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They have an unspoken agreement: Evelyn doesn’t watch the tapes with him, and Miguel doesn’t go near the hospital. But this time, when his daughter hands him the new batch, she says, “They don’t like that you never sign for them yourself.”
He knows that what she wants is for him to go to the hospital, to see Jack in that room. He snorts and says, “The doctors understand who they’re for.”
Evelyn walks into the kitchen. Miguel looks at his yellow notepad, feeling helpless.
“Don’t let me get in your way,” she calls.
“You’re not in my way,” he says.
“I know,” she says, and pours herself a glass of wine. She used to watch the tapes with him, but never Jack. Jack didn’t want to interfere with the process: Miguel did the writing, Jack did the dreaming.
“It is,” Jack liked to say, stretching as though to yawn, “an equitable division of labor.”
Now Jack is gone, except in the new tapes. They aren’t tapes, really, but flash drives packed with flickering representations of what passes through Jack’s unconscious brain. Only three this week—two less than the week before.
From the kitchen comes the noise of banging pots, which means that Evelyn is staying for dinner. That she’ll make dinner, even if Miguel protests.
He inserts the first tape into his console, uncaps his pen, and sits forward to watch. A computer makes the videos, arranging stock images by matching brain scans against the catalogue Jack and his colleagues assembled over the course of months. Hallway, ocean, horse, house. The computer melds pictures, bringing them into and out of focus to shape an approximate rendering of the dreams.
“It’s beautiful,” Miguel said, the first time he saw one.
“You think my brain is beautiful?” Jack asked.
“That’s been established, I think.”
When Miguel began writing poems to accompany the videos, Jack was charmed. “They’ll love these at the lab,” he said. “Practical applications.”
Miguel shrugged off his sarcasm. “Even a scientist’s dreams are poetry,” he said. Then the accident, the coma. And now, at the hospital, that beautiful brain is dying. They’d given Miguel the papers he needed to sign to let his husband go. And their daughter, he knows, wants him to sign them.
But in Jack’s dreams, he is still alive. How can Miguel kill him while he dreams? Their collaboration is unfinished.
Miguel watches and writes. He sees a picture of his own face rise from the gloom: Miguel had been catalogued, too. One pattern repeats several times: an image of dogs alternating with an image of falling snow. He saw it last week, too, and the week before.
Miguel. Dogs. Snow.
Miguel knows what it is, this dream. Three years ago, they’d walked in the woods by Amethyst Brook, the water frozen into sheafs of ice. Three dogs came bounding out of the snow, sniffed them both, then returned through the trees when their owners called. Jack held Miguel, and said that he had everything he wanted. That if he died this moment, he would die happy.
Miguel puts down his pen and goes into the kitchen. Evelyn doesn’t look up from the pot on the stove.
“I’ll go see him tomorrow,” Miguel says. “I’ll put my name on the line.”
“Good. That lab creeps me out.”
“Not at the lab,” he says. “Not for the tapes.”
When she understands, Evelyn stops stirring. He puts his hand on hers, and she lets him take the spoon. Later tonight, he’ll write that last poem. But first he’ll make them dinner.