“I can do dream interpretation. It’s mostly just psychology,” replied Atticus. “How did you meet the dead guy?”

Garrett leaned back and sighed. “On a staircase. We talked about old things, the way you do. What used to be. When it was.” He slipped into his lecturer voice without noticing. “Except I’d never been there before in my life.”

“You mean you never actually met him.”

“Never once. And he turns to me like we go back twenty years and tells me I was his friend.” Garrett spread his hands. “Which came as some surprise.”

“I bet,” I said, watching his eyes.

“So I told him the truth. I said, I thought you died alone. A long time ago.” Garrett’s mouth twitched. “And he just laughed at me. Like I’d gotten the story wrong on purpose.”

“That tracks,” Atticus said, staring off into the haze over the desert.

“He said he never lost control of anything. Not even the dying.” Garrett shook his head slowly. “And then he says, real calm, that I’m looking at the man who sold the world.”

Atticus went quiet for a second. “That is so him.”

“So what do you do.” Garrett shrugged. “I laughed, I shook his hand, I went home. And then the dream just kept going without me. I spent what felt like years in it looking for somewhere solid to stand. Wandering. Looking for ground, looking for a new shape I could exist within.”

He tipped his head back at the desert sky, eyes open, not focused on anything.

“All those millions of people up there,” he said. “And he found me to tell me we’d both died alone, a long time ago.”

He rubbed his eyes.

“You know what the worst part is? I almost believed him.”

“Who’s to say he was wrong,” said Atticus. “Neither of you ever lost control. That was always the problem.”

[It didn’t matter much either way. AAA wasn’t coming until tomorrow.]

Garrett viewed him with new curiosity.

“You were face to face with the man who sold the world,” Atticus Lynch replied, to no one in particular, and lit another cannabis cigarette,

“Hey Musawwir, can you retroactively find out how his body was first seen, identified, documented, and if it was lawfully released before immediate cremation?”