what he wants today before the kids get up: to just sit down in a quiet place and drink slowly. Its better heat containment — now that’s a fancy term for it and possibly a wrong one — might have something to do with what it’s made of, the thickness of it, maybe also the color; something, and the handle’s large enough for him to get his three fingers in, the only mug he has where he can do that. Gwen could do that with most of their mugs; he’s even seen her get four fingers in some, her fingers were so thin. Takes the black mug off its peg and puts it beside the coffeemaker on the other side of the sink from the dish drainer and rubber mat. Some heated-up soy milk with it, maybe half? Easier on the stomach. Too much bother, and then the saucepan to wash. Really has to scrub hard with the sponge to get all the soymilk off the bottom of it. But again, much better for the stomach so early. Nah, a quicker pick-me-up if it’s all black. Turns the coffeemaker on and goes into the living room, where he’ll wait till the coffee’s made. He’ll hear it, after all the water’s gone through: the hissing and steaming and a sound that’s almost like someone gargling. He sits in the Morris chair. No need to turn the floor lamp on. Most times before, when he sat like this waiting for the morning coffee to be made, he did it with something to read. Did he buy this chair or the Maillol print in his bedroom with some of the money from the first story he sold to a major magazine? Whichever it was, the other he bought with just about all the money he got from the first sale of a story to any magazine. Someone suggested he do that. His mother, he thinks: “This way you’ll always have a tangible reminder of your first acceptance” or “sale.” He got both so cheap. Chair in a used furniture store at the Columbus Avenue corner of the block he lived on, and the print — actually, a woodcut of a clothed peasant woman sleeping on her back in a field — at Brentano’s bookstore on Fifth. Suddenly he thinks of a dream he had between Gwen’s first and second strokes, but when she seemed fully recovered. Now where the hell did that come from? he thinks. He wrote it down when he woke up from it. Gwen pushed herself up on her elbows — she’d been sleeping on her back, so the peasant woman? Gwen? — and said “Why’s the light on? It’s still dark out. You feeling okay?” and he said “Sorry. Dream I had. I want to write it down or I’ll lose it. It’s so interesting. I’ll tell you about it later,” and he finished writing it in the notebook he kept on his night table and shut the light and probably turned to her — she was already asleep on her side — and held her from behind and went back to sleep. It was one of several dreams he wrote down around that time and he must have read it when he woke up later or sometime after, and maybe a number of times. It seemed pretty clear what it meant then, but you never know. He remembers thinking it was one of the more vivid dreams he’d had with her in it. They were on Broadway, walking north on the west side of the street, between 115th and 116th Streets, which was a block away from where they had their Riverside Drive apartment till a few years ago. They were on their way to a restaurant on 117th Street and Broadway for lunch. There is no restaurant there; no side street, either; none till about a Hundred-twentieth. Just Barnard: a college dormitory or school building, he forgets which. He’d passed it many times on his way to or back from a garage farther north on Broadway. About twenty young doctors, male and female, all in lab coats, he thinks they’re called, or just white coats, the kind they wear when they make their hospital rounds. The doctors stopped at the 116th Street corner and waited for the light to turn green. They stood behind the doctors. Then he said “Let’s go around them. I’m sure they’re going to the same restaurant, and if they get there before us we won’t be able to get a table.” He put his hand on her back and guided her into the street and they started to cross a Hundred-sixteenth against the light. Cars going both ways had to stop so they could get to the other side. A couple of cars honked at them, and she looked alarmed. “Don’t be worried,” he said. “You’re with me. You’re safe.” They got across the street and he looked back. The light hadn’t changed yet and the doctors were still standing on the corner. Most of them gave Gwen and him dirty looks, as if they shouldn’t have gone in front of them and then crossed the street against the light. She said “They look angry. I don’t like people to be angry because of me or something I did. Maybe we should wait for them here and apologize.” He said “And let them get in front of us and to the restaurant first? You’re okay. It was nothing you did.” He took her hand and said “I love you.” She looked lovingly at him and said “I love you too.” “Good, we’re in love,” he said, “so nothing should really bother us,” and they continued walking, holding hands. When they were a few feet from the restaurant, he said “I know what I’m going to have. Their chicken salad platter, if they’re not all out of it,” and she said “And I’m going to have their fried oysters.” “Less chance they’ll have those left than my chicken salad,” he said, “but maybe you’ll be lucky. I hope so. I know how much you love them.” She smiled and said “You bet.” That he especially remembers from the dream. It was something he used to say a lot and she never did. But she adopted it the last few years and he, for the most part, stopped saying it because he felt the expression had become more hers than his, and he knew how much she liked saying it. No, that’s not quite it. Then what is? She used so few colloquialisms in her speech that he didn’t want to make her self-conscious of sort of stealing this one from him and stop saying it. No, that’s not quite it, either. He opened the door of the restaurant and stepped aside so she could get past him. The place was crowded. He took her hand again and led her to the one free table. The dream ended. Oh, there was a little more — they looked at the luncheon specials on a blackboard as they made their way to the table — but that was basically it. A nice dream. Long. Nothing bad happened. The doctors never caught up with them. The day was sunny and mild and the restaurant was brightly lit inside only by daylight coming through the windows. She was well, happy through most of it, and looked so pretty. They were hungry and about to eat. They held hands. They loved each other. But why didn’t they kiss? Would have been a nice way to end the dream or to happen right after they said they loved each other. But what he dreamt was good enough. He doesn’t know if he told her the dream when they woke up later that morning or after they got out of bed. If he ever told her. He told her just about all his dreams she was in except those where she died or was dead or very sick. Or if she was in one where one of the kids died. What’s that smell? Electric? As if a short, or something like that, and coming from the kitchen, it seems, and he gets up and goes into it. Coffeemaker’s sputtering, making almost hiccupping sounds. Thinks he knows what it is; same thing’s happened to him once or twice. Shuts off the coffeemaker, takes the carafe off the warming plate, shakes it, and nothing’s inside. Opens the water tank cover and looks inside. It’s what he thought. Dummy; dummy. He didn’t put water in the tank or a paper filter into the filter basket, so of course also no coffee grounds in the paper. He usually does all this the night before — sometimes even the afternoon before, when he knows he has enough coffee in his thermos for the rest of the day — so he won’t have to do it the same morning he’s going to make the coffee. It doesn’t make for better coffee. It might even make it worse, with the water staying in the tank so long, and who knows if the coffee grounds aren’t weakened or marred or something a little by being in the same closed compartment with the water all night. But he likes the idea of just walking into the kitchen the next morning and, without any preparations, pressing the on switch to get the coffee started. He fills the carafe with water up to the four-cup level inside. Waits another fifteen seconds to make sure the heating coils, or whatever they are, aren’t still too hot to pour the water in, which might harm the machine, and empties the carafe into the tank. He puts a paper filter into the filter basket, flattens the seams of the paper so none of the dripping water goes down the outside of it, chooses the bag of Colombia Supremo coffee grounds over the Kona — it’s lighter, so more a morning coffee, and smells and tastes better; he’s never going to get the Kona again but will use up what he has — and puts three tablespoons of it into the paper and turns the coffeemaker on. Go back to the living room chair while the coffee’s being made? Why? It’ll take no more than four minutes. He can even pour some coffee in mid-brew by taking the carafe off the warming plate, which stops the flow for up to thirty seconds, so maybe he’ll do that. But then the coffee will be too strong for so early in the morning, unless he adds soymilk. He opens the refrigerator and takes the soymilk out. But he wants his coffee hot and black — that’s what he feels like this morning — so better wait till it’s done, and he puts the soymilk back. No, he’ll have some now and sit with it, and he pulls the carafe out and pours the little that’s in it into the mug.