From ‘The Prison Dialogue’, Chapter 22:
Editor’s Commentary on Raul’s 5,644th Letter
“...The high season had just ended and there were plenty of seats at the Crown & Anchor. Roni Pod manufactured the perfect rationale for her presence and casually lofted inquiries about events from two years earlier with stunning misdirection.
Alan was dead. Murdered. As he was being transferred from the local Provincetown holding facility, Miss D rushed up and stabbed him in the heart. He died instantly. The woman under the TR4 was her live-in lover, the one she cheated on constantly. Her lover responded in kind, not infrequently meeting up with like-minded partners at P-town’s all-purpose nude beach. She’d just finished waiting the prescribed time for her most recent paramour to bike it back to town when she met with her untimely end. I reacted credibly.
I flew back that evening committed to staying awake the entire night if necessary to avoid my next long overdue Silver Lady nightmare. Sleep eventually won out, and I dreamt of my mother and father.
They’re both about my age and sitting on the blue couch in our upstairs apartment in Uncle Peter’s house. Raul is dressed in flowing red robes like some kind of enlightened being. His facial scars have been replaced by an elaborate, colorful tattoo, and there’s this soft glow that surrounds him and partially surrounds my mother. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but the conversation is very pleasant and I’m increasingly upset I’m not part of it.
Finally I shout out, “You will call me Roni!” My father turns away from my mother, smiles at me, and in perfect Spanish says, “Hola (Hello), Roni.” His trill on the R is very pronounced.
Suddenly I’m eight and just standing there like the eight-year I should be. I don’t know how to respond. He repeats even more kindly, “Hola, Roni.”
I woke up and forced myself to stay awake for at least another hour. When I calculated it might be safe, I popped a couple of Quaaludes and fell back into the last dreamless sleep of my life.
[My sleep, however induced, would be violently interrupted by any one of several increasingly nightmarish variations on that same dream, every night, for at least the next two years.]
[Countless comparable dreams have followed.]
[You’d never abandon her, not even that fucked-up child, would you, Daddy?]
[Please, Daddy?]
[Oh, Daddy, I love you so much.]
