Dreamscape

I am at a Tim Horton's with friends at night. I think we are in Texas, or western PA. Jackie and the others get a table while I place my order. I choose both oatmeal and an almond croissant because almonds lower the glycemic index of the pastry. It comes to $17.95, which I think is steep, but I hand the cashier a twenty. She hands me my change. There is a check for $500 shuffled in it. The check is made out to the "Jesus Love Association" or something like that. I realize that this Tim Horton's is also an evangelical Christian recruiting center of sorts. For a nanosecond I am tempted to pocket the check and try to cash it, but instead I return it to the cashier, as it rightly belongs to the Tim Horton's/evangelical church.

The chubby, nice teenage cashier becomes flustered and embarrassed. She thanks me for my honesty and promises to make it up to me by getting me $500 in cash from her friend who's the son of an oil baron.

Then I return to the giant, Victorian house I'm staying in with my husband on a visit to family. Everyone else is already asleep. I am elated because I will receive $500 soon, thanks to the law of karma operating even in a Christian doughnut shop in Texas/western PA. But it is cold and pouring rain outside, and the rain is leaking through the roof of the old house and pouring in everywhere. A Dad Person, an amalgam of my dad and my father-in-law with no distinctive features, tells me I've made too much noise coming in the house.

I wake up to find I've cracked the window above our bed for air and it is, in fact, raining outside.