Losing Everything to Brad Pitt

I woke up this morning and remembered my dream. I love it when this happens. I get to lie there in bed and play it back in my head like a movie, and whether it's a good dream or a bad dream, a nightmare or a sad dream, the fact that I remember the dream at all feels like a victory.

Last night I had the strangest dream. It felt as though it lasted all night.

It all began with a road trip. I was leaving my house for good, leaving my mother, leaving my doorman, leaving everything that I cared about behind. I only had one bag with me, and in the bag was everything I owned. All my clothes (every piece of underwear), my laptop, my novel, my books, my makeup, my checkbook, my wallet, and the ten dollars Dream Me had to her name.

The car was parked in an alley behind my Dream Apartment, and I needed to put my bag down to help load the car. There was another car parked across the way, and I put my bag down next to it, asking the young smiling couple if I could rest it there for a minute. The couple beamed, delighted--I couldn't see the man's face, but the woman picked up the bag, said thank you, and put my bag in their car. They drove away, with all my worldly possessions.

The road trip was not too fun after that. I wasn't too sure why I was on it, and no one would lend me any money, and I kept getting dirtier and dirtier as we drove further along. My chauffeur was a high school friend of my boyfriend's and that wasn't too much fun either. I didn't know where my boyfriend was and we didn't have much to talk about without him there.

I found myself at a dinner party with childhood friends at an apartment complex in Brooklyn that looked just liked the one in Rear Window. The father kept talking to me about his son, about how he wouldn't pay attention. The son picked his nails and leaned against the terrace where we were eating. I confided in the father that I had lost all my worldly possessions and I didn't know where to look. I asked him if he knew who the couple in the car were. The father told me to ask the doorman.

The doorman looked concerned--he was my childhood doorman and knew me well. We talk about the Red Sox and Obama together. He gave me an envelope of pills with a pharmacy on the label. "Call the number," he said gravely, "and they will tell you who the pills belong to."

I don't remember the pharmacy, but they must have told me who it was, because the next thing I knew I was sitting across from Brad Pitt's wife at a table at a cafe on Columbus Avenue. Not Angelina Jolie, just Brad Pitt's wife, a nice-looking, slightly neurotic woman clearly transported to New York from the Midwest, and the woman who had taken my bag in the alley.

"I thought the bag was a present," she confided, somewhat confused. "For our daughter." She was sitting next to a toddler.

"No, I just needed to rest my bag for a minute," I protested, trying to remain calm so I could get it back. She frowned. She thinks I'm a stalker! I thought to myself. I don't even like Brad Pitt!

At that moment Brad himself entered the cafe, as cool as ever. He cuddled with his wife and looked across the table at me.

"I hear you have a house in Italy," he said in a friendly way. "So do we. We just bought it. I'd love to get your mother's advice."

My mother walked over to the restaurant. She only lived a few blocks away.

Suddenly we were in Italy, and Brad and my mother were wandering around his villa methodically, she explaining how to restore the tile, he listening patiently, rapt, like he'd found his new Nouvel. I chased after the toddler around the house, and talked with Brad's wife about making careers work. I was struck with each phrase by how ordinary she was.

I woke up before I got my bag back.