I dreamt last night that Irene and I were moving back to New York. (Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen.) We were moving to an apartment in Times Square. (Yeah, right, like we could ever afford that even if it was going to happen.)

In the dream, I was wandering the first floor of the chosen apartment building, which was being used as a dance studio, with many people leaping around in leotards in time to piano music. I wandered the immense room until I finally found the doorway which opened on the stairs which led up to our apartment.

I unloaded the first box of books from the Jeep we’d parked on the street and carried it upstairs. As I came back down for the next box, who should I find at the foot of the stairs, each lugging a box to help me move in, but Stephen King and Ray Bradbury! And even though Bradbury appeared to be the same age as when last I’d seen him, he was on his feet, full of strength, no longer wheelchair bound. Both men were smiling, laughing, jovial. They’d happened to bump into Irene standing by the car full of boxes, and wanted to help.

The next thing I remember, we were done, all unpacked. And as I looked around the apartment, trying to recall which room I’d chosen to use as my office, I wondered how we had gotten there. I couldn’t remember why we’d moved back, what the motivating factor had been. And in the dream, we’d only been gone from the city five years, not 24 as in real life.

“Exactly why are we here again?” I kept asking Irene, confused, trying to figure out why we’d decided to return. When I looked out the window, I could see that our apartment was no longer in the Times Square area, but instead in Coney Island. I could see the Cyclone roller coaster, the parachute jump. But that didn’t give me any answers. I woke, never having any idea what had caused me to return.