He wanted to yell at her that neither she nor her sister had any right. Instead, he lay rigidly immobile until he heard her straighten and sneak out of the room, closing the door softly behind her. Then he stretched slightly, unkinking his tensed muscles, and heard her pick up the hall phone and dial.
“Hello… Yes. No, nothing’s wrong, he put it in his pillow and he’s already asleep. You must’ve made some kind of mistake. He’d never—Of course not, if you say that’s what happened I believe you, but it couldn’t have been him, you see, not really, maybe some evil spirit
He heard her go into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, pull out a chair, and sit down. The worst of it was that she’d never do anything to hurt him unless she was convinced it was for his own greater good. Whereas he, with no transcendent goals, morality, or justifications, was perfectly aware that whenever he did anything to wound or hurt her, it was always merely for his own convenience and satisfaction, when it wasn’t just selfish indifference.
With the exception of one brief affair with a student at the second college at which he’d taught (and which had hurt Veronica deeply when she found out, though she’d never reproached him for it), he’d never done anything, had always known he’d never do anything. Until now, if he could just lull Mother Isobel’s suspicions while keeping the girls sharing his dreams from conscious guilt over their unconscious willingness to participate in his fantasies.
Veronica came in a little later, undressed in the dark, and fell asleep almost immediately. St. Jacques stayed awake, nervous and agitated, but afraid to wake her. When he finally did drift off he found himself falling through the back of his eyes again. He felt a surge of triumph: the sachet hadn’t been able to stop him after all!
Only this time what he was reexperiencing in reverse was not the previous day, but the time he’d spent lying in bed feigning sleep, and nothing he could think of seemed to make the process go any faster. So he took control of the dream, willed himself to get out of bed. Time reversed its backward flow, became normal again. The bedside clock said 4:00 A.M.
He imagined Terri and June opening the bedroom door and tiptoeing in, but nothing happened. He fantasized the phone ringing, with Liz calling from a phone booth to tell him she’d snuck away from school and would be there in five minutes, but the phone didn’t ring. He told himself a car had just entered the driveway and was coming to a halt outside his window, and still nothing happened.
He was suddenly terrified Mother Isobel had found a way to take control, that she’d burst in in her white satin baseball uniform and smash him over the head or try out some of the tortures he’d been reading about in the books on the Inquisition.
For an instant, he was sure he must have come awake again despite what the clock seemed to say. He glanced down at himself, told himself that if he really were dreaming, he could change his pajamas into anything else he wanted, like his swimming suit.
His pajamas were gone. He was wearing his swimming suit. So he
He left the dream-Veronica sleeping soundly and padded out into the hall. Dreams were symbolic; if he wanted to get in touch with somebody what better way than by telephone? He switched the dial so that each number became a different girl’s name, picked up the phone, and dialed Marcia. No answer, not even a busy signal. He tried the others. Nothing.
Closing his eyes, he imagined himself lying in the sun by the swimming pool, but when he opened his eyes again he was back lying on the bed, though he’d seemed to feel the sun on his chest and face for an instant. He imagined himself a three-piece tweed suit over his swimming trunks, then added the shirt, tie, socks, and shoes he’d forgotten, and went out into the hall to get his car keys out of the ashtray where he kept them. The phone was next to the ashtray; he saw that the dial had reverted to normal.
No one was waiting in romantic ambush outside. When he tried to drive off in his car, the whole night landscape around him faded out of existence and he found himself back in bed, wearing his pajamas. The clock said 4:20.
A few more experiments convinced him he couldn’t get more than a few hundred yards from his sleeping body, and couldn’t alter more than a few things at a time before finding himself back where he’d started from.
