At around 1:30 a.m. I woke up from a vivid dream that may have come from the headlines. I was with an older man, perhaps my father in the dream but not my real father, in an aerie hideout when armed men broke in. They told us they were going to kill him bloodily, but that I could leave with one of them across the treetops. I don’t remember wrestling with the decision, saying good-bye, or leaving; I recall only fleeing through the treetops, hearing gunfire, and being told not to look back. I didn’t need to turn to see the horror in my imagination and to wonder at the ease with which I had left and my cowardice. I did not feel what I should have. When I awoke, I was shaking.

Next I dreamed that I was choosing my room at the White House, but it was nothing like the building on Pennsylvania Avenue. I liked every room I looked into better than the last, although all of them were bare bones, and some were underground. I wondered how I had come to be there and to have this opportunity. The strangeness of it frightened me.