A A Attanasio by Arc of the Dream (epub)

Author:Arc of the Dream (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Time has no shores, someone had graffitied on the ribbon-curved wall of the airport concourse. Hula dancers in shivering grass skirts approached with necklaces of color-splashed flowers in their outstretched hands. Howard couldn’t take his eyes off the graffiti. Its message was so utterly appropriate to his predicament that he stood still in the throng of deplaning passengers while a lei was placed around his neck, and he read the words aloud. The scrawl had the color and line of Utah’s red arches, implying the same timeswept bewilderment.

“You’re dreaming, Howie.” Cora fluttered a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills over Howard’s slackmouthed face, and he woke sputtering. “Welcome to your first morning as a millionaire! How were your dreams?”

Howard gazed about baffled. It was still Las Vegas: Sunlight stood with archangel stature in the tall white draperies, and through the rufflings from the air conditioner, he saw the casinos’ electric icons looking robotically simple in the morning light.

Cora held a bouquet of cash under his nose. “Is any perfume sweeter?”

Money was spewed across the bed and scattered over the floor. What time is it? he had to ask—that’s how the dream went. “What time is it?” he asked, and harmonics of time chimed like a tuned piano.

“It’s after eleven.”

He would stand now and go to the window where birds like black hands would wave from their plunge into the sky. He stood and went to the window, startling gray wrens into throwing their wild hearts to the wind.

“Honey, are you all right?” Cora had never seen Howard so—strange. He almost always was grouchy when he woke up but never sullen. But then, she had never seen him with so much money. The big lottery win had set something desperate loose in him. The million he had won in the casinos last night was crazy excess, manic luck. But the second million he had come back with at dawn, that was frightening. And that was why she had woken him. He was muttering in his sleep, and he only did that when he was scared. Something bad was up.

Howard waited at the window. Cora had to ask a second time before he replied. The wait was necessary, a part of the dream’s blueprint.

“Howie, what’s wrong?”

“That money I brought in last night?” On cue, the urge splurged in him to look at her, and he did. With the windowlight on his face she was startled by his tired, sunset eyes. “I won all that money straight, Cora. But—shit. Cora, I won it off a mobster.”

She clutched him. “A mobster? Howie, you’re joking, right? Where do you know mobsters?”

“Some guy asked me to play. I smelled money all over him. So I played him and his buddies, and I won. I didn’t think they’d try and kill me for that. Geez! When they got nasty I ran.”

“Give the money back.”

“No way.” He pushed her away from him and glowered at her. “I won that money fair and square, Cora. They were trying to cheat me last night.

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