Last night I had one of those dreams again. Nothing happened, nothing ever does—no central dramatic event. Usually I’m so busy puzzling over some vague inconsistency, some hint that I’m actually asleep, that I hardly notice the drifts of dread settling all around me. This time I found myself downtown at midday, or so it seemed from the quality of the light, the eyesmacking noonishness, though the empty streets contradicted it. I came to Eaton’s, which is Sears now. (This was what I was puzzling over, not the eerie lack of traffic, the bizarre absence of pedestrians, but Was Eaton’s back in business? Since when?) I pushed open the glass door and wandered around for a bit. Cosmetics. Women’s Shoes. Soon I began to feel uneasy. Sick. Something wasn’t right. Where was everyone? Well, in the shelters obviously, I realized just as the shrill whine of the approaching missile became audible.
The slap of the newspaper landing on the front porch woke me. These early-rising immigrants who fling the news on our city streets, they’re unsung heroes in a way. How many innocent sleepers have they saved from annihilation? I should leave ours a card. I thought of this after my perfectly timed rescue, when I couldn’t get back to sleep because of Joe making glottal sounds. Eventually I must have slept because the alarm went off, reset by Joe, who has to be at the hospital early. This time I got up well before the apocalypse.
Our front door mat reads “Go Away.” Lying on the joke, helplessly bound by elastics, was the very paper that had saved me. I carried it to the kitchen, poured the coffee, sat at the table. It had snowed in the night. No. Spring had come. Spring was right outside the window. Filling the frame, our snow-white magnolia, peaking. I thought of The Cherry Orchard, all of us reading it on the front porch while we swilled plonk. The truth is every spring when the trees bloom I think about Chekhov and everything that happened, how Pascal betrayed my friend Sonia and she him in turn. We wanted to get rid of all the bombs, but look what happened. It was partly my fault, that bad, bad decision that we took. Only this year it all came together because, when I peeled the rubber bands off the Vancouver Sun and laid it flat on the table, Sonia was staring up at me. Not a recent picture, but Sonia when I knew her all those years ago.
The shock of seeing her again, the dis-ease of the dream. The inevitable self-loathing. Pete’s picture was below hers. It took me a moment to notice him. As soon as I did, I turned the paper over. It was a funny thing to do, a token of respect, like covering the face of the dead. Except both of them are still alive.
But what about the boy? Whatever happened to him?