Magnificent Downtown Brooklyn With Rob

I’m living in Brooklyn Heights and going to a college in downtown Brooklyn. Downtown Brooklyn is that wonderful alternate-Earth place I often dream about. I’m walking with Rob. He says he saw something on the news about so-and-so. Let’s say the name was Hamilton Cooke. A famous person. I say, “I just ran into Hamilton Cooke the other day! He was on his way to visit a Mrs. So-and-So (let’s call her Pembroke) over on the such-and-such side of the park.” Mrs. Pembroke being another famous person. We marvel that it is commonplace for us to rub elbows with and even sometimes know newsmakers. 

Rob leads me to a place in the magnificent basement of a magnificent old public building: huge rooms, grand woodwork everywhere. It is like the times I have walked him to the subway after one of our visits. We say goodbye. I sit down to do some writing at one of the magnificent tables in this unused part of the building. Then I go to the bathroom nearby: more great woodwork and furnishings. The door is a rattan screen, allowing people to see in and out. Rob returns, accompanied by Hamilton Cooke and Cooke’s teenage daughter. Rob waits for me to come out so he can introduce us. This often happens to me in dreams when I’m in the john. I never get to go. I always come out of the bathroom and wake up. As I did this time. As much as I wanted to meet the great man and his young daughter, my real self needed to pee—and so a dream world popped like a bubble.