It shakes, as if bitten by rage. I have stared at it for a lifetime but in the dream it is scarcely a second before it suddenly blinks and floats to the height of a man. The eye is the glowing tip of a cigarette. The smoker inhales and the glow sketches the figure. I know him. It is the man she calls David. Dawn on the laundry bench. I’d fashioned a pillow from forgotten clothing and woken with a crowd of thoughts protesting in my head. David? The dream was no longer a single scene. It had morphed and taken on new dimensions, and the fear I felt had multiplied, too. It now had a face – one I didn’t want to remember but somehow did. I knew that if I let my thoughts rest there, the face would crack and release a buzzing swarm of memory. I showered and walked the foreshore to the café strip. The day shimmered, the air still and bright. I felt strangely rested, as though the shift in my dream denoted that I’d surrendered to my fate, whatever that might turn out to be. I bought a cooked breakfast and ate it on an al fresco table beside a woman with a newspaper, a boyish dog and a cigarette.
