In my dream, a much younger and cuter version of your truly had just begun a flirtation with a cute guy. While I was visiting his apartment (which was also inhabited by two roomies, one male and one female), he took a phone call that seemed to discomfit him. Putting the handset to his chest, he told me that the call was from a woman he’d gone out with in the past. She wanted him to go with her to a nighttime party at the Bay Hotel.

“Isn’t that in a bad part of town?” I asked. He confirmed that it was. He said, “I don’t really want to go, because…she drinks too much, and then I have to take her home, and I’m not sure I can rely on a taxi for her…” Plainly, he didn’t want to have to take the woman home because he didn’t want to be alone with a drunken and possibly amorous ex. He wanted to be alone with me.

“Tell her you’ll be deeply involved in something else,” I said in a low voice.

[Pause for cinematic lip clinch.]

I arrived for a visit some time later and found his female roomie running toward to the kitchen, screaming, her chest covered with knife wounds. He followed, murderous, his own chest bloodied on the surface.

Next came the informal (!) hearing, at which he wasn’t even in handcuffs. His lawyer tried to prove that his client wasn’t in the apartment at the time of the attack, despite the fact that I’d seen him and the victim moments afterward.

I gave the lawyer the one-finger salute. It felt good.

It puzzles me, the way people expect me to get work done after such an experience.