Sitting in the front row of a monstrous hotel ballroom, surrounded by hundreds of youthful FBI agents of every color and gender, I felt out of place. Sensing my discomfort, two agents—who looked to me to be no more than eighteen or nineteen years old—took me under their wings. But only briefly. During a short break in a presentation, both of them left their seats to flirt with female counterparts. Among the female agents was my late wife, who was sitting somewhere in the multitude of law enforcement children. She had just been hired; this event represented her first exposure to FBI culture. I scanned the audience for her amid the ocean of faces, but the sheer numbers made it impossible to differentiate one face from another. I decided to call her, instead. But she called me first and left a voice mail: “I’m going for a walk. Back in an hour or so.” For some reason, I had to leave and could not wait that long, so I tried to call her back. But my phone was exceptionally complex and I could not figure out how to make the call. To avoid disrupting the people around me, I left the ballroom and tried again in an empty corridor outside.
Just as I began fiddling with the phone, an FBI agent approached me, pleading to use my phone. I told him I had an urgent call to make, so he could not. He continued badgering me and I relented. But instead of making a call, he chatted with a woman who had joined him. I shouted for him to give me my phone. He drew it close and said it would take just a moment. “I lost my phone,” he said, “and I have to call headquarters.” I did not care. I demanded he release it. He jumped inside an elevator, whose doors had just opened. I followed. I seized my phone and scrambled away to another empty corridor in a distant part of the hotel.
There was more, of course. But the rest of the dream is shrouded in an odd fog, gritty like sand and awash in the stench of a stagnant backwater filled with the rotting corpses of sea creatures. “Sea death,” I remember thinking, “oceanic fatalities.”
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The weather has turned, with promised temperatures not reaching 80°F until October 23, and then barely touching that level for only four days. I feel like I am missing autumn; the entire season will be gone before I know it. Temperatures that once felt luxuriously cool are now uncomfortably cold. I attribute that to my chemo, but my weight loss could be responsible. Or, of course, it could be both…or something else entirely. My three pairs of blue jeans—purchased not long ago to replace the ones that slipped to my knees if I did not wear suspenders—have followed their predecessors’ behavior. I attribute that to the weight loss; it certainly is not the chemo…though the chemo probably is playing a role in the weight loss. This morning, as I dressed in preparation for a visit with the estate attorney, I found I could not cinch my new belt tight enough to keep the jeans from falling down after a few steps. Back to suspenders. Dammit. I am not slim, though. Just un-muscled with layers of fat protecting those shriveling threads of power.
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Mi novia just reminded me to hurry up…eat something quickly. The meeting is at 8:00 a.m. and it’s approaching 7:25 a.m. Okay. I will stop now.
