I'm in my mother-in-law's house, but in my dream this is the new house my parents are building. The back room (which connects to a deck) is Nick's room, in the process of construction. Plastic sheeting is hanging everywhere, and the walls are covered with irregularly placed (but identical) splotches of glowing plaster. In an adjoining room is something called a genealogy machine: you place a book of family history open on it and there it does something, God knows what. This is obviously a nod to the presence of my mother. I went out onto the back porch and realized I was being pursued by Richard Madden, a character in Borges' short story 'The Garden of Forking Paths', who is never described apart from his name, and his function: namely, to chase the narrator with a gun. I ran out under the deck and ducked. Now I'm in the side yard and there is a blonde woman on the porch. A man behind her waves and shouts: "Good bye, pa!" There is a limosuine cruising down the road: a window rolls down and the barrell of a shotgun pokes out. The woman is gone and the man who was standing behind her crumbles a head of garlic over the edge. The cloves hit the ground. There is a bang. Richard Madden has killed the woman instead of me. I walk to the gate and across the driveway a very fragile and ancient Hindu man wearing blue earmuffs shuffles by with his eyes closed.