A Dream

I am on my hands and knees, peering furtively out of the bay window in the front of my home in Africa. I am looking for a break in the irregular stream of cars on the street across the lawn. While there are gaps, I can always see the next car in the distance approaching. This makes it impossible to achieve my goal: to twist the clear plastic rod that will close the slats of the blinds without anyone seeing the slow change of the slats' angle, from horizontal to vertical. If any of the occupants of the cars sees any motion in my home, they will know that someone remains within.

"C_____ was right," I think to myself, as I wait for my opportunity to quickly render the front window opaque to passersby. "I have waited too long to get out." Where is out? Wherever the cars on the street are going. They are all nice cars, big, dusty silver sedans. They have beautiful grillwork of the type you don't see any more: too elaborate to be a Benz, too understated to be a Rolls. They are driving at a measured pace, but it is clear they are leaving without expecting to return. Their single direction of motion portends that the frontier of security is collapsing toward me, slowly but irreversibly by now, soon to leave me on the other side.

Later, in my darkened house, more tastefully decorated than my real one, cozy, with an unforced antique charm, I am looking at the blinds on the door connecting the back of the kitchen to the backyard. These are of similar manufacture to those in the front, which I must have closed because I am no longer concerned about them. I don't even intend to close these blinds to the back garden. But I am looking at the slats which are made of rare African wood: cut so thin they are translucent, almost like the hull of a vanilla bean. I glumly contemplate how expensive they were.