dude, wake up. Somebody shot Bob Dylan.”
To anyone else that would have been just another celebrity news oddity. Click bait. Dylan’s shot. Or Mick Jagger’s latest wife had another baby. Or Lady Gaga performed with her clothes on. Or Rosie O’Donnell uttered something intelligent. Or Michael Moore is on a Jenny Craig diet. Big yawn. But to me it was catastrophic. Illusion had just become reality. And it wasn’t even my illusion.
“Who? I mean, how do you know?”
He just gave me one of those condescending looks. How does he know anything? I already knew. This was serious. I just couldn’t believe it. Precognition? Psychic functioning? How could . . . I realized I didn’t even know her name. The dish. The hot dame with the bad dream. And that gentleman. Didn’t get his name either. How could she or he or they know about Dylan getting shot? From a dream? I was sold on that dream-story case. In, out, and paid. Case closed. Was it merely a coincidence? I didn’t believe in coincidence. I resisted the urge to check the desk drawer for a large white number 10 business envelope. But this was beginning to seriously spook me.
I must have looked pale.
“You all right? You’re pale. What, were you, like, a Dylan fan?”
I just stared at him. Mr. Brain was doing calculations. No time for idle chatter.
“Jake?”
David laughed nervously. He looked concerned. I was rarely without a witty and acerbic response. This was one of those times. He asked again.
“What’s the matter with you?”
Was it news? Rumor? I had to confirm the veracity of this astounding news. I tried it again.
“How do you know this?”
“Wow, man. It was just an alert on the newswires. There was a video too. It just happened. They don’t know if he’s OK or dead. Why are you so freaked?”
Why, indeed.
I wondered if I should tell him. I wondered if it even happened at all. The dame and her dream, I mean. I was in a sorry state when I learned of Dylan’s demise. Maybe it was all just a hallucination. Mine. Or maybe the dame’s. Or for that matter, maybe this second Dylan shooting didn’t happen either.
Mr. Brain needed some time to work out what the hell was going on.
“Newsfeed, you say? Can you forward that to me?” I didn’t want to waste time with an internet search that would give me everything about Dylan except this.
“Sure. Stand by.” David unfolded himself out of the chair and headed back down the hall to his office.
I opened the desk drawer. The worst feeling came over me when I saw the envelope. That part of the bizarre scenario was true, it seemed. Gently opened it. Hundreds. Crisp. OK, now I knew the dream dame incident actually happened. The rest I’d have to sort out. Something told me to keep the money on the down low. I don’t know why. Instinct, maybe. One thing that was still bugging me was why I was paid so much. Ten times my normal retainer. To solve a bad dream? And in cash? And literally in the first thirty seconds of the meeting? Was it tainted money? Blue dye from a bank robbery job? Counterfeit? I’d wait until the office was deserted, then I’d check. Sequential serial numbers? I hoped so. I could at least track that part of the source. Or maybe not. Cash transactions over five grand are tracked by the feds. Naturally I didn’t have a source at . . . wait. What government agency is it that does that anyway? Tracks deposits? I’d have to find out. I bet this money didn’t go through a bank. Nowhere near a bank. That was the one thing about this crazy deal that I was absolutely sure of.
The envelope went back in the drawer. The drawer closed. I looked up.
David was back. Stuck his head in the door.
“Yahoo News. Google it.”
I nodded.
Just great. That was the last thing I was going to do. I didn’t have time to sort through a search, knowing the returns would be everything in the world about Dylan except this. And I sure as hell didn’t want any more of the Bob Dylan’s belt mystery. Too fucking weird. Somebody would most likely come for the money. They’d want it back. Maybe.
Mr. Brain was working on the cosmic meaning of this surreal deal. He thought it was just a series of events that seemed to have causation. But what cause? Maybe it was a catalyst for something else. But with serious cosmic overtones. Or worse, maybe it was karma emanating from dharma. The universe reminding me who was boss. Who was really in control. Testing me with a philosophical puzzle.
I was just a peripheral player in the universe’s random number generator. Dealing with the reality of things. Deism as observed by a modal realist. And I didn’t want any part of this weighty and confounding mystery. But it had happened. I was there; now it’s done. Move on. Next. But sometimes you get events in life that are unfathomable. Things that make you wonder about inevitability. Fate. Predetermination. Hand of God. Things like that. This was one of those times.
Anyway, what I wanted was for it to just go quietly away.
What I got was a screaming monkey climbing on my back.
Gnawing on my skull.
Damn.
I was majoring in philosophy when I dropped out of college late in ‘68. I ran out of money for school, and I got drafted as well. The Viet Nam conflict was beginning to get really hot, and me and a lot of guys my age were invited to go on an overseas tour. Courtesy of Uncle Sam’s draft. But the US Armed Forces couldn’t use a guy with a chronic medical condition. No matter how gung-ho he may be. So I got a 4-F classification. Unfit for duty. Damn. It was both a relief and an insult at the same time.
What I wanted was to go kick some commie ass. Get right down into the thick of things and slug it out. With some serious trigger time. Kill commies like my dad had killed Japs in the Pacific Theater during Dubya-Dubya-Duce. But it was not to be. Not in the military anyway. And not right now.
What I got was permanent shore leave.
So a different page opened in that chapter of my life. I was twenty years old with a genius-plus IQ. There was a world to conquer. Dames to fuck. Money to be made. I was invincible. I was unique. Just like every other dumbass, mouth-breathing, long- haired, guitar-playing swinging dick slouching around college campuses. I know different now. I didn’t then.
But I am reflective enough—that means aware—to recognize a philosophical conundrum when it comes into my office and lays ten grand on my desk. I took the dough. Offer and acceptance. That creates a contract. My work ethic required me to honor my contracts. And this contract was with the universe itself. Of that I was sure. Who else could it be with? So there’d be serious—and probably eternal—consequences if I fucked it up. Couldn’t charm my way out of this one.
Even if I had solved the case for her.
Did that satisfy the obligations of the contract?
My hands sweat. Stomach growled. Mr. Brain was scratching his head.
David hollered a goodbye as he left for the day.
Rebecca Lynn was in court all day today trying a big case. She’d be home very late. So my going home to a dark and empty
