The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued
Page 100
But it doesn’t stop.
The dream cheats. The elevator keeps rising, past the 86th floor, past the 102nd, past the antenna. The walls turn transparent. They’re floating now, above the city, above the clouds. His father doesn’t seem surprised.
“See that?” his father says, pointing. “That’s where I proposed to your mother. Right there, by the fountain in Bryant Park.”
The boy doesn’t know what a proposal is. But he nods, solemnly, like he does.
They hover in silence. Below them, Manhattan glitters like a circuit board. The Chrysler Building winks at them. The Hudson shimmers like mercury. The boy presses his nose to the glassless air.
His father pulls a coin from his pocket. A 1956 Roosevelt dime. “For the telescope,” he says, though there’s no telescope in sight. He hands it to the boy anyway.
The boy clutches it like a relic. It’s warm. It smells like his father’s coat.
The elevator never goes down. Not in the dream. Instead, the boy wakes up; older, heavier, alone in a recliner that smells faintly of aftershave and old upholstery. The TV flickers with