Dreams

A man on a quest for a peaceful, stress free life.

 

DREAMS

 

Wade was received by the audience with the polite applause which is normally relegated to those entertainers of the lower categories, the best applause reserved for singers. For his first tricks he relied on the old favourites: flowers that appear from scarves, money from behind someone’s ear, a chain of small scarves that come from one of his hands, pulling scarves through his ears. Wade went on and on producing these basic little tricks. Then he got a top hat and produced a rabbit, then before he knew what was happening the rabbit had started multiplying, till there were rabbits all over the stage. He began to run after them in a vain attempt to get hold of them and put them in his top hat. There were so many rabbits it was more than he could manage to catch even one. The rabbits were now everywhere and the audience was roaring with laughter. Wade was chasing rabbits all over the stage which by now was a sea of rabbits. He leaped towards the edge of the stage in one great effort to grab one rabbit that was on the point of jumping into the orchestra pit. He felt himself falling, and then he came to a halt.

He opened his eyes and found himself off the bed but instead of being on the floor he was hanging in the bedding. Wade hauled himself up onto his bed and lay shaken. What a dream! And was there any meaning to it? He looked at the alarm clock but although it was still a bit early for him to be up and about, he got out of bed.

 

Wade was rather a ladies man. He fancied two women, one was Cathy, who worked in a pet shop. He had first espied Cathy through the window of the pet shop and thought how pretty she was. He had gone into the shop, after a few days of working out what story he could tell her. “Good morning, I’m looking for a pet. But I’m unsure of what to get, I haven’t had one for a long time.”

Cathy stared at the tall, good looking man in front of her, and said, “Good morning, I don’t know how I can help you if you don’t know what you want. Do you live in a house or a flat? The space available for an animal to roam around in is very important.”

Wade was thinking, what I really want is a date with you, but he didn’t want to rush things, so he said, “I live in a fair-sized house with a garden large enough for a dog of middling size or a cat.”

Cathy was wandering around the shop making suggestions. “Perhaps an aquarium would do for you?”

Wade shook his head, “No, thanks, I eat fish. I don’t think I’d be so keen on having them floating around in my living-room.”

Cathy laughed, “You’re so funny. What’s your name? Mine’s Cathy.”

“Wade. Cathy, nice to meet you. I’m sorry, but I still haven’t made up my mind about the pet, is that OK with you?”

“Yes, of course it is. I suppose you’ll be back when you’ve made up your mind.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll be back, you can count on that,” and with those words. Wade left the pet shop.

 

He felt very satisfied with the morning’s activities. Wade was nearer sixty than fifty and had had no end of women, at one point in his life he had been married. Now he was more interested in having a companion than a lover, in spite of fancying Cathy and Jackie. That had always been Wade’s problem, he was unable to keep to one woman. He liked many of them.

After the rabbit dream, which had stimulated visiting the pet shop, Wade had made an analysis of the business with the rabbits. They were notoriously fertile and fecund. He had no desire to be a late father, so what did the fertile and fecund mean? All he wanted was, not to be alone, he didn’t like that idea at all.

 

The other female interest in his life was Jackie, who ran a garden centre.

The visit to the pet shop over, Wade directed his steps to the garden centre. He had got to know Jackie a few months before, but had not yet summoned up sufficient confidence to ask her out. As yet, they hadn’t got to know each other very well. The garden centre was an extraordinarily pleasant place to sit in. Apart from an idyllic layout, there were fountains and statues ornamenting the whole area as if it were an ancient garden and not for business. Jackie was a lady who had proved to be an inspiration to him when he had nothing much to think about.

“Hello, Jackie, how are you today?”

Jackie was older than Cathy, and always showed happiness on seeing Wade. What he didn’t know was that Jackie had an excellent sense of public relations. She was nice to everyone. He needed to take her out and get to know her properly. But would he?

“Hello, Wade, how’s it going? Fancy a cup of tea or coffee?”

“Coffee, please,” Wade answered, accepting a cup of coffee with some biscuits.

They sat down at a garden table made of artificial stone. Wade sat and stared around him. He wondered what it would look like with some animals running around in it. Jackie was running her hands over the table top. Wade wasn’t sure whether he wanted to watch her doing that. Was she bored with him? If so, then he’d never go to see her again. What to do?

Jackie stopped fidgeting with her hands and said, “Wade, I’m going on holiday next week. I’ll be gone for three weeks.”

Wade put his finished cup down onto the saucer, and pulling himself in to hear the worst said, “Going somewhere nice?”

“I’m going on a tropical cruise. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Jackie told him, doing her best not to meet his eyes.

“Have a good trip, and see you when you get back. Thanks for the coffee, hope you enjoy yourself aboard the ship.”

Jackie looked at his figure walking out of the garden centre, and sighed. What a disaster, and yet how handsome he still was.

Wade sincerely hoped that Jackie would have a good holiday.

 

That night Wade had another rabbit dream. This time he was a magician, but there was only one very large white rabbit, and when he was holding it by its ears the rabbit looked him straight in the eyes and winked. This time Wade didn’t wake up with a sense of panic, but amusement. What could it mean - if anything?

 

There are many things that a single person can do. Some are around the house and garden, and others are to get away from both. Wade had a pretty busy schedule: gym, tennis, jogging, and his newest hobby - making cakes. He didn’t know where all these diverse activities would take him, but for the moment he was quite happy. After two dreams about being a magician, he began to wonder whether he should dedicate some time to studying magic.

Jackie was away on the cruise, and Cathy was available in the shop. Wade began to think seriously about getting a dog or a cat or both, and then he asked himself the question: what would he do with the pets when he wanted to go away on holiday?

 

Wade returned to the pet shop and went in, “Good morning, Cathy, how are you?”

Cathy said, “Good morning, Wade. This is my mother, Julie. She’s been staying with me for a bit.”

Wade saw an attractive older version of Cathy standing in front of him, he held out his hand. Julie didn’t offer hers, “I don’t like shaking hands. I’m afraid of catching germs.”

Wade looked from Cathy to Julie and back again. What was all this about?

“My mother doesn’t understand how I can have a pet shop. She’s allergic to animal fur and other things,” Cathy told him

Julie said, “I have to be going now. Don’t forget to ring more often, will you, Cathy? Goodbye. Wade, pleased to meet you:”

“Same here,” Wade said, as he watched her leave the shop.

“What’s the matter with your mother, is she ill?”

“No, she’s a fusspot. Always has been, don’t worry about her. Made your mind up about the pet you’d prefer?”

“Not yet. Cathy, let’s have lunch together, shall we?”

“Yes, of course”

 

Three weeks later Jackie arrived back from her cruise with a wonderful suntan and a new man, one who was more with it than Wade. Jackie found it rather odd that Wade didn’t make an appearance. Meanwhile Jackie and her new man, called Doug, were going great guns and were making plans to get married, in spite of being in the ‘beyond children’ bracket. Doug, who had always had dogs when he was a child, asked Jackie if she’d like a dog, and she said that she would.

 

They both decided on a big dog, and one Saturday afternoon paid a visit to Cathy’s shop. Wade wasn’t present when they were there, but later heard from Cathy, how she had given them the names of breeders of large dogs. Wade didn’t pay very much attention to what Cathy told him about the shop or the things that happened inside it. The pet shop was Cathy’s business and that was how Wade thought it should be, he had no intention of interfering with it. He noticed that Julie, Cathy’s mother, never pushed herself on her daughter either.

 

All in all, Wade’s life was nice and quiet. He and Cathy had started getting more serious while Jackie was away on the three week cruise. The first time Wade invited Cathy to his house he showed her all over, upstairs and downstairs, to sense her approval or not. Then he took her to see the back garden.

When Cathy looked at the garden, she said, “Have you got rabbits here?”

Wade, who had had no more dreams about rabbits, said, “No, I haven’t. Why do you ask?”

“It looks like there are rabbit burrows in your lawn,” Cathy said pointing to some suspicious holes. At that moment two rabbits popped out of holes in Wade’s immaculately mowed lawn.

Wade went to where Cathy was standing and said, “Let’s take a look over the fence.”

As they were peering over the next door neighbour’s fence they saw brown rabbits hopping across the lawn. “We’d better have a chat with the neighbours and try and make sense of this,” Wade said to Cathy.

Wade’s neighbours didn’t delay in answering the front door bell. “I must say I’ve been wondering when you’d make us a call. It’s about the rabbits, isn’t it?”     

Wade and Cathy followed the neighbours through their house and out into the garden and saw a row of rabbit hutches. “The problem arose when we left our teenage children to look after the rabbits while we went on a short break. They left the door of one of the hutches open and out hopped some rabbits. As you know they breed without thinking about it, and soon we could see they had burrowed into your garden. I’m not sure how we can get them back,” the man said to them.

Cathy said, “I have a pet shop and a man who works in the shop is good at catching runaway animals, so you leave it to me. If you like, I’ll take them, and sell them for you. Is that OK with you?”

The man and wife exchanged a stare, and nodded agreement.

 

Wade and Cathy went back to his house. Now I understand why I had rabbit dreams, Wade thought to himself.

Later the same day, Wade told Cathy about the rabbit dreams. Cathy was highly amused, “Have you ever thought of becoming a magician?”

To which Wade replied, “You’re enough magic in my life now, so how about us putting things on a more permanent level?”

“All right, if you like. I don’t see any problems, unless you have rabbit dreams again and go falling out of bed and waking me up. I need my sleep, I get up early enough to get the shop open and feed and clean the animals. You can come and help out in the shop if you like.”

Wade made no answer, he was still thinking about the state of his garden with the rabbit burrows in it.

 

“Wade, you still haven’t decided what pets we are going to have,” Cathy said to him as they were eating dinner one night after the discovery of the rabbits in the garden. Wade had given the subject more thought than he had revealed to Cathy. Ever since meeting the woman who was going to be his future mother-in-law, he had been looking up on Google the hairiest dogs and cats that exist. Before speaking he cleared his throat and said, “What do you think of a couple of long-haired Dachshunds and two Persian cats?”

Cathy replied, “I don’t suppose you realize how much grooming they need?”

“Yes, I do,” Wade said, thinking that the compensation for not having his mother-in-law visiting very often, was worth all the grooming in the world.