I dreamt that I was in a cookie-cutter mall bookstore of the Borders or Barnes and Noble variety—long, narrow, and badly lit. I was reading a (non-existent in real life) beautifully designed three-volume collection of Michael Chabon’s essays and short stories. I’d pick up a book, settle in a comfy chair, skim through it, note a particularly fascinating sentence here and there, and then return it to the shelf in exchange for the next volume to enjoy in that comfy chair.

When I returned with the third volume, who should be sitting in the comfy chair next to mine but Jonathan Lethem. For some reason, we got into a discussion about whether or not he really existed. Not sure how we got on that topic, but in the dream, the discussion of his possible status as imaginary seemed entirely rational. We were discussing this situation both as if it was happening to us, but also as if we were just characters in someone else’s story.

Perhaps, I suggested, when the workers in the bookstore looked at me, all they saw was a guy talking to himself, gesticulating toward a empty chair. Talking about myself as if I was but a fictional character, I continued by saying that when they looked at me, they probably thought of me as harmless. Jonathan corrected me, as if taking about a story we would write, saying that, no, they’d instead see the character as a user.

With this, Jonathan stood up and said he was hungry. As I considered where we might head off to have dinner, I woke, and was, of course, hungry in reality.