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I leafed through the book. I didn’t take notes. My memory is good. There were twelve pages and twelve photographs under cellophane or maybe it was isinglass. Two were driver’s license photos. Two were headshots. Six women and six men. They were all different ages. The youngest looked like a high schooler. Below the photographs were their names and occupations. Two were college students. Two were teachers probably on their summer break. One was retired. The rest were what are known as bluecollar workers by people who don’t do bluecollar work, waitresses and store clerks, a carpenter and a long-haul truck driver.
There were eggs and bacon in the Frigidaire. I fried four eggs in bacon fat. There was a little deck on the side with a view of the lake. I ate there and looked at the water. When the sun was in the wedge between Mount Washington and Mount Jefferson and gold across the lake, I went in and went to bed. I slept better that night than I had in four years. Ten hours of thoughtless imageless darkness. It’s what being dead must be like.
On Saturday morning I walked down to the lakeshore. There was a bench. Elgin was sitting on it and smoking. Same white shirt and same long-crotch khaki pants. Or maybe different ones. I never saw him wear anything else, as if they were a kind of uniform. He asked me to sit down with him. I did.
“Get settled in all right?”
“Yes.”
He took out his wallet from his hip pocket and handed me a check. It was from The Dream Corporation LLC and made out to me. The sum was a thousand dollars.
“You can take it to the KeyBank in Castle Rock. That’s where I have my accounts, both personal and corporate. You can open your own account, if you like.”
“Can I just cash it?”
“Of course. Do you remember the first test subject in the book I left you?”
“Yes. Althea Gibson. A hairdresser. Looks to be about thirty.”
“Good memory. Is it eidetic? Given your stenographic speed and your knowledge of Vietnamese, I think it might be.”
So he had done some digging. Made some calls, as they say. “I suppose so. I picked up steno from my sister. Helping her study.”
“And you were better at it.”
“I guess I was but she landed rightside up. Got a job in Human Resources at Eastern Maine Medical. Better pay.” He didn’t need to know she died and I didn’t want to tell him.
“You were a translator in Vietnam.”
“Some of the time.”
“Don’t want to talk about it? That’s fine. It’s nice here, isn’t it? Peaceful. Later in the day there will be picnickers. The whine of the boats is annoying, it goes on from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but the picnickers stay further down the beach.”
“Your part is private.”
“Yes. I like my privacy. Mr. Davis, I believe I am going to change the world.”
“You mean the world’s understanding of dreams.”
“No. The world. If I am successful.” He got up. “I’m going to send you a fax. Look it over. Mrs. Gibson will be here at two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. I’m paying her to close her hairdressing shop. You will greet her and show her in. I will want to show you the set-up before. Say noon. In case she comes early.”
“All right.”
“Read the fax. If you have comments, use the intercom. Otherwise, you are off until Tuesday.” He offered his hand. I stood up to shake with him. I was struck again by his timeless look. A kind of serenity. He believed he was going to change the world. He really believed it.
The fax shrieked in while I was making coffee. It was a release for his test subjects. I wondered again about the legality of this particular op. There were spaces for the test subject to print her or his name, address, and phone number. Below that it said that the undersigned had been informed and agreed to a light hypnotic drug being administered before the test run. It said the drug would wear off in six hours or less and that the test subject would feel fine. Since Elgin would be the one administering the drug and I wouldn’t be on the hook if something went wrong, I had no comments. I will admit I was becoming a little more interested. I thought it was possible that Elgin was crazy. After Vietnam I had a nose for it. I went downtown and bought groceries. The bank was open until noon. I started an account and deposited the check, taking a hundred dollars in cash. There was nothing about waiting for the check to clear. So they knew he was good for it. I had lunch at the Castle Rock Diner, then went back to the guest house and took a nap. There were no dreams.
On Tuesday I went to the big house at noon. Elgin was waiting on the stoop. Inside on the left was the living room where he had looked at my discharge papers and showed me his books by Jung. On the right were double doors. He opened them. It used to be a dining room but was now where he meant to conduct his experiments. It had been partitioned in two by a wall that looked made of plywood. One half of the room was for his test subjects. There was a couch with the head lifted and the feet lowered, like a psychiatrist’s couch. On one side of the couch was a Polaroid camera mounted on the tripod and pointed down. On the other side was a small table with a Blue Horse tablet open to the first blank page and a pen. So he expected his subjects to write notes, or thought they might, probably what they dreamed while the dreams were fresh. There were Bose speakers mounted on the walls. In the middle of the plywood wall facing the raised portion of the couch was a mirror and you’d have to be someone who never watched a cop show on TV not to know it was oneway glass. On Elgin’s side of the wall was a desk and another Polaroid on a tripod, looking through the oneway glass and pointed at the couch. There was a microphone on the desk. There was a row of buttons. There were more speakers on the walls. There was a Philips stereo system with a record on the turntable. There was a chair by the oneway glass.
“That’s for you,” he said, pointing at the chair. “Your post, where you will sit and watch. Do you have a fresh pad?”
“Yes.”
“You will take down everything I say. If Mrs. Gibson says anything, you’ll hear it from the speakers on this side and take that down. If you don’t understand what she says, often what a person says while asleep is unintelligible, draw a double line.”
“If you had a tape recorder,” I began, but he waved that off.
“I told you there will be no audio, no film. Only Polaroids. I control the sound system and both cameras from the desk.”
