Saturday, November 22nd, 2003

I’m sharing a hotel room with a few other guys at someone’s wedding. A woman who I don’t know calls me and tells me that Scotty, someone else at the wedding, just died. She asks me to put her in contact with one of his friends. I tell her I’ll give her the number of this other guy. After hanging up with her, I go out to the deck where I find the other guy. He’s a post-frat surfer guy. I say to him, “I’ve just given your number to a girl.” “Oh yeah?” He seems happy about it. I decide to break the news to him myself. “You know Scotty the surfer? He just died.” The other guy thinks about this for a moment, then, as if suddenly remembering, says, “He died last week.” I ask him why people are just now talking about it. He says, “These things always happen briskly.”

Later, It’s late at night as Susannah, Tom and I lie in bed discussing plans. I tell them that I’ll go pick up Adam and Tamara at the airport since I’d like to get out of the hotel room.

Later…

I’m with a child on the roof of a building. We’re trying to get to the bottom. We both strap on parachutes but we take the stairs down instead of jumping. We get down several floors when we encounter a restaurant on the 3rd floor. There’s some obstacle we can’t get past. A waitress comes out and suggests we use the parachutes now. I tell her we can’t just jump one story using parachutes. She pulls a lever and the floor falls away to the level below. We open our parachutes and jump safely to the round floor.