I was in a classroom full of consultants, where a presentation was being made to an academic client. Various people, including me, would comment, sometimes humorously, on what was being said. The presentation was going well. Then the partner in charge spoke up from near the back and rambled incoherently for a long time. Everyone looked uncomfortable; we could tell she was losing the client, who was standing in front of the room looking perturbed.

Then I was in a beachfront mall, with the water beckoning at one end, trying to find my mother so we could have lunch and decide what to do. Instead, I found a friend, who stopped to look at shoes. In the store, I noticed that the ones she was now wearing, pink clogs, were too new . . .

I found a table at a restaurant, but before my mother or friend had arrived, five or six good-looking boys from my high school (although no one I actually recognized or knew) came and took all the seats around me. They seemed fascinated by me, as though I had been the most attractive girl in the school. Intrigued, I asked the closest one what he was doing now, and he said he had found a career that brought him into constant contact with his primary interest — garbage. (But he was not a trash collector.) I thought he was insane.

Then I found myself at a different table, in a different place, with a man from college who also seemed to admire me and who was equally odd in his tastes and profession. I can’t remember them, or perhaps he didn’t tell me exactly. They probably involved writing or consulting.