The Reincarnation of Peter Proud Read Free Page B

interesting,” he said.
    “I knew you’d be fascinated.” Then, abruptly: “Time to get dressed.
    Who showers first?”
    “You,” he said.
    He lay there, thinking of Nora Haines.
    She’s a good kid—bright, lovely to look at. Great in bed, good to talk to. Apparently we like each other. The proof is here—between these no-wrinkle sheets.
    Question:
Premature, of course. But still. Could this last? Go the whole route?
    Answer:
Who knows? It’s much too early to tell. But it could, it could. I’m a little tired of running around.
    They had met a little over a month before. At the moment, she was a teaching assistant in a course on Introductory Sociology. She was a girl who knew what she wanted, she seemed to take to him right away, and she had no particular hangups when it came to sex. In fact, she took a healthy pleasure in it. A week after they’d met, they had gone to her small pad and she’d taken him to bed, and they had found they pleased each other very well. It was just as simple and as good as that. Three weeks later she had moved in with him. She came out of the bathroom glowing, one of his big Turkish towels wrapped around her, and began to get dressed.
    “Nora,” he said, “What’s your hurry? Why get dressed now?”
    “I’ve got things to do.”
    “It’s still early.”
    He threw off the bed sheet and lay on his back, naked, sprawling. She studied his reflection in the mirror, then turned for a better look.
    “I thought you were tired.”
    “Not
that
tired.”
    She smiled. “So I see. You know, darling, that girl in your dream—Marcia—she was a bitch. Trying to smash that beautiful thing. It’s really a work of art. A monument. She just didn’t appreciate you.”
    “True!” He grinned. “But do
you?
”
    “Oh, I do, I do.”
    “Enough to stay a little longer?”
    “Sorry, but not today, Napoleon. I know it’s early, but I have aclass at nine, and I want to get to the office early and correct a few student papers and gradually put on my normally stern face, so that I can stand up before all those eager young faces looking properly professional and harried. I don’t want to look like some contented Cheshire cat who’s had a long night with some virile tom and has just lapped up a whole bowl of heavy cream besides. My students are very bright, very perceptive. They notice these things. Especially the girls. Now, for God’s sake, darling, get up so we can have breakfast. I’m starved.”
    He rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom. He studied his face in the mirror. It looked haggard, as though he’d been up all night. Shadows under the eyes, the eyes themselves narrow slits.
    Twenty-seven, and today I look forty
.
    Right now, he thought, he could simply fall into the bathtub and go back to sleep. He would have all he could do to get his ass through the day. He thought of Sam Goodman now. Goodman was a friend of his, and a tennis partner, but he was more than that. He was the professor in the psychology department who ran the experimental Sleep Laboratory at UCLA. He had told Sam about these wild hallucinations he’d been having, and the obvious fact that his sleep patterns had been disturbed by them. Sam had shown immediate interest. He had suggested that Pete come over to the Sleep Lab and go through the routine.
    Maybe they could come up with some answers. There wasn’t any room at the moment but at the first opening Sam would let him know.
    He picked up his electric shaver and began to buzz it over his stubbled chin. Then he stepped into the shower. In a way, he regretted telling Nora about the Lake Dream. He had not told her, of course, that it happened over and over, in the same way. Neither had he told her about all the others. The ones he had listed in his black notebook, each with a special name. He ticked them off, one by one, in his mind.
    The City Dream. The Tower Dream. The Tennis Dream. The Window Dream. The House Dream. The Cliff Dream. The War Dream. The