—Elizabeth David In her office, her head rests upon her arms, her arms upon the desk. She is alone. The only sounds are those of the clock on the wall, monotonously repeating its two-syllable vocabulary, and the faint noise of the street coming in through her closed windows. Her next appointment isn’t until nine P.M. She meant merely to rest her eyes for a few moments; instead, she has fallen asleep. In her dream, the rain falls in a mist. It crouches thicker at knee level, twining across the street. The dead man approaches her through the rain with a pantherlike grace he never displayed when alive. He is nothing like Hollywood’s shambling portrayals of animated corpses; confronted by the dead man, she is the one whose movements are stuttered and slow. Because she is trapped in flesh, she thinks. Because in this dreamscape, he is pure spirit, unfettered by gravity or body weight, while she still carries the burden of life.
