ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 127: Lying in a Dream World

It’s night.

As I unfurl my bedroll atop the living room rug, I look at my man-in-the-moon oil, propped in the seat of a chair near me, and say: “Ernie, if you can, come back to me tonight. I need a sign from you that you still love me, that you’re still with me. That I’m not alone.” And then I say: “Of course you’re with me. How silly of me to think you’re not. I’m writing this, am I not? I’m putting words on paper. I couldn’t put these words on paper without your help. Not possible.”

Now it’s morning, and I awaken from long hours of uninterrupted sleep having just dreamed this dream.

Ernie and I are together. I know he will die soon; his bladder is out. I don’t want to ask him how he is even pissing, but how can he be alive, standing next to me, and not be able to piss? I say: “You don’t look much different from when I first saw you. Your hair looks the same. Long. The same color.” He goes to a mirror. “You’re right.”

Hah! Even in a dream, I don’t tell Ernie what I’m really thinking.

And even in a dream, Ernie so wants to believe what I’m telling him is true.

We were fools, weren’t we? We both knew the truth, and we kept it to ourselves. We were bound together in deceit. We were lying in our own dream world.