Paint you as you are. Because I think that’s pretty interesting and complex in itself.”

“You’re just an asshole, Frank, yep, and you’re not going to get any inspiration out of me. I dropped all that. I don’t have to do for anybody, and that means you. Especially you, you asshole. I don’t play ball anymore.” Herb plucks a piece of the toilet paper off his cheek and peers at it for blood.

“I’m ready to give up on inspiration, Herb. It was just a place to start.”

“Do you want to hear the dream I have over and over?” Herb rolls the paper between his fingers, then pushes himself out toward the end of the dock. I sit on the pipe bannister, looking at his back. Herb’s bony shoulders are like wings, his neck thin and rucked, his head yellowish and balding. I do not know if he knows where I am or not, or even where he is.

“I’d be glad to hear a dream,” I say.

Herb stares off toward the lake as if it contained all his hopes gone cold. “I have a dream about these three old women in a stalled car on a dark road. Two of them are taking their grandmother, who’s old, really old, back to a nursing home. Just someplace. Say New York state, or Pennsylvania. I come along in my Jeep—I had a Jeep once—and I stop and ask if I can help them. And they say yes. No one’s come by in a long time. And I can tell they’re worried about me. One woman has her money out to pay me before I even start. And they’ve got this flat tire. I shine my Jeep lights on their car and I can see this worried old grandmother, her face low in the front seat. A chicken-wattle neck. The two other women stand with me while I change the tire. And as I’m doing it I think about killing all three of them. Just strangling them with my hands, then driving off because no one would ever know who did it, since I wasn’t a killer or even known to be there. But I look around then, and I see these deer staring at me out of the trees. These yellow eyes. And that’s it. I wake up.” Herb twists his wheelchair and faces me.