One Hundred and Seventy Six

I had a dream last night. 

I dream every night, of course.  Everyone does.  But this was the first dream I’ve had in a long time that I remembered after I woke.  My dreams are usually too terrible now to remember.

She’s alive, of course, as she always is in my dreams.  And she and I are both young.  But we’ve lost everything.  All we have left are the clothes on our backs.

We live in a storage locker inside a warehouse.  Many other people live there, too.  All the people who’ve lost their homes now live in such warehouses.

Just as the hotel in my previous dreams was on the shore of the eternal sea, so is this hotel-cum-warehouse on the edge of an airport.  Day and night we hear planes taking off into the sky.

We’re both jobless, as most people are now.  But I still have my business suit, and she has hers, and every day we put them on and go out looking for work.

As I walk across the airport tarmac, I am joined by other people, all walking in the same direction.  The other men are all dressed in suits, as I am, and the women are in long gowns.

I hear music.  I look around and see, through the windows of a nearby building, an orchestra on the top floor.  The other people are all walking towards this building, so I do, too.      

A sign at the entrance of the building announces that it is the new world headquarters of a multinational corporation.  Today is its grand opening, and the corporation is celebrating with a party and lavish buffet, with music provided by the orchestra.   

I and the other people enter the building.  Most gather around the buffet in the lobby, but some of us head for the elevator.

The elevator stops at the twelfth floor and the doors open, but no one gets off because the orchestra is on the thirteenth floor.  Of course the building doesn’t have a thirteenth floor.  No building does, officially.

Before the doors close again, I get off and head for the stairs.

As I am climbing up to the thirteenth floor, I find a black boy lying on the stairs.  He is small and thin, dirty and in rags.

I pick him up and carry him down to the buffet in the lobby.