In the Virtual Bank Line

The Pirate and I are at the opera. The venue is not the usual War Memorial Opera House, but something that looks like a community college auditorium. The walls on either side of the audience are giant windows covered with heavy drapes, and everything is done in white and gold, making the interior very light.

It is intermission, and before the audience gets up and files out, an usher asks if there are announcements. I pipe up and say that if anyone hasn't received their tickets for next season, the ushers are now handing them out. With that, ushers appear at the heads of the aisles with sheaves of tickets in their hands, although I realize that I don't have mine either. The thing in my hand that I thought was a ticket turned out to be an old receipt.

The people have filed out and are just about to come back into the auditorium. There is a single set of huge double doors at the back of the auditorium through which the people come to get into their seats, and as the first couple comes back into the room, I am standing next to the door. The man hands me my green leather notebook, and I remember that I had mislaid it somewhere. I express my gratitude, and he told me that I had left it in one of the seats and that he and his wife had to read a lot of it before they could discern to whom it belonged.

I had a message for a Chinese couple, and I waited in the stairwell until I saw them. I gave them the message, and they were incredibly grateful, so much so that we ended up talking and becoming friends. I invited them to our house after the opera, and they came over.

The Pirate and I went to bed, and when I woke up in the morning, not only was the Chinese couple still there, but they had invited all sorts of other people. They were sitting in the backyard on the adirondack chairs surrounded by their children and a few of the children's friends. They were looking out over the swimming pool that had a rock garden just beyond it. There was also a carefully laid out flower garden with little gravel paths, and a little orchard with tidy plots of vegetables among the trees. The whole effect was beautiful and restful, and the couple was telling us that they loved our place and wished they had one like it.

It turned out that while we were sleeping, a lot of people had come to the place. We heard about jam sessions among famous musicians, witticisms by famous writers and pundits, appearances by politicians without their wives. And the miracle was that I was being credited with this whole party. I saw snatches of notes on the floor that had dropped from the notebooks of at least one reporter, and when I got on the internet, I saw stories from the party in the entertainment section.

I had a screenplay that I had written and had been vainly trying to sell before, but I now had messages on my answering machine from at least three studios that were trying to buy the work. I went to a friend's house to sort out what to do next. The friend had a daughter about Peaches' age, and the two girls put on bathing suits and played in the swimming pool and ate potato chips while my friend and I talked about what to do next. The friend suggested that I not react too quickly to anything. Just sit back, let everyone make their offers, and then make a decision.

I left, leaving Peaches behind to play with her friend while the Pirate and I went on an errand. We had a second truck that we had left out on the edge of town, near a place that had a lot of truck stops and convenience stores. On the way, the Pirate asked me if I wanted to listen to a new tape that he had bought that he didn't like very much. It was some sort of "classic rock" crap, and I told him no, thanks. He gave me five dollars to put gas into the truck to get it home, and I realized that I really wanted a cigarette. I went to the convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes, but realized that I only had the five dollars and that I couldn't put any gas in the truck if I bought cigarettes, so I put the pack down and walked back outside.

The Pirate and I went to a place that was a sort of combination insurance agency/state aid agency/title company. We had to check into the insurance on one of the vehicles, and while the Pirate was busy looking into that, I looked out the window at the people outside. It took me a few minutes to notice that all of them were women, and all of them were wearing red dresses of various cuts and designs. I thought that it was odd, but the fact that I wasn't wearing a red dress didn't bother me at all.

A woman wearing a long black coat over a long-sleeved red sweater dress came walking in. She was applying for welfare, although she was obviously not poor. She was dressed expensively, was wearing very tastefully-done, expensive-looking makeup, and had manicured nails. Her shoes were obviously very expensive, and her sweater dress was cashmere. She was pregnant, and was telling the woman that she wanted to apply for welfare since she would have to quit her job once the baby was born.

The office worker made her fill out some forms, and then talked on the phone while looking at the forms. She told the woman that because her husband made a lot of money, she didn't qualify for welfare. The woman burst into tears, saying that she didn't know how they were going to live on just her husband's income, even though just his income was hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

She made a call from a payphone in the middle of the office that was one of the European style that looks like just a big, fat regular telephone. But she was short a nickel for the call, and while the telephone connected her, it began demanding the nickel loudly, the volume increasing the longer everyone in the office tried to ignore it. Finally one of the office workers got up and, with a look of obvious annoyance at the woman, plugged a nickel into the machine.

Then her caseworker told her that she had talked to her supervisor and that he had changed his mind. At first he had just said "tough luck," but now he was telling her that he could do something for her after all. The woman was beaming, and walked out of the office toward the bus stop looking very pleased with herself. I noticed her actions, but although I knew them to be unfair because this woman certainly didn't need welfare, I didn't feel at all angry about it.

We went back home and I listened to the messages on my answering machine. The messages were all from the studios that were offering me a lot of money for my screenplay. They all said that they were sending out representatives to my house today to draw up the contracts, and I figured that I would just let them come over and negotiate.

The doorbell rang, and it was the head of the company that laid me off last year. I didn't open the screen door or invite him in, but I asked him through the screen what he wanted. He said that he'd heard about the screenplay and that because I was a former employee of his, he wanted to take care of me. He offered to buy the screenplay, although he didn't mention a dollar figure. I asked him what use an electronics association had for a screenplay, knowing full well that he himself was just going to turn around and resell it to the studios.

He said that he just wanted to look out for my interests, and I told him that since they laid me off last year, I was no longer an employee, and that I could take care of myself just fine, thank you. He asked me to reconsider, telling me that he thought that I was making a mistake, but I just laughed at him and closed the door.

Then the alarm went off.