Dreamer

by BUTLER, JACK

• ISBN13: 9780517463109
• ISBN10: 0517463105
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-07-20
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing

Summary

Santa Fe dream scientist Dr. Jody Nightwood becomes a beautiful pawn in a deadly contest when she receives a generous grant to conduct a study in her own sleep clinic--a grant that, unbeknownst to her, has been funded by the CIA. The chief of a covert-operations subgroup believes he has discovered the key to artificial intelligence--if computers can be made to dream like humans, they can be made to think like humans. But his nemesis within the agency is secretly running a competitive operation, and will stop at nothing to see him fail. Jody's painstaking research into the nature of dreams reaches a dead end until she turns to less conventional investigative techniques. Looking to the mystics and shamans of Santa Fe for help, she enters the nightmarish but finally healing realm of the subconscious, drawing closer and closer to the most elusive mysteries of the human mind. When she meets in daylight the darkly handsome figure who has appeared in her dreams, she begins a dangerous love affair that will catapult her into the highest levels of government conspiracy and intrigue, and leave her fighting to protect her lab, her career, and her life. Written with Jack Butler's trademark intelligence and style,Dreameris an electrifying novel in which nothing is what it seems and even the mysterious operations of government are less dazzling and powerful than the hidden mechanics of the subconscious--a gripping new work from one of America's most original and inventive writers.

Excerpts

They met for cocktails in the hotel bar, Sandoval joining her in a dry Manhattan. She had always loved the architecture of the Inn, its combination of solidity and liveliness, antiquity and novelty. That night the restaurant outdid itself. The service was quiet, respectful. The scallops in blue corn meal were superb. A cold white Italian, she couldn't remember the name, with the appetizers. A magnificent French red with the main course. Her filet, au poivre and medium rare, was perfect, almost fell apart on her fork. She ate everything on her plate and three slices of buttered bread besides, and was still hungry. Chartreuse after dinner. A wedge of pavé for dessert, dark chocolate and denser than the core of the planet. Two espressos.

Bruno Sandoval was immaculate in a soft white linen shirt worn buttoned without a tie, a double-breasted Italian silk suit that probably dated from the seventies, a pair of boots that were even older but had been burnished to a fare-thee-well. She had imagined him a pensioner, a poor old man from the country. But the waiters were deferential as he deciphered her wishes, made all the orders himself. It felt uncommonly good to have someone else take care of things.

It seemed that he owned Sandoval Ski, just off San Francisco. Officially also the manager, though he didn't go in much anymore, leaving matters to his assistants.

"Sandoval Ski? That's you?" She hoped she didn't look as surprised as she felt.

He had developed a taste for the sport, he explained. In the mountains during the war. Then, when he had come back, he and his wife, God rest her soul, had maintained the family's little crafts store for a decade or so. But he had seen the future, and--

"I caught the wave," he smiled.

His English seemed better than he had allowed in his visit to her office, and she wondered now if he had been testing her, seeing what effort she had been willing to make. Or perhaps he was one of those people who veiled the true extent of their abilities. He had good French, and a ready command of Italian. During the war, the sort of soldier he was, it had been necessary on occasion to seem a compaesano. He had been very well trained. Now, every spring, he went back. Florence usually, but sometimes Napoli, sometimes Lake Como.

Her French was acceptable, and she had minored in Italian for no good reason other than her love of the way it sounded--and perhaps because it was different, wasn't the usual French, Spanish, German, wasn't something you got in high school in Arkansas. She hadn't had much occasion to use her Italian since college, but once she got something she never lost it.

So they spoke, all evening, in that language, with occasional Gallic forays. Such irony that they might have spoken easily together in her office if they had only known. We might have gotten to know each other that much sooner, she said. But then this evening would not hold so many pleasures, he said, and she laughed again. She saw curious tourists throwing glances their way. Who were they, the unusual couple at the excellent table in the back? She was a foreign movie star, no doubt; he a producer, a famous director.

It was a pleasant feeling, more pleasant than actually being famous would have been. Sandoval told amusing vignettes from the war: The nonna who had mistaken him for a grandchild from another valley, who had insisted he come in while she prepared a huge feast and had invited the entire village to come meet her long-lost nipote, all culminating in a presentation from the sindaco, and all at a time when he had been supposed to fade back into the hills in preparation for his next mission. The pig that he and a prostituta--but no, that was not a fit raccontino for a lady, no, no matter how she begged, he could not tell her that one.

An occasional darkness shaded his eyes. There were moments when she could tell he was omitting details, skipping episodes. She was certain there were uglier stories he might have told, but they would not have been appropriate for the dinner table.

He was giving her World War II Lite.

He had not known her father, but that was no surprise. Her father had been infantry, it was unlikely he would have had dealings with special forces. But still they had been there, they had both been there, in a hard, violent world she could not imagine. It was quite a thought.

Outside, it was cold, though thank God the wind had stopped. She pulled her coat tighter. Sandoval insisted on walking her back to her car. That man who had been murdered, it had happened only a few streets from here. Such a pity. He remembered when Santa Fe had been a small and friendly community, you could walk the streets in utter safety.

His head barely cleared her shoulder, Jody outweighed him by at least fifteen pounds, she was strong enough to make pretzels out of rebar, but she felt strangely safer in his presence.

She had driven the Pontiac. Sandoval admired it greatly. "You have a reverence for old things, then," he said. He smiled, and his eyes glinted in the light from the streetlamp.

"I'll drive you to your car," she said.

At his car, he invited her to see his home. She had been hating the letdown, the sense that the evening was ending. "What the hell," she almost said, then caught herself, thinking that he would not like her customary profanity. "What--what a pleasant invitation," she stammered.

"It will be cold," he said. "But we will have a fire."

She delighted him by asking if he wanted to drive the Pontiac. She followed in his car, an old but well-kept Allante. It was the first time anyone else had driven the Pontiac since Pop was alive. Sandoval lived south and east of town--Buckman Road, a gravel road off that, a gravel road off that, and a long driveway winding up a piñon-covered hill.

He stopped in the driveway, walked back down to the gate. She got out and waited. When he came back up, his breath smoking, she said, "What's the matter?"

"Nada. Two men in a black car, behind us all the way. But they are gone now."

She felt a flash of anxiety. She remembered that Victorio had never come to check out her computer. "Do you think they were following us? But why?"

"No," Sandoval said, his voice rough with some indiscernible emotion, perhaps anger. "I do not think this. It is an old habit, to make certain I am not observed. A useless habit, in these times. I am sorry to have concerned you." He took his car the rest of the way, to park it in the carriage run, showed her a graveled visitors' parking area. His home, a territorial, seemed a part of the hillside, white in the darkness, secluded in tall old trees.

He joined her, led her up the steps to the portale and into the house through a set of double doors which had been carved, obviously enough, in Mexico in the previous century.

Inside, she saw the home was original adobe. Massive walls, rounded doorways, age-polished vigas running high overhead. It was cold. He led her to a sitting room, got her comfortable in a modern easy chair centered on a worn kilim, wrapped her in a woolen shawl. On the mantel was a row of photos in silver frames, boys and girls and young men and women, perhaps three or four children at different stages of their lives. One photograph, in the largest frame, of an older woman, more severe than pretty. Handsome, that was the word.

"Mi familia," he said. He took down the large photograph, looked at it, replaced it. "Mi esposa. Se murió hace quince--quindici--años."

He said not another word until he had tended to the necessities--a fire in the fireplace, Manhattans again for each of them. Then he held his glass to hers. "Salud," he said.

"You have a lovely home." She meant it, but found it hard to say, hard to move her lips. She felt suddenly emptied of speech, of thought, of will.

"Mille grazie," he said.

They sat and watched the fire awhile. Neither of them spoke, and yet she was perfectly relaxed. She felt safer than she had felt in a long, long time. She kept drifting off, coming awake. The fifth or sixth time it happened, he was standing over her chair.

"Shall I drive you home?" he said. "Or I can prepare a bed for you."

"Nooo . . ." she said, slowly, sleepily. Her fingertips found the back of his hand. He curled her fingers in his, brought them to his other hand, held them gently.

"I don't mean to insult you," he said. "But--"

"No, no, non è un insulto. La voglio fare."

He assured her that he was free of disease, that it had been many years, since the death of his wife. But-- She replied that she was prepared, that there would be no unwanted child.
In his huge bed, on crisp linen, under acres of downy comforter, she nuzzled into his chest. She did not want to be kissed, as if that were the greater intimacy, but brushed the hollow of his throat and shoulder with her lips. The smooth, dry leather of his skin was whispery, intoxicating. She could have sworn it smelled of mesquite.

She would not have thought the act could be dignified, but when he entered her, tears came to her eyes for the loveliness of it all, the ritual. Afterward, as he lay across her in his sleep, she was grateful for the lightness of his body, his bones like a shelter of small sticks.

I will never regret this, she thought. I can't tell Toni. But I will never regret this.

He was a luminous tent in which she fell asleep.

She woke alone in the big bed in full morning light. There was a fire in the hearth at the end of the room. She had hardly stirred when Sandoval came bustling in with a tray. A pot of hot, thick coffee, bacon, two poached eggs, a slab of whole-wheat toast, a bowl of steaming oatmeal filled with raisins and piñon nuts and dressed with brown sugar, butter, cream.

He sat beside her and drank coffee while she ate. "You understand," he said once. "Capisci che, this is una sola volta. I do not--I would not--non mi permetto di più."

"Shh, calmi," she said. She crunched a strip of bacon, licked her fingers. Swallowed a spoon of oatmeal. "This is a very good breakfast."

"Hai un amico," he said.

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Excerpted from Dreamer by Jack Butler
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.