The slain rat

I dreamed I was in a well-lit basement with some friends from high school, comfortable. We were sitting around talking nonsense. Someone asked how I was enjoying it, and I said it was great, except for that one rat that was scampering about. And there was one: a small brown rat, skittering about. Instantly we all leaped up and seized the rat, and one of us began striking its head with a book, as if to crush its skull. Somehow it escaped our grasp, and began running about, until my friend S. from Bergen County grabbed it and ran into a boiler room area. He used a letter opener and slit the animal's throat, spraying blood all over the floor, even as we all begged him not to and looked on in horror. The deed was done.

*

I dreamed I was talking to my brother about his new commute. He had some circuitous route from Brooklyn through Manhattan involving multiple highways and subway exchanges. It was exhausting just listening to him.

Then we were in a bar on Staten Island, some kind of overnight party on a slouching ship in a marina. My friend K. from Staten Island was descending a staircase from the deck above, disheveled and wearing a rumpled, white captain's costume and a crooked grin. I didn't know how I was to get home, and a young woman with lipstick smeared across her chin asked if she could stay here overnight. I shrugged; I live with my parents, I told her. Then another fellow we knew from Staten Island was telling about the time he was eating Lebanese food at 4 a.m., and everyone was laughing.

*

I dreamed we were near the site of the old Black Prince distillery, the underpass. On the radio there was a new R&B hit being played, partly rapped, partly sung in the mode of a girl group from the '60s the chorus ringing out like a bell: "Penalized by your feelings, babe/since you bought me an extra good sweater..." Cars raced by in the darkness, kicking up dust.