Chapter 1 1 I was never a dreamer. I mean that in the most literal sense. Figuratively speaking, I absolutely consider myself a dreamer. Aspirational, at least. Optimistic? To a point, although my profession--journalism--mandates a certain cynicism. When I say I was never a dreamer, I mean at night, in the depths of sleep. No dreams. Just didn''t have ''em.

Not good, bad, happy, or sad. Slept well, though. I slept well. That''s hard to believe these days, but I know that it was true once. People talk about their dreams all the time. I dated a woman for a few years who would wake up and recite the bizarre and vivid stories that had accompanied her through the night. Sometimes, I''d be tempted to pretend that I could share the experience. Dreaming seems normal, right? Seems like something that should happen to all of us.

And yet we don''t know much about the mechanisms of dreams, for all of our scientific research and psychological theorizing. We believe dreaming is tied to memory, that REM sleep is an archival process. We believe dreams are indicative of repressed emotions, or perhaps harbingers of maladies that haven''t yet offered physical symptoms. Warnings. Messages from the dead. From God. We believe all of these things and more, but what we know is this: dreams are still not fully understood after all these years. They come and they go.

For most people, at least. Until I returned to Hammel, Maine, in the autumn after I was laid off from my newspaper, I enjoyed deep and untroubled sleep. Not for long, maybe, but enough. Five or six hours were plenty. Whitney, my ex, was a nightly dreamer who always seemed bothered by my blank-slate sleeping. When I returned from a stretch as an embedded correspondent covering troop drawdowns in Afghanistan, I think she was waiting on nightmares, PTSD terrors, cold sweats. That didn''t happen. The visions that came for me from the war zone were--and remain--real memories.

Once, she asked me to explain what dreamless sleep felt like. We were in bed in our apartment in Tampa with the windows up and a humid spring breeze fanning through the screens, coffee cups cooling on the nightstands, a lazy Saturday morning. She''d just recounted her latest theater of the mind that passed for sleep and returned to the question of whether I''d dreamed that night, too. "Maybe," I said. "I don''t remember them, that''s all. I''m not like you." "Everybody remembers something from a dream," she said, dark blond hair falling over her face before she pushed it back. "You''ll have to ask me before I wake up next time," I said, a dumb joke I offered just to move on to another topic.

She''d minored in psychology and loved to guess at the meaning of a dream, loved to hear opinions on what the subconscious or unconscious mind was trying to tell her. I think that''s one of the reasons the empty archives of my nights bothered her--there was nothing to dissect. "What does that feel like, then?" she asked. "What does not dreaming feel like?" She nodded. The hair fell across her face again, and she swept it back again. Whitney and her hair had a war each morning and she always surrendered first but on a Saturday morning the battle could go on for quite a while. "It doesn''t feel like anything," I said. "Come on, writer.

You''ve got to do better than that . You fall asleep, you wake up, and that sensation feels like." She hung on that dangling unfinished sentence, waiting for me to turn a phrase that explained the experience. I could see that she was serious and so I tried to come up with an honest answer. "Blackness," I said. "It''s that simple. The world is black, and then I crawl out of it--float out of it, if there''s no alarm going off--and the world is light again." I shrugged, sensing her disappointment.

"It''s the best I can do. Sorry." "That sounds sad," she said, and her expression was so forlorn I couldn''t help but laugh. "At least I do wake up," I said, leaning over to kiss her. "Beats the alternative." She cocked an eyebrow, giving me mock scrutiny. " Something goes on in that brain at night. It has to.

" "You say the same thing during the day, and you''re wrong then, too." "False. I''ve never accused your brain of working during the day." She propped herself up on her elbow, studied me. "Promise me you''re not hiding them?" "Hiding my dreams ?" She nodded. "I want to know what they are. Even if they''re always about that bitch from Chicago you dated back in--" "Now, that''s not nice." "I want to hear.

Actually, don''t tell me if they''re about her. Turn her into someone more interesting, would you?" I laughed, and she did, too, but then her smile faded and she said, "You will tell me when you remember them, Nick? Even if they''re bad?" "I''ll tell you," I said, and I meant it then. I really did. I also knew better than to believe it was my literal lack of dreams that put up the wall between us. Yet, when the breakup finally happened, I couldn''t help the thought. I remembered the combination of scrutiny and concern in her eyes when she asked those questions, remembered her emphatic insistence that everyone dreams something sometime, and I wondered what she saw in my own eyes when I insisted that I did not. Whether there was something in them that scared her. Nonsense, right? It had been a silly conversation in a loving relationship that had simply run its course.

There was a gap between us, and eventually in a long-term relationship you ride up against that chasm, judge its risk and reward, and make the hard choice: try to make the jump on faith, or retreat? She retreated and tried a new path. Last I heard, she was dating a man who owned a sailboat and they were talking about taking a year off and cruising the world, untethered. I have a feeling that guy''s dreams made for the right kind of conversation. Better than blackness, anyhow. I don''t know if the happy couple ever actually weighed anchor. Whitney and I fell out of touch, the way you do. Except I''m not sure you ever really do. Everyone insists they''ve lost track, of course.

"Where''s the ex? No idea. Haven''t heard from her in years." But there are days when I''ll think of people I lost touch with long ago and have a near-physical certainty that they''re thinking of me, too, right then, as if there''s some electric current riding through the atmosphere and we happened to connect on the same circuit one more time. It''s always a good feeling, like a kind touch. For a guy who can''t dream, that''s not bad, right? I returned home for the reason most people do it: a lack of options. It wasn''t a formal move. Just a visit. The kind of visit without dates that you can make only when you''ve got no demands on your time.

I was unemployed and doing what you do--calling in favors, hunting for leads. Networking is the polite term. Begging is the feeling. I started with editors, working my way through contacts in an industry that was hanging on the ropes. Even the more optimistic colleagues I spoke with couldn''t promise a job. On down the line I moved, from the overseas bureau folks and the managing editors at big metro dailies to Patrick Ryan, the oldest friend I had who was connected to anything remotely related to journalism. Pat ran the PR department for Hammel College, one of those tony New England liberal arts schools that have been around long enough to justify the tuition rate with a straight face. I''d graduated from Hammel at a discount because my mother was a faculty member.

The student loans were still equivalent to a mortgage payment, but in exchange I emerged with a degree in journalism--a dinosaur of a profession and a historically low-paying one at that. (I have a theory that some basic finance class should be taught in high school. It''s the kind of theory you arrive at in your late twenties, but rarely before that.) I loved writing, though, loved newspapers, loved the daily grind of reporting. First draft of history, and all that. Pat had started in the J-school with me, but he read the industry''s writing on the wall and bailed for a degree in folklore--which he claimed was the same thing as journalism--and a heavy focus on schmoozing with anyone who could hire him for. well, for anything. In the end, he didn''t have to leave at all, remaining at Hammel to work in the bold world of college PR.

Yawn. But, hey, nice benefits package. Pat had come east from Montana for school, and although I was technically a townie, I''d lived in Hammel for less than two years, a move we made following my father''s death, and I still felt like an outsider when college began. I was used to that, though; as my mother''s academic star ascended, we''d moved frequently. There was always another school that could entice her by promising fewer lectures and more research time. I attended four different schools in four different towns between the ages of eight and eighteen, so moving into the dorms with out-of-state and international students didn''t feel all that unusual to me. Fresh starts were standard operating procedure in the Bishop family. Pat Ryan and I bonded the fall of our freshman year over two things: beer and bullshit.

Much of the latter was based on endless arguments over who was tougher, Mainers or Montanans. He was a big, rangy Irish kid who sunburned easily--n.