Oh, Martin.” So his sister smiles at him, doesn’t say anything, and they continue walking down what’s turning out to be an endless dimly lit hallway, with no doors in the walls either. “What do you think will be the outcome of all this?” he says. She smiles and shakes her head in a way that says “Not to worry, dear brother; you’re going to like what happens.” They start walking up a long steep flight of stairs similar to ones he remembers in the London underground, or maybe it was the Metro in Paris, where he and Gwen, on a short visit there more than twenty-five years ago — and he’d been to Paris and ridden the Metro long before he met her — decided to walk up them rather than take the elevator or escalator. “You’re right,” she said, when he suggested the idea, “we could use the exercise. Too much good food.” She also said, between her first and second strokes, or second and third, “I’m sorry we didn’t live more in Paris. Now we can’t chance it.” He and his sister go around another landing and start walking up another long flight. At the top of the stairs is a fireproof door that looks like the one that opened onto the roof of the building he was living in when he first knew Gwen. “Ah, at last: fresh air and natural light,” he says, and sees he’s now talking to Gwen. “Miracle of miracles,” he says, unbolting the door and pushing it open, “not only was my sister alive and walking but she’s turned into you, when before you were paralyzed from the waist down.” “That is something, isn’t it,” she says, “since the only time I’ve ever been sick in my life was with chicken pox: twice.” They go outside and from the middle of the roof—“Don’t go any farther,” he says, taking her hand. “It’s dangerous and I wouldn’t let you go out there alone and we could fall off”—and look at the city all around them. “Tell me,” he says, squeezing her fingers, “which—” and she says “Ouch, that hurts.” “I’m sorry. I thought I was being gentle,” and lets go of her hand. “But I was saying, out of all these buildings, if you had the choice, which one would you want to live in with me if you wouldn’t want to live in the one we’re standing on now?” and she says “I have a very nice apartment uptown, big enough for both of us and with a view that rivals this.” The dream ended then and he woke up. He doesn’t think he turned on the night table light — no, he had to have, but later, to write everything down. At first he just lay in bed in the dark thinking about the dream and what it might mean and how quickly she entered his dreamlife — that must mean something, he thought. Then he turned on the night table light — there was only one, on the same side of the bed he sleeps on now, the left. At least he thinks it’s the left. He’s always had trouble with that one. For facing the bed, it’s the right. But it’s got to be the left. Left side of the road, right side of the road. That doesn’t work. Maybe it’s just that he’s a little more tired than usual right now, and the whole terrible day. Nah, the last is just an excuse. Tired, maybe. He once even asked Gwen, when he got confused again as to which side is which — it had to do with something he was writing — and she told him and he knew she was right — she didn’t hesitate when she told him and she looked at him as if he were kidding — and he probably said something like “That’s what I thought,” but forgets which side she said was which. He also doesn’t remember how they decided which sides of her bed they should sleep on after they made love the first time. It wasn’t that after they were done and had uncoupled they stayed on the sides of the bed they ended up on. And he, probably with his weak bladder, no doubt got up to pee so he wouldn’t have to an hour or two later. He thinks he remembers her saying she sleeps in the middle of the bed when she sleeps alone. And he thinks he remembers saying he sleeps on only one side of his bed, and it’s a double bed like hers. She must have first said, when they were getting ready to go to sleep, “Which side of the bed would you like to sleep on?” Or he asked her which side of the bed would she like him to sleep on. Or it could be, when he got back from peeing and maybe washing his face and rinsing his mouth, that she was already on what he’ll call the right side of the bed or on the right side close to the middle. But he doesn’t recall that. He recalls one of them asking the question and his saying something like “Either side’s okay with me. Though at home, because the night table’s there, though I guess I could always move it to the other side — there’s room — I sleep on what I think’s the left,” and pointed to that side. He doesn’t remember her correcting him, so that time, unless she was just being polite or didn’t think it important enough to correct him at the time or thought it the wrong time to — their first time in bed — he thought he knew. If she had had only one night table by her bed he would have known which side she preferred sleeping on when she slept with someone. But she had matching night tables on either side, with the same kind of lamp on them. One of these lamps — the other he broke when he was trying to put back the plug that had come out of the socket behind the bed and pulled the cord too hard and the lamp fell — is on the night table now. She bought a different lamp for her side, one for two bulbs, though it was his lamp he broke, and gave him hers. Next he took the piece of paper and a large hardcover book off the night table — probably one of the