Catch Him If You Can!

 

Another weird-ass dream. My friend Robert has come round one evening, along with another friend, Mark Bender (in reality the two don’t know each other and Mark is in the US right now) and Steven Spielberg is there too. I think Spielberg is the first person to notice that, although the night sky is perforated with bright stars, as you approach the window they become grey smudges, then cheerful pastel blobs. Then we notice that the building across the street looks like the one in NOSFERATU, and that there’s a guy in the window there who looks like Wilford Brimley. General jubilation.

Photographs are taken, and soon the window is wide open and Robert is sitting on the sill, legs dangling over a three-storey drop. I think to myself, “I should warn him to be careful there,” and at that instant, his buttocks slide off the sill and he drops silently from view.

A frozen moment of sickening horror, and then Mark charges to the window and impulsively vaults out into space. Does he hope to catch Bob on the way down? Spielberg and I exchange a startled glance then rush over and look down.

I remember a statistic I just read — in any fall of more than two storeys, your chances of death are at least 50%. I can’t remember where I read this, and in fact it may have been in another dream.

Down on the pavement, Mark is getting gingerly to his feet and staggering about, looking for Robert. But Robert cannot be seen.

We run downstairs. Spielberg, the big film genius, is as big an idiot as I, since neither of us has called an ambulance or even grabbed a phone. We find Mark, still hobbling, with perhaps many small broken bones in his feet, still looking for Robert. Robert is nowhere to be seen.

As I am waking up, I come up with a solution to the mystery, but I’ll only put it in the comments section after hearing your own suggestions.