I’m in a conference room with Ron Silliman. He leans back in his big red-leather chair, creaking.
“We’re done, Rauan,” he says, and now he’s up at a chalkboard.
“Well, almost done,” he continues. “You’re going to have seven more dreams about me, and that’s it.”
“But, why Ron, why?” I plead, hot tears gushing down my cheeks. “Hasn’t this been good for you?”
“Yes, yes it has, my darling,” he replies softly. “Lately I’ve got an extra bounce in my step."
"It's like...It's like..." he mutters, "It's like I’m permanently on Viagra. I’ve never felt better.”
“But then why, Ron, why?”
“I’ve started to wake up in the middle of the night,” he says (with a tortured look on his face, like a frightened dog), “and I’m covered in sweat and I know you’re dreaming about me and I’m filled with an impending sense of doom.”
Ron pauses, looks down at the ground, trembling all through his body, and then he continues——
“...Other times I’m making sweet love to my wife and that same corroding-poison floods my mind and heart. Rauan, I want to. O how I want to! I swear on a big fat Buffalo’s head: I want to! I want to! But we just can’t go on.”
It's quite obvious he's a broken-man. A used-up old coal-horse.
So, “Fair enough,” I tell him, resigned.
“But seven more dreams, huh?” I add, looking up at him coyly.
“Yes!” and he’s perked up right away.
“In the first one,” he says. “I’ll be licking your toes.”
“In the 2nd we’ll discover the North Pole together...”
“In the 3rd, boil potatoes...”
“In the 4th———”
Ron’s glowing, ecstatic, and he shouts out:
“Christ!! Why did I ever learn to count to seven ??!!”
And, then, like a King or a Clown or a Magic-Lizard, he rises up in a cloud of swallows.
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