Therapist Dream

E is over at the house babysitting. But she’s come with her own kid, a young toddler in diapers with a messy head of blonde hair.

I’ve made a card for her to say thank you for all she’s done with $5 in it. It sits on a silver tray near the door.

We’re in some kind of big apartment that you have to get to by climbing a narrow flight of stairs. It reminds me of the 86th Street Theatre Lab.

Heather is there and oblivious to the card, to the awkwardness of E being in the apartment with us. At one point we are all talking and I turn to E,. She is somehow lounging back in a black bikini bathing suit. But no one seems to notice this. Not even E who just talks like there is nothing unusual. She feels cold, yet tuned in. I think she knows I want to talk to her but she is ignoring me. I feel stupid for wanting to give her a card. Stupid that I feel I need to.

Heather tells me I need to run an errand. I put on my new Taft shoes that have flowers on them. They are like Oscar Wilde’s missing footwear. I leave and I’m in a neighborhood lined with Beaux Arts houses and hedges. It’s very French. Then suddenly I’m on a ski lift type transport taking me along a side boulevard.

People walk beneath me and the sidewalk is busy. A woman in a long dress flashes her underwear as she adjusts something under her skirt waist. She looks around to see if anyone has noticed, but it’s all normal and she walks on: Nothing to see here. Or at least that’s what everyone seems to be pretending.

Someone calls to me from the ground below my ski lift. “Hey Tooey, I need some fashion advice,” I hear. I get off the transom. The man who’s called me is handsome but old. He looks like he has plenty of money from the ski vest he is wearing, his wraparound sunglasses, his capped teeth. He says something about my clothes and I look down at my Taft Shoes. I’m wearing them with a running suit. I tell him I’m not Tooey and don’t know anything about fashion.

Then I’m walking toward my house/apartment and I take a wrong turn and as I correct my path in the drive, I see bored kids in the windows of the house.

I go up the stairs to my apartment and E is still there. She is getting her stuff to go. I still haven’t given her the card which sits like a bomb on the tray.

I go into another room that seems to be used to hold coats for a party. There’s a European style restaurant urinal there and I use it.

Then I go back out to where E and Heather are, still talking.