I was at a high school reunion, where each of us had received a gift, probably a stapler. I left for a while, and when I returned to the table the gift was gone. For some reason, I was disturbed into outrage over this trivial loss and demanded that the hotel staff help me, but they pointedly ignored me. I was beside myself.

As part of the reunion, we boarded a bus that headed west on 55^th Street/Garfield Avenue in Chicago. Our destination was a theater, where we watched a musical that seemed to be part Big River, part Show Boat, and part Dreamgirls, with the main story revolving around a African American singer married to a Caucasian man in the 1960s.

The bleacher seats we were on started to move, and the scene changed to an outdoor view of the Chicago River and a church in winter. I looked behind and saw tracks through a back window, so I suspected the entire theater was on a track and could be moved to change the scene, but I was mystified by the view of the river from that location. I sensed that the theater could be moved to any scene and that there was more to this mystery than moving within the limits of physical tracks. This, and that it was occurring in Chicago, where I had not attended high school, bothered me, and I woke up frightened and fascinated.