William Styron

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INTERVIEWER

And what time of the day do you find best for working?

STYRON

The afternoon. I like to stay up late at night and get drunk and sleep late. I wish I could break the habit but I can’t. The afternoon is the only time I have left and I try to use it to the best advantage, with a hangover.

-- William Styron at The Paris Review

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Dream

Another dream which I suppose may be considered one of my bus dreams. It is hardly more than a scrap of a dream, but it a sweet one, a little something between me and Pop. We are walking through what could be a big hotel lobby to catch a bus. As we step outside I realize that I do not have a shirt, not even a t-shirt. I tell Pop to go on without me, as I rush back to put something on. However, as I am walking back across the lobby, I suddenly notice that I am in fact wearing a t-shirt, one of my grey pocket-Ts, and so I head back out. When I am outside, I check my watch. The bus is scheduled to leave at nine o'clock, and although it is less than five minutes till departure and the bus is across a vast parking lot, I am entirely confident that I will catch it, so that I do not run or even do a quick trot but walk comfortably on. As I get on board, the latina driver jests about my last-second timing, saying something like, "You really are Mr. Right On Time". As I walk to the back of the bus, looking for Pop, I am a little worried that he might have run back to look for me and might not be on the bus, which is now driving off, but then I see him seated off to one side with a window seat. He is crowded in by other passengers, and although he slaps the empty seat in front of him, I shake my head no, as it would be inconvenient to get through the people. He nods: it is no problem. I walk to the very back and take a readily available seat, feeling pretty good.

I needed to be sure to write this dream down. I cannot even recall if I ever before had a reasonably positive, sweet dream of Pop. It is also noteworthy that more than 90% of my bus dreams are negative, in which some mishap happens, whether I miss the bus, board the wrong bus, or just plain get lost. It is true that life has been very easygoing with Pop lately. Sometimes I have been surprised by the deference he gives to me, as though he somehow needs me more than I need him.

Cats

Maybe cats like soy sauce. Maybe it does have a seafoody quality to it. Coco certainly seems to favor it. I caught her lapping up some of the stray rice from off my plate. Fortunately I was finished, but I think I will have to be more careful with these meals from now on and not leave my plate of fried rice alone in the room with the cats.

Pop

In the midst of another wintry cold blast, Pop does not feel like going out on his rounds, preferring to stay in today. I had forgotten how problematic this can be. Even at 73, he cannot just play on the Internet or watch TV. He needs to do something more meaningful, to pick a home-improvement project, and today he decides to give the kitchen a top-down cleaning. At first, it is only an annoyance for me. I cannot readily let the cats in and out of the house, and he is playing his music right next to me as he plays the busy bee all day with the entire kitchen rendered a disaster area. At least he still does not try to involve me in his works. I have things to do with my time and need not run from boredom as though it were a hungry bear. Such chores are not an escape for me but a pure drudgery.

By the evening time, however, we did run into a more biting problem. In olden days, I called it a stress-point. I caught him cleaning the inside of the microwave oven with those Lysol Disinfecting Wipes. I had asked him before not to do that, on the grounds that it is too heavy-duty a cleanser to commingle with our food preparations, as I am horrified of the thought of microwaving those toxic chemicals into our food. I asked him again not to do that, thinking that he might have simply forgotten, but he gave another of those 'yeahs', with his eyes cast down, facing away from me, that I know means that he is just shutting down the discussion and has no intention of heeding me.

I cannot go without using the microwave oven, but I suppose I can work around this problem. You can always tell when those wipes are used, because it leaves a heavy scent, which is one of the reasons why I think that it is pretty strong stuff and am concerned about it. Accordingly, when I can smell that disinfectant, I will just give the interior of the oven a good wiping off, and I will start to wrap my food more thoroughly. This entails going through more wax paper to wrap up the food, but this is an added expense that, as far as I am concerned, Pop has brought on himself.

To think, I just had that sweet bus dream about how well things have been going at home between me and Pop. This episode brings back to mind the old days with mother and those pissing matches that I cannot win, not when I live in utter dependency on the parental dime and on their goodwill. Maybe Pop just really believes in the efficacy and healthiness of those wipes and this is just a one-off thing, but I am afraid that the wind might be blowing in from a different direction and the weather may get a little stormy in the house. See, even my old paranoia has kicked in, that is, if Pop isn't really out to get me!