IN SEATTLE, LATE AFTERNOON in a modernist house with a view of the twinkling bay. Think my ex- is in there somewhere, too. Or perhaps in a now-forgotten earlier sequence.

Then there’s a trailer of some sort, touting the movie along with a kind of genealogy that mentions me among others and “the books yet to be written.” I start screaming at the screen, “But the books are written! Nobody’s reading them!”

Scarface, up till now politely distant, begins taunting. I wind up overturning him in his curvy laminated wood folding chair, the kind we used to own.

A few words are exchanged, and we leave. That’s it.

MAYBE I WAS A REPORTER … or just working with one. Somehow, the Washington Post was involved. The subject we were following, though, was sentenced as an incorrigible offender – one of those three-strikes-you’re-out type felons – and placed in a large prison behind three big sets of gateways, each with a different password, and five smaller ones. The unspoken message was that if you failed to remember them, this person was lost in the maze – there would be no contact from you, on the outside.

ALL SET TO VISIT FRIENDS IN CUBA, I discover three days before departure I have forgotten to obtain my passport and visa. Had tickets and was already packed.