As I lie in bed I'm told that there is a rapist on the plane. I nod as if I didn't know.

I walk up to a stranger on the sidewalk and whisper, "I missed you." She says, "I know."

As I fall asleep on a friend's loveseat I am awoken by a high strung voice telling me the story of a vaudeville magician who would cut a deep hole in his armchair and hide his body inside it. Evidently pretending to be no more than a torso was the most popular part of his act. I know, I say, but I'm trying to sleep around here.

Ethan is a junkhead. It comes to him as a gang of teenage boys who kidnap his little sister then promise to dehead him if she makes a scene. I enter into protracted negotiations with these little terrormongers but it takes another band of stronger but cleanhearted rogues to get him free. Now I have the smack and he tells me he'd rather eat a throat sandwich than let me throw it away. He'd rather climb the ladder to oblivion than give up his four-a-day habit. So I leave him with it.

An unreasonably fast series of ideas for dreams, half dreamed.

After the cocktail party I am the first to climb a series of stairways leading to a quick succession of claustrophobic doorways which are ever smaller and harder to push open. At the roof level, I win a raffle for a year's subscription to Harper's Magazine.

In a car climbing a hill with my Dad, I look out over a wide dark sea with shimmering lights on the shore. It's beautiful. Later in bed, there is a girl and two black-and-white cats.

In a cathedral there is a small square hole through which I see a scene of judgment. Everything is dark, but I can see the outline of a wax figure in a robe who stands without guilt but with head bowed, waiting for it.

A deeply green and tiny turtle, crushed.

We owe him a full rewrite.

Our house guest comes with a two year old daughter and a handgun. We lure him out into a field in an effort to knock him unconscious with the butt of his own pistol. But we come back drinking and forget our mission. The squirrels remember.

The family sets out on a kayak adventure on a narrow and steep canal. The downhill stretch is the easiest. At the end there is a high school math teacher politely waiting. Later my family is moving to New York but the plane lets us off in a toy version of Boston. City Hall is run by mannequins. As the first to check into the hotel, I discover that our room is next to a suite of three girls, all of whom seem to want to set me up with one of the others.

A child is two patterns on the vibraphone.

People who live in ice cube houses shouldn't melt.

My brother moves to town to record an epic radio documentary. He retrofits an old black suitcase with a mixer and holes for microphone cables. His plan is to take the subway to a secluded part of Bronx. The raw sound material will be real but he will use it to tell a story of ninjas. We lose the suitcase on the platform and ride the trains for a few hours. We run into Asbury Jones, who kneels and teaches my brother to sing. A young woman watches us from across the train. This is the consort come too soon. Brother decides to return home without the suitcase but we find it where we left it on the platform.

We are released from the field trip into an underground luncheon complex. My friend waits on line with everyone else at the macrobiotic stall, but when he attempts to make small talk with the attendant he is booed out of the sector. As she threatens a self-immolation if the rudeness continues, I recognize her as the boss's daughter. I forget how to get back up to the open-air concourse where there is a South Indian thali stand, which I am pretty sure is gluten-free. So I go back to the welcoming party in the basement. There I find a young reporter who, in interviewing me, reveals that she is actually the daughter of the enemy emir on a reconnaissance mission. I take her into my confidence and show her the monkey bars, but she falls off, and when someone tries to leap down to help, she suffers a blow to the head which knocks her half-conscious.

At work, all the surfaces are clean. Someone refers to "Thomas Fried-barn" and I have to be told it is a joke.

A spider under the skin of my forearm. It pricks where he burrowed in and it stings where he crawls. I try to crush him and hit a pressure point by mistake. He plays dead but he won't go out the way he came.

The Youth Zionist Dating League convenes at an apartment on the Upper North Side. I stare through the orientation and training. When it lets out I give three women long hugs in front of their boyfriends. Later at the pantomime, we are three of the last to leave. Before the show is over an old woman hurls mango pulp at whoever is left. We shake our heads but our faith is strong.

Treading dark water off the coast, we try to stay directly above an Apple logo on the sea floor.