Our electrician was also a bookie for NFL games. He carried around big cards with each game and its point spread written on them. He pointed out my Eagles hat and asked how they were doing, as though he didn’t know. So-so, I said. Still have a decent shot at the wildcard. They need to beat Washington tomorrow. And the Cowboys and the Giants. He charged $460 for whatever he had done. My pockets were full of crumpled-up foreign money, euros and Caribbean dollars and shit. I wondered whether I’d have to go to the ATM.

J.D. was opening a restaurant. The first day didn’t go great. It wasn’t in the best neighborhood but I told him that shouldn’t matter. Plenty of great restaurants are in shitty neighborhoods. What he needed was a lighting design consultant. “Spend ten thousand dollars on one,” I suggested. That sum seemed about right. High but worth it considering. “You need warm, low lights,” I said. “It needs to be cozy.” I hadn’t seen the dining area but I supposed it was marred by high, bright, inhospitable light. Then I went through a door and looked around it. In fact the lights were pretty nice. But there was something off about the place. The decor didn’t hang together right somehow. I told him he needed to spend twenty thousand dollars on an interior design consultant. His eyes widened at the price. Now I felt like I might be exaggerating. But I said tens of thousands of dollars is worth it if it means the survival of his restaurant.

Desolate dream about falling behind in college. I resolved to work harder, to attend all my classes, including that one I hadn’t been to in months. It all seemed extremely important and also impossible. B.S. had given me his embroidered Grateful Dead jean jacket and I wore it even as we’d had a falling out.

I was on a plane and I thought of the Twilight Zone episode where William Shatner sees a monster on the wing. Then it started to happen, except I was watching it like it was a movie, a longer, scarier remake starring a trendy young actor. He was on the phone in his seat trying to get work done while the beast was doing its thing outside.

I was contemplating a job with a realm of new responsibilities, mostly financial—signing off on this or that. There would be opportunities for corruption. Would I stay on the straight and narrow? I thought yes.

I had arrived home from work just as my older sister was visiting. I was running around doing chores, fixing things, feeling guilty that I hadn’t greeted her yet. A senior account person from work showed up. He’d been out because of the religious holidays, he said, and now he was catching up on some things. He didn’t like the name that had been chosen for a drug: Zoyotoga Garajagar. I said I knew what he meant, though I thought it sounded all right. I said it’s too bad we don’t have any say in that, other people do, people get paid a lot of money for that. Then his wife, another senior account person, showed up to complain about something gone wrong on another job.

I felt compelled to buy a bicycle. I searched for the best, lightest one. The top result was a foldaway model with three wheels.

I was standing in line somewhere with P.C. and someone else. He said, “We’re getting in!” It was the line to be in the studio audience for Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. We settled in our seats. There was a lengthy preamble of warmup acts, comedy but also music. P.C. became distraught when his wife—his wife’s sister in real life—texted to tell him their unborn baby was of indeterminate sex.

I was having a hard time getting home on the subway. Going the wrong way, missing trains, in the wrong station. I got on at one point and I sat with people from my high school reunion. I said there was a game we used to play called Cake and Ice Cream, or maybe Fun and Ice Cream. The thing about the game was that it had no rules, no point, and in fact did not exist. In the dream, this seemed very clever and profound. They didn’t remember it.