Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“In the dream you call me. I’ll come over to your place, I’ll get in the car with you, and we’ll drive to Cleveland together. After you deliver the briefcase, you can just curl up in the backseat and I’ll drive back. You ought to be able to get four hours’ sleep on the way home, or close to it.”

Hackett straightened up in his chair. “Let me see if I understand this,” he said. “I get the call, and I turn around and call you, and the two of us drive to Cleveland together. I drive there, and you drive back, and I get to nap on the drive home.”

“Right.”

“You think that would work?”

“Why not?”

“It sounds crazy,” Hackett said, “but I’ll try it.”

The following morninghe called Krull. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.

“It worked?”

“Like a charm. I got the call, I called you, you came over, and off we went to Cleveland together. I drove there, you drove back, I got a solid three and a half hours in the backseat, and I feel like a new man. It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of, but it worked.”

“I thought it would,” Krull said. “Just keep doing it every time you have the dream. Call me the end of the week and let me know if it’s still working.”

At the week’s end, Hackett made the phone call. “It works better than ever,” he said. “It’s gotten so I’m not dreading that phone call either, because I know we’ll have a good time on the road. The drive to Cleveland is a pleasure now that I’ve got you in the car to talk to, and the nap I get on the way home makes all the difference in the world. I can’t thank you enough.”

“That’s terrific,” Krull told him. “I wish all my patients were as easily satisfied.”

And that was that. Every night Hackett had the dream, and every night he drove to Cleveland and let the psychiatrist take the wheel on the way home. They talked about all sorts of things on the way to Cleveland — girls, baseball, Kant’s categorical imperative, and how to know when it was time to discard a disposable razor. Sometimes they talked about Hackett’s personal life, and he felt he was getting a lot of insight from their conversations. He wondered if he ought to send Krull a check for services rendered and asked Krull the following night in the dream. The dream-Krull told him not to worry about it: “After all,” he said, “you’re paying for the gas.”

Hackett’s health improved. He was able to concentrate better, and the improvement showed in his work. His love life improved as well, after having virtually ceased to exist. He felt reborn, and he was beginning to love his life.

Then he ran into Feverell.

“My God,” hesaid. “Mike Feverell.”

“Hello, George.”

“How’ve you been, Mike? Lord, it’s been years, hasn’t it? You look—”

“I look like hell,” Feverell said. “Don’t I?”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“You weren’t? I don’t know why not, because it’s the truth. I look terrible and I know it.”

“How’s your health, Mike?”

“My health? That’s what’s ridiculous. My health is fine, perfectly fine. I don’t know how much longer I can go on before I just plain drop dead, but in the meantime my health is a hundred percent.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s too stupid to talk about.”

“Oh?”

“It’s this recurring dream,” Feverell said. “I have the same dream every goddamned night, and it’s driving me nuts.”

The room seemed to fill up with light. Hackett took his friend’s arm. “Let’s get a couple of beers,” he said, “and you can tell me all about your dream.”

“It’s stupid,” Feverellsaid. “It’s an adolescent sex fantasy. I’m almost ashamed to talk about it, but the thing is I can’t seem to do anything about it.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, it’s the same every night,” Feverell said. “I go to sleep and the doorbell rings. I get up, put on a robe, answer the door, and there are three beautiful women there. They want to come in, and they want to have a party.”

“A party?”

“What they want,” said Feverell, “is for me to make love to them.”

“And?”

“And I do.”

“It sounds,” said Hackett, “like a wonderful dream. It sounds like a dream people would pay money to have.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

“What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” said Feverell, “is that it’s too much. I make love to all three of them and I’m exhausted, drained, an empty shell, and no sooner do I drift off to sleep than the alarm clock’s ringing and it’s time to get up. I’m too old for three women in one night, and these aren’t hasty encounters. It takes the whole night to satisfy them all, and I’ve got no strength left for the rest of my life.”

“Interesting,” said Hackett, in a manner not altogether unlike the late Dr. Loebner’s. “Tell me, are they always the same women?”

Feverell shook his head. “If they were,” he said, “it’d be a cinch, because I wouldn’t keep getting turned on. But every night it’s three brand-new ladies, and the only common denominator is that they’re all gorgeous. Tall ones, short ones, light ones, dark ones. Blondes, brunettes, redheads. Even a bald one the other night.”

“That must have been interesting.”

“It was damned interesting,” Feverell said, “but who needs it? Too much is still too much. I can’t resist them, I can’t turn them down, but I’ll tell you, I shudder when the doorbell rings.” He sighed. “I suppose it relates to being divorced a little over a year and some kind of performance anxiety, something like that. Or do you suppose there’s a deeper cause?”

“Who cares?”

Feverell stared at him.

“Really,” said Hackett. “What’s the difference why you’re having the dream? The dream is the problem, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so. But—”

“As a matter of fact,” Hackett went on, “the dream isn’t the problem either. The problem is that there are too many women in it.”

“Well—”

“If there were just one woman,” Hackett said, “you’d do just fine, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so — but there’s always three, and no matter how much I want to I can’t seem to tell two of them to go away. I don’t want to hurt their feelings, see, and it’d be impossible to choose among them anyway—”

“Suppose you only had to make love to one of them,” Hackett said. “Could you handle that?”

“Sure, but—”

“And then you could get plenty of sleep after she left.”

“I guess so, but—”

“And you’d be rested in the morning. In fact, after a dream like that you’d probably feel like a million dollars, wouldn’t you?”

“What are you getting at, George?”

“Simple,” said Hackett. “Simplest thing in the world.”

He got out a business card and scribbled on the back. “My home phone number,” he said, thrusting the card at Feverell. “Go ahead, take it.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Memorize it,” Hackett said, “and when the doorbell rings tonight, call me.”

“What do you mean, call you? I’m supposed to get up out of a sound sleep and call you? And then what happens? Is it like AA or something — you come over and we have coffee and you talk me out of dreaming?”

Hackett shook his head. “You don’t get up,” he said. “In the dream you call me. You call me, and then you go open the door and let the girls in.”

“What’s the point of that?”

“The point is that I’ve got a friend, a psychiatrist as it happens, a very nice clean-cut type of guy. You’ll call me, and I’ll call him, and the two of us’ll come over to your place.”