Dreams

B and I are driving through our neighborhood, on the way to Joe & Heidi's house a few blocks away. We park our silver Beetle on a long incline behind their garden. It has just finished raining and the grass is wet with dew and the moldering railroad ties that border their property are steaming. Rising above some scrabbling blackberry bushes are the neighboring architectural jumble of red tile roof lines and half-timbered gables, as if our redwood forest neighborhood suddenly ended and Thomas Hardy's Dorset began. The incongruity of these tumbledown cottages is eclipsed by their beauty and we walk around to the front of the lane to see them better. Grey-branched wisteria grow through windows and empty doors. Off to the side is a white marble mausoleum that bares the faded name "Dutra". "I went to high school with a guy named Chris Dutra! I wonder if that's his family crypt?" I ask B, cheerfully. B is ashen-faced, afraid, and I can feel his fear coming out at me. He shakes his head, and won't look at me. Joe & Heidi meet us outside and they, too, seem afraid to talk about the mausoleum. "But I know a Dutra!" I tell them and I make them walk back with me to look at it. Symbols are traced all over the outside, some of the them moving. "It's Masonic Phrenology!" B says in a horrified whisper. "Let's get out of here!"