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stoked up on Ecstasy. My daughter and son are enfolded in a nest of kids. Taylor has a cup of punch in her hand. Instinctively, I know it is 64 percent vodka, 36 percent Crystal Light. Don’t ask me how; it’s just one of those dream things. Micah’s head rests in his hands. A skinny girl with a sheet of glossy black hair runs her hand along his back. My dream mind calculates an 89 percent probability they will have sex tonight (72 percent likelihood of using a condom; 3.4 percent chance the condom will break).
    This is when it hits me: I am dead.
    My dream self reels at this sorry revelation. Although I cannot see her hand, I know it is there, against the wall, propping up the ghostly soul of Raquel Rose in her own dog-hair-strewn hallway. I stagger around a bit before going on—okay, this is morbid—a search for my casket. Finally, wending my way around friends, neighbors, and more than a few annoying people I am surprised to see there at all, I realize there is no body. I, the special guest, am AWOL at my own wake. Typical! This could be because (a) my will explicitly requested cremation as the preferred mode of corporal disposal, and I am already occupying mantel space in a pretty vase; (b) nobody but the Bedouin really lays out the dead anymore; or (c) my body was stolen by grave robbers, and everybody’s too embarrassed to mention it.
    Panic engulfs me.
    At this point I basically wake up. My mouth is dry and vile with a cheesy coating of sleep. I can feel blood rushing around my body without a plan, ending up in weird places, broadcasting the spastic rhythm of my heart to the outer reaches of the faltering kingdom.
    Like everyone else, I have heard that if you see yourself dead in a dream, you will really die. Soon. I wonder if the fact that I couldn’t find the body is at all germane, or if praying for a technicality is just the futile yearning of a middle-aged woman who has witnessed the crooked finger of the Reaper before her time.
    Extricating myself carefully from the blankets so as not to wake Phil—if we ever divorce, it will not be because of our sleep habits, which are civilized to the point of real refinement—I pad to the kitchen to comfort myself.
    I shove aside the New Agey collection of colon-cleansing teas I habitually buy and allow to molder. Instead, I grab one of the juvenile brands of cookies featuring drawings of smiling dinosaurs and monsters, and arrange several—okay, several dozen—on a plate.
    The source of the dream is as obvious as the furrow on my brow. Earlier today I’d had a call from Laurie’s associate producer, Shiny. She wanted to know when I could come back to the
Living with Lauren!
set.
    “Did I leave something there?”
    “Leave something?”
    “Was it my cell? Oh no, did I leave my purse? I must have left my purse.”
    I could almost see Shiny’s untarnished face pucker up. “Not at all. I’m talking about having you back as a guest. Raquel, do you realize how successful your first appearance was? We’re still getting calls and e-mails about it.”
    “Laurie wants me to come back?”
Why didn’t dear sister call herself?
    Shiny had been briefed on the Schultz talent discrepancy. “She was the first to suggest it!”
    Hmm.
    “We were thinking of doing another fund-raiser. Maybe something on location. Something adventurous. Something that hasn’t been done before. There’s a brainstorming session on Tuesday.”
    Brainstorm?
    “We have a real opportunity here to make a difference!” Even Shiny’s voice was, well, shiny.
    “If I die, do you still get the money?” Where this came from, I don’t know. Probably the heinous well of morbid thoughts that had been brewing since I first sat across from Babyface Meissner stiff with fright and pondered his hairy, steepled knuckles.
    “Uh, I don’t—” Shiny had momentarily lost her patina.
    “It’s okay. I don’t know why I said that.”
Because I so, so don’t want to. Die I mean.
    “Well, there are