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He’d never imagined a dream could feel so real. Every detail, every sound, odor, physical sensation, seemed to be really taking place, even though reversed. Finally, though, after what must have been nine subjective hours, he found himself getting unbearably bored. It was about two in the afternoon and nothing strange, interesting, or in any way dreamlike was going on: he was just sitting behind his desk, fidgeting a little, while he listened to a class of fourteen-year-old girls answer the questions he was posing them about irregular verbs not only backward, but incorrectly. His mind had been wandering when he’d first experienced the class period, and it was embarrassing and even somewhat painful having not only to listen to the girls with their horrible accents and ridiculously wrong answers, but to be going over his remembered self’s repetitious and futile erotic daydreams again. At the moment he was having the one in which Marcia—the tall, tanned girl with the long, smooth blonde hair and slightly too-large Roman nose, sitting alone in the back of the classroom where he’d had to put her because she was such a disciplinary problem—caught his eye, smiled mischievously at him while she licked her lips the barest instant with the tip of her tongue, then started to unbutton her school blouse a button at a time while he somehow found an immediate excuse to let everyone else in the class out early, but of course asked her to stay behind—

The last of the other girls was closing the door behind herself and Marcia had her blouse completely off, was reaching languidly back to unhook her bra before St. Jacques realized that not only had the day’s progression of events changed completely, but that things were no longer happening in reverse order. And by then Marcia had her bra off and was undoing her green plaid skirt, while he himself was struggling out of his rumpled gray suit—

He’d never imagined a dream could be so real. Marcia’s breasts were fuller than he’d imagined them, her belly flat and tanned and muscular, her thighs long and golden and smooth, with just the faintest hint of sun-bleached blonde hair on them… but somehow he was having an impossible amount of trouble getting his own clothes off, his rumpled suit and wilted, stinking socks and clumsy shoes clinging to him with a will of their own, while the skin he was uncovering was warty and covered with coarse, curling iron-gray hair, his flesh mottled bruise-purple where it wasn’t fish-belly white… his legs were impossibly skinny and twisted, like the legs of an octogenarian who’d spent the last forty years in a wheelchair… he could smell the sweat and grease on him, the sick old man’s stench from the clothes he should have changed days before, the grayish boxer shorts with the ridiculous clocks on them… yet Marcia was still looking at him with that incredible, impossible mixture of adoration and provocation as she deliberately tossed her skirt aside and, still wearing her panties, was coming up the aisle to him… her small, hard nipples brushing against his chest as she helped him out of the last of his clothing, and then she was kneeling, bending forward… but somehow he was wearing those ridiculous boxer shorts again even as he realized that she was about to take him in her mouth, there in front of the empty classroom with her blonde hair sliding silky soft over his thighs as she swayed forward and Mother Isobel’s office was just down the hall where she was only seconds away if she started wondering why he’d let the class out early and the door wasn’t even locked—

“You didn’t lock the door?” The boxer shorts were gone again but she’d pulled back just before her lips touched him, was staring up at him, amazed, angry, and somehow infinitely scornful. “You mean you forgot?”

“Yes, but, don’t worry, it’s all—”

Only it wasn’t all right, because at that very instant Mother Isobel burst into the room wearing a white baseball uniform with a bright red Maltese Cross on the chest and carrying an equally bright red baseball bat with a pair of silly white wings on it just above where she was holding it. She began belaboring him over the head with the bat while chanting at him, “You’re fired for cheating on your wife, St. Jacques, you’re fired, you’re fired!” over and over again.

He woke up with a throbbing headache and the events of the dream still perfectly clear in his mind. The bedside clock said 4:00 A.M. Veronica was still asleep. He got out of bed without waking her, staggered into the hall bathroom to get some aspirin, closed the door and turned on the light. In the mirror on the medicine cabinet he saw he had two large goose eggs on the top of his head and a swelling purplish bruise over his left eye.