where he waits and where she moves even when big sister’s mouth does not open. And she saw the bad thing he did, this man who calls himself her father. Not once, not twice, but many times over and Oh Lord, how she screamed the house down. He saw her moving and told her she was next. She ran from him looking for familiar boltholes but big sister wasn’t smiling anymore and so she had to find new places to hide.

  She She.

  hid sinks

  in into

  the the

  gaps spaces

  between

  inside

  dreams words.

  The bad man never found her. She never found big sister. She has been living in the margins ever since, but always on the look out, always watching for that golden road that will carry her a little further towards realising the dream she carries inside her head.

  I hear the jingle-jangle music of a carnival and see the lights of the travelling show as it moves over the brow of the night hill. A terrible sadness falls on me like a wave, pounding me into the sand until I’m nothing but grains. I see her running towards the disappearing rides, knowing she’ll never catch them. This is a hurt she hides deep inside herself. A hurt not known to anyone. The world shudders and blurs. I lose focus for a moment and when my vision clears, I have a tangible memory of her. Not just something to see but a body I can touch, thoughts I can hear. It is impossible, yet somehow it’s real. In this light, she’s beautiful. She talks in her sleep and I sense the fear buried in the words. It is clear, like the mark of some disease on her flesh. I lay my hands on her trouble spots, kneading them all together in one small patch at her navel. Her body hums as I lower my mouth to her belly and tastes the dread on my tongue. I take it down inside myself, and hide her in a dream of my own making.

  *

  She was staring out the window when he woke, silhouetted against the afternoon light. “You know what it sounds like when people lie to you?” she said. “How something in their voices is different, just enough so you can tell they’re lying?”

  “No,” Moon said. “I don’t think I ever learned to tell.”

  “I know you’re trying to help me. And I know you think you know why you’re doing it.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Shannon.”

  She turned to face him. “Do you? So why are you here?”

  “This morning, I saw a man leaving the hotel.”

  She nodded. “The same one as the other night. That’s why I hid.”

  He sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “He works for a man called Milo Landry.”

  “So?”

  “You said the man called you by name. How do you think he knew it?”

  She returned to the bed and sat. “I guess Lucas must of said.”

  “So you know Lucas works for him?” Moon touched her back. “You know what it is Milo does?”

  “He makes films.” She spoke quietly, her voice distant, as though daydreaming. “Kinky stuff, Lucas said. Like porn.”

  “It’s more than that. They hurt people. And your boyfriend told him about you. That’s why that goon was here—looking for you. You have to stay hid until I can find Lucas.”

  “And what then?”

  “Get him to change his mind.”

  “You think he’ll listen to you?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Later, Moon watched a car slide to a halt outside the hotel. Lucas got out, looking a little unsteady on his feet. When the car drove off and Moon got closer, he saw why. Lucas had bruises on his face and one eye was swollen. He staggered across the sidewalk and slumped against the railings. Moon grabbed one arm and stopped him from sinking to his knees.

  “Hey,” Moon said. “Can we talk?”

  Lucas’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Do I know you?”

  They’d given him Rev, Moon figured, to nullify the hurt. “Sure you do, Lucas. I’m a friend of Shannon’s.”

  Lucas looked confused. “She ain’t got nobody but me.”

  “You thirsty, kid? You wanna get a beer?”

  Lucas touched his puffy eye and flinched. “Shit. I feel like I been in a fight.”

  “How about that beer?”

  “You buying?”

  “Sure.”

  He took Lucas to The Coal Train and bought him a bottle of Coors and a whiskey. When they were seated near the back of the bar, Lucas leaned across the table. “I remember you.”

  “Take it easy. You’ll hurt your brain with all this thinking.”

  “I told you stay away from Shannon.” Lucas sniffed at the whiskey and drank it. “I take care of her.”

  “You’re working for a man named Milo, right?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “You can’t trust him.”

  Lucas yawned and knuckled his eyes. “You don’t know anythi
ng about it.”

  “You told him about your girlfriend.”

  “So? He said there’s more in it for us if there’s two.”

  “You know why?”

  Lucas hesitated. “It ain’t so bad.” He picked up the bottle of Coors and stared at the label. “It beats hustling for tricks on the street.”

  Moon gestured at Lucas’ face. “What about this?”

  “This is nothing I can’t take,” Lucas said, dully. “Milo said we gotta make it look real for the clientele.”

  “The clientele? You know who they are?”

  “It don’t matter. It’s not a permanent thing.” Lucas drank from the bottle and wiped his mouth. “He says if we do three or four shoots we’re gonna be set up.”

  “You’re happy for her to get beaten?”

  “She’ll be okay.” Lucas reached in his jacket and brought out a tub of pills. “She takes one of these babies and it’ll all be worth it.”

  “Don’t make her do this, Lucas.”

  “Hey fuck you, pal. You got no say over me. Or Shannon.”

  “She’s smarter than you.” Moon reached across the table and grabbed Lucas’s hand. “She sees the truth.”

  Lucas pushed back from the table. “Take your fucking hand off me. You want a taste, you gotta pay.” He rose and stormed from the bar.

  Moon felt foolish for getting involved. It was something he’d promised himself after he’d lost Lacey, when Drake told him he was through. Stay away from things that don’t concern you. Do your business, keep your nose clean, don’t get involved. Cardinal rule, written on his brain.

  Which was why it didn’t make sense that twenty minutes later he was standing outside Drake’s Wintertown operation. He entered the front office and rapped on the glass partition, behind which a slab of a guy stared at a monitor. “Is Drake in back?”