CHAPTER 2-1

For a moment Matt had no idea where he was when he awoke in a four-poster bed enclosed by tapestry curtains. He separated the curtains and peered out into Room 5.  Gradually he remembered his dreams. Such dreams!!  Technicolor, lucid. Laura was in them. He was Detective Mark McPherson played by Dana Andrews. Laura, the dead woman whose murder he was investigating, had just appeared shockingly alive. Laura, alive, and he, Mark McPherson, was to be her hero and lover. Matt was just about to remember whether there was a steamy sex scene or not when his foot touched another foot. He was not alone in the bed. A chill went over him as he realized that he had no memory that would produce a warm body beside him. What if it were a cold body? He edged his foot up a bit. Definitely warm. He turned slowly to see dark hair on the pillow next to him. The bed was quite narrow and the woman was wedged against the wall. 

Who was this woman in his bed?

Slowly and carefully, he slipped his feet onto the cold floor and wiggled out from under the heavy feather comforter. He noticed he was wearing a very nice cream-colored linen nightshirt. Not his.

The woman stirred, turned over and opened her eyes. It was Laura. Or was it Gene Tierney? Her makeup was perfect, her hair slightly tousled. Actresses back then always woke up with perfect make-up, dark lipstick. And the steamy scenes were always fade-to-black. Had the dream faded to black?

In a flash, Matt remembered smoking the saffron threads, getting stoned, going to dinner in his tux, sitting with a woman who looked like Gene Tierney. No dream. Today, his brain was his own. Laura was a movie character. Gene Tierney was a dead woman. 

Stepping  back, he tripped over a chair by the bed, and went sprawling on the floor.

"Are you ok?" She was sitting up. She wore a white silk nightgown.

"No. Yes. I don't know. Who are you?"

She smiled, as only Gene Tierney could smile. "I'd like to get some more sleep. Go have a walk on the beach and I'll meet you downstairs for breakfast and explain everything."  

She rolled over and went back to sleep.

Matt jogged to Muir Beach as Gene or Laura or whoever she was had instructed.

Matt ignored a sore shin from having tripped over the chair, an epic inner battle obscuring the landscape. His emotions screamed that he was madly, passionately, over-the-top in love with this woman. Yet he barely knew her, if indeed, hold this thought, a real live woman she was at all.

His omnipresent opposition chimed in: Have you not watched Laura dozens of times and did you not buy the collected films of Gene Tierney?  Do you not know her far, far better than you have ever known any woman?

And just how pathetic is that?  

These adolescent hormones are a most precious commodity--enjoy them for what they are.

I haven’t owned a miserable smidgeon of adolescent hormone for decades. I am a pathetic schlub.

Yet he arrived at Muir Beach with his newfound euphoria intact.

He walked down to the very seam of the ocean and land and stared out at the horizon. Perhaps it was because he had seen Casablanca so many times that he felt compelled to scream “Vive la France!” and sing, at the top of his lungs, what he recalled of La Marseillaise from that fabulous scene with Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid. First in French, then in English, ignoring the warning thought that the last time he had serenaded the Pacific, it had not ended well.

To arms, citizens!
Form up your battalions
Let us march, Let us march!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

He knew he was meeting the woman who had been in his bed last night for breakfast at the Pelican Inn. She was real. She would explain everything.

Was he crazy? Footnote to self: Gene Tierney is, if not a dead woman, a very, very old woman. Will she, as in a scene from a horror movie, fall to the floor as a dreadful rotting corpse and shrivel into a puff of smoke?

Plopping down on the rocky beach, rubbing his sore shin, Matt said to himself:  I am not crazy. She has blood in her veins. I love her. I am going to meet my fate. My Destiny!   --Amor Fati !

CHAPTER 2-2

Back at the inn Matt felt his blood running at double speed in his veins as he waited for Gene Tierney to have breakfast with him in the greenhouse room beyond the dining room. 

But she never showed up. Charles, who was serving breakfast, asked him if he was ready to order. 

“I’m waiting for a woman, the one I had dinner with last night.”

“You ate alone last night, by the fire.”

“No, I was with a beautiful woman in a dark red velvet dress. I was wearing a tuxedo.”

Charles was silent.

“Wasn’t I?”

“You were wearing a heavy sweater and sitting by the fire to warm your bones, the same as you did yesterday after your, um, dare I say unusual? evening swim.”

“Charles, the lady and I both had the salmon. She had strudel. I had bread pudding. We both had Tanqueray martinis. You brought our dinners. I paid for them. She paid for the gin.

Charles shrugged and left, returning with a copy of the dinner bill- one salmon, one bread pudding, signed for by Matt, Room 5.

Matt had breakfast and returned to his room. The bed was made. The tuxedo was not in the closet. And the chicken was gone. He felt like a schizophrenic who can’t tell real voices from made-up ones. Was he losing it?  I’m in trouble here, he thought.

He went to the parking lot and looked in his trunk. No parcel from Plum Island. And his tux was still in his suitcase. 

Matt spent the rest of the day confused and miserable. At dusk he had a sudden idea. He checked the inner pocket of his jacket where he remembered putting his pipe and there it was in a plastic bag as he had left it. 

And there was the proof that this was not all imagination: that fat pinch of saffron thread. Something very strange was going on here, and Charles was part of it. This time without hesitating, he put the threads in the pipe and smoked it. The sweet aroma filled the air. He waited. Once again he could see the blood running in the veins of his hand. He felt the euphoria, the lack of fear, the almost cosmic sense of understanding everything. He was not crazy. He would be able to sort it all out.

He would wait for Laura. He went down to dinner when the restaurant opened, this time in his regular clothes, and ordered duck breast with orange sauce, white wine, and strudel for dessert. The waiter, not Charles this time, told him there was no strudel on the menu tonight so he had apple pie and ice cream. He got lost in the food, which was more delicious than anything he had ever tasted. He waited until the kitchen closed. No Laura.  

He went back to his room. The chicken was on the night table. He grabbed it and twisted the right eye but stopped in time not to rip it off. There was no screw, no tube leading to a fat belly full of saffron threads. It looked identical, except for the eye that didn’t sparkle. Who had left it? He undressed and went to bed.

Several hours later he woke in a dark room. He was still stoned and he was naked. He turned on the light and saw that his clothes were gone.  All of them, and his suitcase, and his wallet and his car keys. And his laptop.

Ripping a sheet from the bed, he wrapped himself up, grabbed the chicken by the neck and raced downstairs and into the parking lot. His car was gone. Back in the inn, a twitchy little man with a baseball cap was sweeping the floor, but strangely-- more as if he were spreading the dirt around instead of gathering it in one place. Matt tiptoed up behind him.

“S-s-s-shit,” said the little man, spinning around to see a stoned, chubby barefoot man wrapped in a sheet grasping a chicken statue by the neck.  “S-s-s-shit.”

“Listen to me. My clothes are gone. My car is gone. Last night I had dinner in a tuxedo with a woman in a red velvet dress. I listened to a piano player playing the theme from Laura.”

Looking up forlornly, the floor-sweeper said, “No piano here. We had a piano when Bobby was here but he s-s-skedaddled. You should, too, right now. Take your ch-ch-ch-chicken and s-s-sheet and s-s-s-skedaddle. You aren’t s-s-safe here. You have to get to Green Gulch Zen Center tonight. Or else! Or else! Get out of here. Run! His voice crescendoed to a screech, like Donald Sutherland, Matt thought, in the last scene of the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Matt ran. As he raced to the road, he checked to confirm that his Prius was not in the parking lot.

He skipped and hopped and said Owie! Owie! on the rough road that led to the beach where he thought the trail up the hill at the left would lead to Green Gulch. Maybe his car would be there, but then he didn’t have the keys anyway. A light rain soon saturated the sheet that stuck to him like plastic wrap. And the heavy rain left part of the road flooded. Matt sloshed through it. Where were the famous hot sunny beaches of California? So far, all Matt had experienced outdoors was being cold and wet.

When he got to the Muir Beach parking lot it was empty, except for a black Mercedes with a chauffeur standing next to it parked to the right side of the lot. When he got close, the rear door opened and a beefy bearded man in a black leather jacket got out. Matt noticed a circular green and blue yin yang image on his jacket. The man gestured for Matt to get in. Matt hesitated. He was cold and scared and his feet hurt.

“Not askin’.”

Matt got in.

CHAPTER 2-3

The next thing Matt knew it was morning. He estimated that it was Sunday but he couldn’t be sure. He woke up as relaxed and happy as he had been the morning before when the woman who looked like Gene Tierney slept in his bed. He checked the bed with his foot. He was alone. Once again he went through the events of the day before hour by hour until the moment he got in the Mercedes and then, once again, as it had been with Laura, it was immediate fade-to-black. Had the hulk put a needle in his neck? Who are these people?  What are they doing to me? He wondered for a moment if he should get in his car and drive back to Pennsylvania where everything made sense. Except that his car was missing. Should he call the police?

Matt’s keys were on the bureau as was a new wallet. In the closet were clothes, not his own-- casual and elegant, his taste, perfect fit, but expensive. And the substitute chicken was there as well. He dressed and went downstairs and then went back and got the chicken. The Prius was once again behind the inn. He drove back to the Tennessee Valley Beach parking lot, parked, and walked to the beach. Gentle waves --nothing unusual there. He walked back, drove to the nearby shopping center (the sign said “hopping center” because the S was not lit) where he decided to have breakfast at the Shoreline Cafe, which Charles had suggested to him the day before.

The Shoreline Cafe was a throwback to the fifties with a stained menu that had price changes printed on white correction tape. The waitress was wearing a white uniform and a gingham apron. She had shiny red hair in pigtails. Matt thought she could have been his daughter if he had one, but then his daughter would probably have pink hair and tasteful piercings--an oxymoron that. This shy young thing's name tag said "Frida." Little Frida.

Matt ordered two scrambled eggs, link sausage, hash browns, toast with blueberry jam (high in anti-oxidants), and coffee with real cream. Cholesterol be damned. How long had it been since he had eaten a traditional American breakfast? The whole meal cost less than strudel and cappuccino at the Pelican.

Matt contemplated that whoever was observing him, playing with him, couldn't have chosen items more to his liking. The pants were Two Star Dog soft blue denim jeans, the sweater, a white Irish fisherman cable, running shoes a half-size too big, which was just fine given the damaged condition of his feet from the sheeted run to the ocean. A toiletry kit contained SPF 30 sunscreen made of natural products. Whoever had put this kit together knew he was concerned about a recurrence of a basal cell carcinoma (small scar on nose), but more to the point, knew that he had been reading about the carcinogenic dangers of most sunscreens. This one was free of petrochemicals. His credit cards were in his wallet, along with cash in new twenty-dollar bills. Trendy sunglasses matched his prescription. And a new watch with strange dials. Did it have a GPS? Was he being tracked? Someone, something, was way too deep in his life.

The hash browns were delicious.

Where could you still get fresh-made hash browns? Crisp and brown on the outside, soft on the inside. Little Frida took his order for a second order. This time he divided it in three parts: plain, ketchup and Tabasco. The old-style Tabasco, not the new one with the extra flavor you find in trendy restaurants. He felt a twinge of regret with the last bite.

With his third cup of coffee, he faced his dilemma, slowly, methodically. He asked Frida for a piece of paper and a pen which she brought to his table. Writing things down always sorted them out, or had until now.

He scribbled quickly on the lined notebook paper:

My name is Matt McFee. I’m a single man, a professor of film, especially film noir and science fiction, on leave from a rural Pennsylvania college. I’ve written much of a biography of Gene Tierney that no one wants to publish. I‘m now writing a novel that takes place at the Pelican Inn. I took a walk on Tennessee Valley beach where I almost drowned. I found a box that I took back to the inn. Inside was a chicken statue rapped like a mummy with drugs inside. I smoked some of the drug and since then nothing has made sense. Clearly there was something in that drug that opened up unusual channels to places that don't exist in my everyday life.

Which of the following is real?  Laura, the piano player, the stuttering sweeper, the Mercedes with the thug by the beach. The chicken, or rather, the two chickens. The Shoreline Cafe, the hash browns--these feel real. But what about that sense of being in an old movie, of being someone other than myself? Where did I get these clothes? Laura was really (seriously-- really) Gene Tierney, not just a look-alike. If I went back to the Pelican, would there be a record of someone else having slept in Room 5? Did I, shy fat Matt McFee, race to the beach wearing a wet sheet and clutching some dead chicken icon? What about this feeling of Destiny? I do not feel crazy. But then institutions are full of people who think impossible things are real.

I am religiously indifferent, I do not believe in space aliens, or God, or Intelligent Design. Why then do I have this exhilarated feeling that something--or someone--very, very strange is messing with my life? And yet-- why, despite all this, do I feel so safe? Happy and sad at the same time. Why the sudden regrets? Something to do with feeling like a pawn in someone else’s game. Cat and mouse. I‘m the mouse. I’m the damn mouse.

Matt felt a few hot tears roll down his cheeks. Frida brought his check and looked sympathetic.  When she took away the second hash brown plate, Matt noticed a flier where it had been.

Green Gulch Sunday lecture 10:15. Tea and lunch to follow. A $5 donation for support for the temple is suggested. Carpooling: meet at Manzanita Park & Ride just off Highway 101 at the Stinson Beach Highway. 9:30.

The stuttering fellow had said he had to get to Green Gulch. What else was he to do?

Matt looked at the new watch. He took several bills out of his wallet, a good tip for Frida, and raced to his car, forgetting the chicken on the seat of the booth.

CHAPTER 2-4

Matt pulled into the Manzanita parking lot next to a green Volvo. The driver was standing next to it, as the chauffeur had been the night before. He was gorgeous: muscular, unshaven, wearing reflective sunglasses, dressed like a Navy Seal on a weekend in the country. With sun-streaked blond hair, he looked like Brad Pitt. In the back seat were three slightly anorexic women, off to meditate. They introduced themselves. The driver didn’t give his name. Matt got in the front seat.

Back on the road, after indulging in a wild erotic fantasy about the driver (what is this about? he wondered--I’m not gay), Matt persisted in his reverie about the Pelican events. He was not religious, or rather he was the Bishop of his own one-man parish, the Church of the Baffled, a firm believer in the not-yet-discovered principles of a universe in which he was one clueless hunk of aging, animated, thinking meat among billions, pretending moment by moment that the seemingly flat patch of soil on which he walked was not a fast-spinning top in the vastness of a space filled with who-knows-what. Some game was afoot and he, Matt-among-billions, was engaged, up for it, fearless.

He didn’t notice that the driver, whose sunglasses reflected passing manzanita trees, periodically checked his rear view mirror, monitoring the silent pilgrimage toward Green Gulch of the green Volvo followed by a black Mercedes driven by the yin-yang thug of the previous night. Sitting next to the thug was pig-tailed Frida holding to her breast Matt's paper mache bird.

At the entrance to Green Gulch the driver pulled over and so did the Mercedes. The big guy came over and motioned for Matt to get out. Matt recognized him and looked to the driver for help. The driver nodded indicating that he should do as he was told. Matt experienced a rush of fear that went all the way to his sore feet as he rolled down the window. So much for bravado.

The big guy said, “Get out.”

“Again? Really?” Matt got out of the one car and into the other. The meditators cowered in the back seat.

The big guy got in to the driver’s seat and put out his hand. “I’m Rondo. You know Frida.”  She smiled and waved the chicken at him. Matt shook his hand.

“Why the kidnapping? Seriously, Rondo. Twice?”

“I’m supposed to keep you away from Green Gulch.” 

“Why?” 

Rondo shrugged. “Frida?”  She shrugged. Everyone around here shrugs.

"You forgot your chicken, sweetie." Frida smiled.

"So I did."

"You're wanted back at the Pelican," Rondo said.

"I have a call to meditate at Green Gulch."

"Green Gulch isn't ready for you. The Pelican is."

"What do you mean?"

"Something about a stolen sheet."

"You're kidding."

"Of course I'm kidding."

"But you do have to come with us," Frida said.

"The last time I got in this car, I lost a day of my life and ended up eating hash browns in your diner. Which, come to think of it, Charles recommended.”

Rondo smiled. Frida smiled. It almost appeared that the chicken nestled into Frida's bodice smiled.

CHAPTER 2-5

As the Mercedes twisted around the hairpin turns on the coast road, Matt, sitting in the back seat, concentrated on not spewing Frida's hash browns in a most inelegant fashion. No one spoke. Matt’s spy-thriller bravery to foot-tingling fear settled into a kind of lulled indifference. When Frida passed him the chicken with a look dripping with significance -- you are hot, you are toast, be careful, this is just the beginning -- Matt said only, "Whatever."

Matt's brain felt like a yappy lapdog that, exhausted, falls into a stupor. He was unaware of the spectacular winter light making sparking diamonds on the ocean far below. Frida occupied herself unbraiding, brushing, and rebraiding her hair.

In his semi-daze, Matt became aware of the edge of a tattoo peeking out from Rondo's shirtsleeve. He imagined what it might be: a snake, a naked woman, maybe a swastika. On one sharp turn, the whole tattoo was exposed. It was a tastefully done yin yang symbol, a neat circle in green and blue. It was the same symbol he had noticed on his jacket the night before. Why would Rondo choose this ancient Chinese symbol representing the union of opposing forces, male and female, and the celestial phenomena of the passing of the seasons, the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year?

They had to park about a quarter of a mile from the Pelican because of the crowd attending the Sunday morning buffet. Apparently a lot of people wanted to celebrate the crisp sunshine after so much rain and fog. Families sat on the grass, balancing full plates. With Rondo on his left and Frida on his right, Matt was a prisoner.

The inn was packed and loud. Matt caught a tantalizing whiff of hot spit-roasted prime rib. Rondo bought three tickets for the buffet and handed one to Matt who helped himself to salad, a roll, vegetables and mashed potatoes. At the main table a red-headed man as imposing as Rondo was hacking off slices of rare prime rib and ham and turkey and slapping them on plates. Rondo was next to Matt in line. The redhead, with a face the color of the beef he was carving, gave Rondo two thick slabs. Matt saw him notice Rondo’s tattoo. He expected a smile, or a smirk, but instead the big guy looked steadily at Rondo and nodded slightly. He laid down his knife to role his shirt sleeve one more turn. The same delicate blue and green yin-yang with a fish eye in each half was on his arm. Matt imagined a row of snorting Harleys driven by guys in yin-yang decorated leather jackets. What kind of secret brotherhood was this? What did they want with him?

Rondo filled another plate for Frida and went to save three seats by the fireplace at the end of one of the family-style tables. Matt, who had thrown counting calories to the wind, heaped both beef and ham on his plate, with gobs of creamy horseradish and mustard, wondering how he could be so famished within a few hours of such a big breakfast. At least his nausea was gone. Frida brought them two mugs of ale and then went back for a third for herself. They ate without speaking. When Rondo went back for another plate, Matt went with him. The tattoo guy was gone. In his place, a delicate very British-looking woman was carving thinner slices. The din was even louder.

Matt noticed a gypsy woman weighted down in turquoise and silver jewelry going from table to table selling long-stemmed roses. He lost track of her until she was suddenly behind him, handing him a blood-red rose, which he took without thinking, at the same time saying, "I don't want a rose . . . ." But he was holding the rose and a thorn had bitten deeply into this thumb. His dripping blood mixed with the juice of the roast beef. She put down her tray of roses, pinched his cheeks with thumb and forefinger, and looked at him with intensity.  "You are loved," she said. "You are really, really loved." He tried to say something but his lips were pinched together by her vice grip. And then she swooped up her roses and was gone. Rondo and Frida seemed not to notice. Matt wrapped a napkin around his bleeding thumb and then smelled the rose.

When he had finished his second plate of food, he went to the reservation area to check on his room. His reservation had been for three days, enough time to gather details about the inn for his novel and then find someplace less expensive, but he had lost track of how many days he had been there.

"We're booked months in advance. I'm sorry."

“I was hoping to get Room 5 again.”

“I’m sorry. Room 5 is booked for a month.”

Perfect, thought Matt. My stuff is gone, my car is back at Manzanita, I have no place to stay. No plan, no clue-- and no chicken. Once again he had left his chicken in Frida’s care. “Whatever” kept popping into his mind. It seemed events that would have turned him into a frantic wreck before were now just passing by.

Matt got another beer in the pub and strolled across the lawn still packed with brunch-eaters and then he walked to the beach, thinking about his mad bare-footed wet sheet run.

A tanker moved slowly across the horizon. What was it carrying, from where to where? Children and dogs leaped for frisbees.

Rondo and Frida had left when he returned. The buffet had been cleared. He had missed the dessert table. Had they served strudel?

He went to the pub and ordered a refill of his beer stein. At a loss for what to do next, he hurled darts at the dartboard, consistently missing the target.

He looked at the picture of the Prince of Wales and the Queen Mother on the wall.

"Charles, what should I do?"

But Prince Charles had no opinion.

He ordered another beer, wondering where he was going to sleep off this ponderous meal and all the alcohol.

The reservation book was open on the bar.

Upside down, he deciphered his name.

Written in pencil was Room 5: Matt McFee. Reservation for one month.

Matt went up to Room 5 wondering who had made the reservation. His suitcase was there and he had a feeling that if he went to the parking lot his Prius would also be there. And he was not surprised to see the drug-empty chicken, chicken #2, on the bureau.

CHAPTER 2-6

A week went by. Matt tried to write but he was beginning to realize that just having free time was not enough to make marvelous characters pop into his brain and start having adventures and conversations. He became obsessed with how few plots there were and how they repeated with boring minor variations. What could he say that was unique, intriguing, worthy of replicating beyond his own keyboard? Maybe the only creative time in his life was when he stumbled on some advanced government neuro-stimulating drug and imagined being with Gene Tierney and experiencing spy-like kidnappings. The drug feeling was gone. Even the memory of the feeling of the drug was gone. And Gene Tierney was a 1940s actress. A dead actress.

To fill time he read a pamphlet about the Pelican Inn. It wasn’t named after the bird that did nose-dives into the ocean to catch fish but rather after Sir Francis Drake’s sailing ship, later re-christened the Golden Hind during Drake’s daring voyage.

In the pub he ordered a cappuccino. The blackboard menu announced peach as the strudel of the day. He ordered a strudel. He took his cup into the dining room and sat at the end of the long table by the fire.

"S-s-s-strudel up."

Matt looked up to see at the far end of the table the short man wearing a Giants cap who had seemed so preternatural on the night of his beach run.

What had he said that night? "Do you see s-s-s-strudel on the menu?"

But here he was, sending a plate of steaming strudel flying and clattering down the table to stop right under Matt's nose.

Matt was hit with a blazing blast of peach strudel scent. His olfactory nerve sent a message to his brain. His gray matter seemed to glow a peach color.  

"Wow."

 He heard the tinkle of piano keys.

He remembered something else Giants Cap had said that night about Bobby, the piano player, down from Alaska.

"Played here for years and one night dis-s-s-sappeared."

At Sunday brunch there had been no piano. But now he noticed the piano was back, where the Sunday Brunch table usually was and at the keyboard, the same piano player. He looked at Matt and winked. He was carefully picking out a melody key by key. In his rusty voice, he sang:

. . . Laura is the face in the misty light,

footsteps that you hear down the hall;

The laugh that floats on a summer night

that you can never quite recall,

And you see Laura on the train

that is passing through.

Matt fell into a reverie listening to the soft sound of the theme from Laura. Recalling his favorite scene. Lieutenant McPherson investigating Laura's apartment after her supposed death, after Waldo Lydecker observes that he has fallen in love with the murdered Laura, the dead woman, her portrait. He reads her diary, her letters. He pours himself a stiff drink from her liquor cabinet. And another. And another. He sits in her armchair and stares at the portrait of her above the fireplace. He falls asleep with the drink in his hand. And then he wakes to see Laura, dead Laura, standing in front of him, wearing a raincoat and white hat with flaps that come down on both sides of her face, like ears on a rabbit.

You're alive.

If you don't get out of here, I'm going to call the police.

You're Laura Hunt, aren't you?

I'm going to call the police.

I am the police.

Bobby sings:

Those eyes, how familiar they seem.

She gave her very first kiss to you.

That was Laura . . . but she's only a dream.

And there was Laura, standing at the end of the long table, wearing the white hat with the rabbit ears. In the dim light wearing the trench coat she looked like a black and white screen image. He looked at his hands to make sure the whole room had not turned to black and white.

"You're alive," he said.

She smiled and played the game.

"If you don't get out of here, I'm going to call the police."

"You're Laura Hunt, aren't you?

"I'm going to call the police."

"I am the police."

They both smiled. She sat down. She took a bite of his peach strudel. He put his hand over hers. He squeezed it. It was a real hand.

Bobby sang, louder now, with full piano accompaniment:

"Those eyes, how familiar they seem.

She gave her very first kiss to you.

That was Laura . . . but she's only a dream.

“Matt.”

“Laura?”

“Ah, the question mark. You must be wondering what’s going on. Who I am.”

“Do you blame me?”

“No. You have noticed that I look a lot like Gene Tierney.”

“You could say. But more than look like. More than if you were her twin, as if that would be possible unless you were a frozen thawed twin from the nineteen forties or something. I feel like this is a remake of Woody Allen’s movie Purple Rose of Cairo. Jeff Daniels steps out of the black and white movie and becomes a full-color 3D human who falls in love with Mia Farrow, a fan in the audience. And then she steps into the movie. Am I going to step into the movie Laura and disappear?”

“No, Matt, you’re not. And I’m not a twin. If you will meet me for dinner tonight, here at eight o’clock, I’ll explain some things.”

“You said that before, when you were going to meet me for breakfast. You never showed.”

“This time I will.” They looked at each other for a long moment. Matt wanted to say something, but what was there to say?

She got up and walked to the front door.  Exit stage right.