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dreams
    If this part of my story seems to drift off, if you get bored, if you want really just to hear my story without side trips, move on.
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    I got up to go to the bathroom at two in the morning. Nathan lay asleep, his eyelids twitching, just how people say what happens when you’re dreaming, and pa pow, there was this dream of mine came flooding back.
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    I’m staying in a very, very large hotel suite, somewhere in a large city, but just that hotel room was important, not the city or even the name of the hotel. Nor can I remember why I was staying in a hotel suite, but I was far from home.
    The rooms were endless:
    kitchens
    living rooms
    TV rooms
    bedrooms
    I wander into the farthest bedroom and as if the fourth wall didn’t exist, there I am inside the next hotel suite, among people I’ve never seen before.
    Okay. I wake up. This dream I know, not so hard to figure out. Nathan wants me to move with him to the Navajo reservation.
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    I sat on the toilet, lost in considering the dream.
    Went back to bed, couldn’t sleep, got the folders that Bob Gates left, and went back to sit in the bathroom and read.
    Mary Emich.
    She meant nothing, I mean, nothing, nothing at all…except…
    I’d have my PI license reinstated.
    That’s no small thing, to have a part of your identity denied. Your livelihood, your business reputation. I’d spent too many years doing illegal computer hacking, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t return to that.
    I called Bob Gates.
    â€œUm,” he said. Coughing, clearing his throat and his head. “Yeah?”
    â€œBob. It’s Laura. Laura Winslow.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œPromise me, if I visit Mary Emich tomorrow, promise that it might end there, for me, I might not have to do anything else.”
    â€œMmmmm.” A deep sniff, a cough, but clarity now. “I promise.”
    â€œBob,” I said. “Why should I do this?”
    His phone put down while he blew his nose, coughed, blew his nose again.
    â€œSorry,” he said. “Bad post-nasal drip. You need an answer right now?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIf getting your PI license back isn’t good enough, I don’t know what to say.”
    â€œThese…the maras . Why should I get involved with them?”
    â€œYou shouldn’t. You won’t.”
    â€œBut if I did,” I said. “Why?”
    â€œAre you asking again, is there a risk?”
    â€œYes. Not to myself.”
    He blew his nose again and again. I couldn’t tell if he really had to do that, or if he was working out an answer.
    â€œYou ever hear of Rage In The Cage?” he said.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œExtreme fighting. Up Phoenix way, a few years back, some people wanted to make fake wrestling even more violent. Instead of a ring, they built a cage. Bars twenty feet high, chainlink fencing material all the way around. The maras took to the idea big time. Except without rules. Without time rounds or referees or corner men to deal with cuts and blood. Was like that Mel Gibson movie. Except, and I only know this from rumor, with the maras, the loser was lucky to stay alive.”
    â€œThat doesn’t help me much,” I said.
    â€œIt helps me,” Gates said. “It helps a lot of us taking down these skels. You…well, you decide.”
    â€œI’ll call you tomorrow.”
    â€œThat’s it?”
    â€œSorry to bother you. I just had to know.”
    I hung up. Still sitting on the toilet, I must have laid my head back against the wall and fallen asleep.
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    Another dream came into my head.
    This time, I’m staying in a very large home, a huge home of a friendly couple, I’m taking care of this home and all the plants. There’s a large kitchen preparation area next to the living room which is decorated asthough it’s tropical, vines, trees in tubs and planters, all of which I’m responsible for. In one corner is a Christmas