The Fancy Dancer

falling asleep that night, I dreamed that I was walking through this huge Victorian house.
    It might have been my parents’ house, but it wasn’t. And yet the big rooms seemed to be disquietingly familiar and dear to me. I walked and walked, and beyond every doorway, there was another room. I went up wide stairways and there were acres more of rooms. Fires burned in the marble fireplaces, clocks struck softly on the mantels, motes settled gently in the sunlight streaming through the lace curtains. The rooms were dusted and neat, as if the housekeeper had just been through them. But no one was there. It was almost as if I wasn’t there either—like the clocks were striking with no one to hear them.
    Then I was walking up a winding rickety attic stairway. It led up into some kind of tower room. I had a happy feeling that I was going to find an old rocking horse up there.
    The attic tower was empty except for a couple of old steamer trunks with greenish brass fittings. There was no rocking horse, of course. A ray of sunlight came through a single dormer window. On the bare board floor, Andy was lying stretched out, naked.
    He was not only dead, but he looked as if he had been dead for several days. His battered body and his blond hair were caked and crusted with dried blood and sweat. The gaping holes in his hands and feet had the ends of severed tendons sticking out of them like dried-up spaghetti. He had the kind of grotesque swollen erection that executed men are sometimes said to get.
    A feeling of horrified anxiety swept over me.
    Doric stood looking down at the body. He was dressed in an immaculate black broadcloth suit. The creases in the black pants were sharp, and the white Roman collar was freshly laundered and starched. I wanted to turn and go back down the stairs, but I couldn’t.
    Slowly Doric unbuttoned his pants, took them off and threw them over one of the steamer trunks. His wrinkled shirttail hung below his jacket, around his thin white hairy thighs. He kneeled down by the body and tenderly caressed those broken legs.
    I wanted to scream, but you can never scream in dreams.
    Doric lay down on the board floor and took the body in his arms. It moved limply, with that heavy nerveless cold limpness of the dead whose rigor mortis is already gone. Doric fondled the stiff dirty hair and kissed the dried-up mouth.
    Suddenly the limp hands twitched, as if an electric current had shot through them. Then they flexed. The mouth sucked in a harsh, whistling breath. Even the legs were moving, though the lower part of the legs trailed brokenly.
    Still trying to scream, I ran. I went slowly and dreamlike down the attic stairs, almost like falling down a cliff. With great insane bounds I went back through those pleasant sunny rooms. The clocks were striking softly. The velvet cushions looked as if the housekeeper had just plumped them.
    I woke up gasping and drenched with sweat.
    » » «
    The next morning, when Doric was dropping me off at Regis College, I said, “I’ve got to talk to you today. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
    “I’m not free this noon,” he said. “Some people are
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    here from Dignity/Portland. Why don’t you meet me at the Botanic Gardens this afternoon around five?” “Why the Botanic Gardens?”
    “It’s a favorite place of mine,” he said. “M wait for you in front of the Boettcher Conservatory. It’s like a big greenhouse.”
    When I walked into the conference auditorium, another ugly surprise was waiting for me. As I was going down the carpeted aisle toward the row where I usually sat alone, an unpleasantly familiar voice said: “Why, it’s Father Tom.”
    Mr. and Mrs. Shoup were coming down the aisle behind me, also with briefcases and pads to take notes on.
    Never had my abilities as an amateur actor been so taxed. I had to look absolutely blah and mildly pleased to see them, when in fact my stomach was lifting off some infernal runway with a sickening roar, like a jumbo jet.
    “Why, hello,” I said. “Father Vance didn’t tell me you folks would be here.”
    “Oh, we decided at the last minute that it would be a good idea to attend. After all, the abortion issue is important too, you know,” said Mrs. Shoup. “We’re staying at the Brown Palace. How about having dinner with us tonight?”
    “Well,” I said, “that’d be nice, but I’ve already got plans for tonight. Could I interest you in lunch at that awful cafeteria?”
    When everybody had sat