Chapter 2

I fully realized that I could have set myself up as a money manager of some type, compiled a record of handily beating the market, and become filthy rich as well heeled clients buried me in funds. I valued freedom too much for that, though. I wanted to do whatever it was I felt like doing whenever I felt like doing it, and being tied to a job is still being tied to a job, whether it pays twenty dollars an hour or twenty million dollars a year. Too, great wealth is a trap all on it's own. Aside from the obvious kidnap danger, serious money represents serious power, and our civil masters can't afford to leave potential rivals or supporters unmonitored. Fuck that. I was content to skim off only what I could use--plus a little for rainy days, old age, or in case I lost my unusual ability. So yes, I was a parasite by choice, but I never got greedy about it.

As I ate my breakfast, I decided not only to head south, but also to take the coastal highways all the way down to Big Sur. The driving could get hairy at times, but the scenery was spectacular. Besides, I could take it in small steps--one or two hundred miles a day. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. When I left the diner, I took the freeway until Olympia and then headed west to the coast.

Traveling for me went beyond the practical purpose of getting physically close to the persons whose dreams I wanted to target. I simply didn't like to spend too long in any one place. This propensity might have been in my blood, inherited from my parents. To Mom and Dad, vacation meant a road trip, preferably a long road trip. God only knows what my parents would have been like if Dad's job hadn't held them in one place. I easily could have imagined them in retirement becoming one of those old couples who move into a land cruiser and follow the seasons north and south.

I found myself in the middle of one of Mom and Dad's excursions a bit more than a year after I first had learned how to control my dreams. I was having fun on the trip, which was a relief. Eighth grade hadn't been the pure hell that seventh grade had been, but it had been unpleasant, and I was doing my best to pretend that ninth grade wasn't going to happen. Some of the things we had been seeing on that trip were helping to maintain that willful delusion.

My family had crossed into Canada and headed west in a van with a tent trailer towed behind. I had an older sister and a younger brother. Linda was about two years older, and Tom was about three years younger. I had always gotten along well with Linda, and Tom had finally matured enough that he no longer was a constant pain in the ass. My sister had her license, but my parents didn't trust her with the trailer, so they had been doing all of the driving.

They went up into the Rocky Mountains, which was scary but awesome, and we spent a couple days at spectacular Banff National Park before going south back into the States, where we drove through a small chunk of Idaho and a bigger chunk of Montana. We then experienced three days of Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone blew my mind, and I was of the firm opinion that it was the greatest place in the universe. It had to be.

After we left Yellowstone and started heading back east, we stayed the night at a campground in Wyoming. The next morning, I was sitting at the picnic table that came with the campsite. I must have looked pretty blissed out, because Mom said, "You look like you're having a great time."

And that is all I remember of that day. The phenomenon is called retrograde amnesia. A hard blow to the head can cause it.

Two hours driving, more or less, got me to the Pacific coast, and I decided to stop for the balance of the day at one of the many state parks along it. It was the off-season during the workweek, so I had no trouble getting a campsite. I warmed a can of stew on my Coleman stove for lunch and, after cleaning up, took a walk along the beach.

It was chilly. Whereas there were a few people catching some sun, they hadn't removed much clothing to facilitate the process, which was disappointing to a dedicated voyeur such as myself. Two young women were trying their luck fishing in the surf. I watched them a short while and concluded that they were probably a lesbian couple. The way they occasionally touched each other seemed to say, "We're together as more than friends." One of the twenty-something fishers had short black hair and was wearing an old camo jacket and jeans. She looked rather butch. Her more femme-looking friend had shoulder-length auburn hair and wore a violet windbreaker and tan slacks. Both were slender.

The butch chick caught me watching them, "Hey," she said with not too unfriendly a tone, more cautious.

"Hey," I replied. "Catch anything?" What else is there to say when you come upon someone fishing?

"Not yet. You fish?"

"I haven't since I was a kid. I worry too much about hurting the fish to enjoy it."

She gave me a skeptical look. "Fish don't have any feelings."

"I've heard that," I said, "but I can't make myself believe it. Plus, bait is usually icky."

"I know," her redheaded companion said. "I make Jo bait my hook and take off anything I catch. My name's Carrie, by the way, and this is Jo."

They gave me hands to shake. "I'm pleased to meet you. You can call me Rich."

"You here by yourself, Rich?" Jo asked.

"Yeah, I've decided to take a drive down the coast all the way to Big Sur."

"That ought to be a wonderful trip," Carrie said. "Have you traveled much along the Pacific?"

"In bits and pieces, but this will be the first time I take in a big stretch all at once. Are you two from Washington?"

"We live on the other side of the Cascades, near Yakima," Jo said.

"I've driven through there."

"How about you?" Carrie asked. "Are you from the state?"

"My official address is in Wyoming, but I'm almost never there," I answered. This was true. I kept my main mail drop there. It was part of an international mail forwarding service.

"I take it you travel a lot on business," Jo said.

"Yeah, investment research," I said. Nine out of ten people would just nod when I said that, satisfied not to hear more. Jo was one of the other ten percent.

"Oh, yeah? Do you have any good stock tips?"

It didn't cost me anything, so I told her about the merger I had recently investigated. When I had just about finished, Carrie let out an excited squeal and yelled, "I've got something!"

She reeled in the fish. "Sea perch," said Jo, "a nice one." She took the red-tailed fish off the hook and put it in a creel on a shoulder strap. Jo re-baited Carrie's hook with a bug-like creature that might have been some sort of shrimp. When she finished that and Carrie was about to cast, Jo got a hit of her own. "You must be good luck, Rich."

Over the next ten minutes, they caught four more. Jo looked at me and said, "Are you going to help us eat these?"

I had never tried sea perch. "Sure," I said, "just as long as I don't have to clean the damn things."

"I'll take care of that," Jo said. "Wimp." She smiled when she said it.

"I'll make homemade fries," I said.

The campsites were numbered, preventing someone from getting lost, and we made arrangements to meet at theirs at 5:00. When the time came, I walked over with my camp stove, some potatoes cut up that afternoon, a jug of oil, and a cast iron pan. Carrie fried the fish while I did the spuds.

It was a pretty good meal. I decided that sea perch wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't bad. Jo and Carrie had a tent and a screen pavilion set up. We ate and then chatted in the pavilion for a couple of hours. It turned out that Jo was a mechanic. She originally had been trained on airplanes, but she had trouble finding work, so she switched to cars. Carrie taught English at a community college. She was taking the spring half-semester off. When I took my leave, I wished them a good vacation. They returned the sentiment.

I was experiencing my third dream session of the night, and I had so far resisted taking control of any of them. Some balding lecturer in a bowtie was presenting a slideshow on the care and feeding of cocker spaniels. Worse, it was full of nonsense. Cocker spaniels are not "the most schizoid breed of Canis lupus familiaris." I couldn't take it any more, so I got out of my seat and left the auditorium.

As I passed through the exit, I realized that I was entering someone else's dream, as sometimes spontaneously happened to me. I stood on the sidewalk of a pleasantly woody lane. The houses along it were of modest size, but they had big yards. I started walking. Less than a few seconds passed before I heard, "God, help me! Help me, God!" It was a child's voice, and it was praying for succor rather than blowing off steam.