In a dream this morning, Irene and I were working for the same company, though I had no idea what it was or what we did there. We were getting ready to leave for the day, but before we did, I had to find my jacket.

When I finally did, it was one of my leather ones, but sadly, it was covered with a white mold. I looked further and found a second one of my leather jackets, and that one was also covered with mold. As I began wiping away the mold, someone walked by out in the hallway, and I when I turned I was startled to see that it was John Verpoorten. He was hectoring some poor freelancer for being late with an assignment.

“But … he’s dead,” I said to Irene. (In the real world, John, who’d been the production manager at Marvel Comics, died in 1977.)

Irene explained to me that it had become the fashion nowadays for people to disguise themselves as John. Everybody was doing it. Only those of us who’d known John could see through the disguise.

The bogus John moved on, and Irene and I moved out into the hall. Paul Levitz was there, who in the real world I’ve known since the early ’70s, as this photo proves. This Paul was the Paul of today, though, and I suddenly realized that the office we were in belonged to DC Comics, and that I had just started working on staff there.

I asked Paul whether I’d now have to salute him, and jokingly raised my fingers to my forehead. (Paul had edited some of my comic-book stories when I freelanced for DC, but unlike Irene, I was never on staff, so this was the first time he’d officially be my boss.) He said that it wouldn’t be necessary.

And then I woke.