a dream, two --this time, DreamMelissasaurus isn't who you think she is. She's not who she was in the last dream, with DreamBoy and his little sister and the flowers in the backyard. In this yuletide season (for in the dream it is snowing), she resembles, much to an unknown number of people's surprise, Ziyi Zhang. Pale, sleek, long-limbed; long black hair, almond eyes and the teeniest lips you can still fit around an apple. She's wearing--and the mind still remembers what the body has already forgotten--a fur coat (hopefully fake, lest DreamMelissasaurus be mobbed by PETA), jeans; pointy boots. Her hair is down. She is walking. She is walking, as I previously mentioned, through a shopping center in what seems to be the grand city of New York, or perhaps Tokyo. Designer stores span the wide dome: BeBe, Jessica McClintock, Sephora, Victoria's Secret, Nordstrom. There are silk dresses and high heels everywhere; and as we, DreamMelissasaurus and I, walk on, we pass people we know only in passing or by acquaintance: wearing normal everyday clothes not suitable for the atmosphere. The girl in the lingerie store whom we know from school is wearing a frilly top and jeans, modeling lingerie over these clothes in the open front of a nameless brand store. We pass by still, and the light otuside, we notice now, is dark and starry. DreamMelissasaurus and I exit through a back door into the freezing night, manuevering around clumps of snow and trying not to look anyone in the eye (as you must be wary in the city). We pass miles in seconds: brick walls smeared with graffiti; underground entrances; stairs leading down the subway; sidewalk vendors. One of us pulls our coat tighter around the body. Then he--for when is there not a he involved?--appears seemingly out of nowhere. He is Asian; black hair falling sensually over his pale (or perhaps it is just the moonlight) features. He is wearing a standard schoolboy's winter coat, double-breasted with the buttons all done up. He wears all dark clothing and leather gloves; shiny black shoes that DreamMelissasaurus could see herself in. A smile plays round his lips, one foretelling a night of dinner and drinks and skinny jeans getting pulled off their Ziyi Zhang legs; of memories flushed with the olives from martinis. "I've been waiting for you," he says, putting an arm on the wall next to her, leaning in to DreamMelissasaurus as she blushes furiously. "Are you ready?" Neither of us knows what he is talking about. Neither of us knows what he wants or who he is, though we're sure in this dream we do, in this snowy dimension we understand completely his identity and plans for the evening. Our hearts beat together, DreamMelissasaurus and I, in a fast-paced rhythm of anxiety. Somehow we end up back in the row of shops and this time we run down them until we reach the same back door. As if no time has gone by at all, we appear again in the same spot: Mr. Dark looking down at us, his breath (sweet) tickling our face. "Come on," he says, and takes our naked hand in his leather-clad one. "We can't keep them waiting." Through the snow we walk, shoes crunching against the grime of NY and ice. Where we go, nobody knows. I woke up soon after. back