In queue along some decrepit stretch of industrial wasteland, I await with others for something necessary . Crowded. (My dreamscapes are gothic postmodern noir nowadays, the slipshod renderings of gloomy postindustrial decay, dark wrecks in dusty ruin, the end of today...)

Someone is very close behind. Her breasts against my back. Without any agreement, any word even, nor any look, I bend lower and take grip around each of her thighs and she is aboard piggy-back. It is a point of honor I do not look at her, speak to her. She might then be obliged to gratitude, or perhaps she would be recalled to the strange interlude and want down and out of it. I want to help her, carry her, be her anonymous hero.

We travel about like that. There are single-level building wings, even, one after the other, glass and aluminum with some brick. Some there to make product, some sell them, others offer services of varying sorts. I walk and look at the desolation and we say nothing. I do not seek our reflection in glass anywhere.

I enter one wing, and travel through a series of dining halls, all in a row, all in one wing. I ask an attendant what is the difference between the various diners along the row. She tells me in a staccato sing-song she has delivered many times that day alone, and the import and even denotation of the words have been worn off like a water color left out in the rain. I learn nothing.

I am conscious of how light the girl is, how well she rides my back. Nobody seems to notice us. Nobody seems to notice anyone.

Down in a grassy dell between two wings, there is commotion. I see Scoobie, cavorting with one of his buddies, maybe the Ridgeback Gramby. Someone is running after them, trying to restrain Scoob.

I quickly set the girl on her feet and hurry into the pit. The action all hits pause with no damage, as it most often will. I turn to retrace my steps up out of the pit.

There are some who watch now, disinterested, like you might if caught in traffic at vague honking elsewhere.

I have no way of finding the girl again. I know not her appearance nor her voice.

Nobody makes any sign of recognition. Of course, were I to identify her, the magic would be lost anyway.

I am so sad for her, as I trudge back up to the rank and forlorn row. I am so sad for me.