I was at work and needed to take the bus back to town. So I walked down to the pickup point to get on the bus, and found there was no bus, only three or four beat-up old pickup trucks driven by good-ol-boys. Some disreputable old people from the apartment complex, Morton and his wife, plus another guy that stares at me a lot, were waiting in line, too. "Morton" and his wife were shouting at one another as usual, and the other old guy just stood there, being unnerving. Luckily, they all got in this one blue pickup together. I got in the red one behind them. As I got in the car, I asked: "So. We're going to S City?" Without really answering, the guy said: "Shuttle to B Town!" I was clasping a dollar in my hand and I resolved not to pay if I could possibly avoid it. There was a long drive along a crazy screwed up road, and the upshot was, in order to get to B Town at all we had to drive over the treetops of this really dense forest. So the goodolboy begins driving over the trees and the guy in the back really begins protesting violently, which makes the goodolboy lose his concentration (it takes a lot of concentration to drive on treetops, you know!) and the car kind of tips like a boat taking on water, and then finally falls through the trees twenty or thirty feet. Lucky for me my window was open -- I clambered through the window just as the car tipped onto its side, and took refuge in a branch. When the car hit the ground I climbed down the tree and joined the people. The other passenger was laying motionless at the bottom of a chainlink fence (wind knocked out) and same with the goodolboy. They were both alive, though, and arguing enough that I could sneak off without paying.  The chainlink fence, as it turned out, was guarding my parents' Summer Palace. This was a huge sprawling mansion, most of its rooms hardly even used, three or four used intensively. The place was a thorough disaster. In one room the walls were lined with peeling cork. (Proust?) There was a stack of books like the donation pile at the Hillside library. These were paperbacks I have looked at in the used book store, but have decided not to buy. I was very happy to find them just sitting here now, though, because it meant I could have them for free, when it wasn't worth the two or three dollars apiece to buy them. There were books by Melville and Henry Fielding, both of whom I've had a lukewarm interest in this past month. Laura was with me in this room. She said: "Gee, it's too bad my mother doesn't live here. She deserves a big place like this." Just at that point, her mother showed up and whooshed around in her normal way, apologizing for the mess and attending to one thousand little errands at the speed of light in order to get them all done before dinner in a half hour. You get the feeling she's been going like that all day long. In an aside she mentioned to me that if I wanted to give music lessons, I can do it in her name and she'll pay me under the table, since she's registered and it would be a pain in the ass for me to register, since I'm going to be leaving in a few months. Then Laura and I walk into the next room. Here are where all the registration forms are to be found. Laura hadn't heard her mother tell me I could give lessons in her name, so I begin telling her. Right as I'm about to give away the game the old lady in charge of registrations totters up and asks me what I'm doing. "Registering to give piano lessons!" She hands me a registration form, and tells me sweetly that I really must register, since it's very illegal to give lessons without registering, etc. etc. etc. I smile and let her dodder off into the other hallways of the mansion. I turn to Laura with a look like "Whew! That was a close one!" and I wake up.