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It was a nightmare, a lurid waking horror show that unspooled every night, every noon, every morning, dead center in her mind, her life.
“What do you want to know about it?” she asked, stalling. She felt sick to her stomach.
“I want to hear it all,” he said. “Tell me about the dream. Tell me about Mr. Ludo.”
    Eve Galvez looked at the outfit on her bed. Collectively, the jeans, cotton blazer, T-shirt, and Nikes represented one- fifth of her wardrobe. She traveled light these days, even though she was once addicted to clothes. And shoes. Back in the day her mailbox had been thick with fashion magazines, her closet impenetrable with suits, blazers, sweaters, blouses, skirts, coats, jeans, slacks, vests, jackets, dresses. Now there was room in her closet for all of her skeletons. And they needed plenty of room.
    In addition to her handful of outfits, Eve had one piece of jewelry she cared about, a bracelet she wore only at night. It was one of the few material things she cherished.
    This was her fifth apartment in two years, a spare, drafty, threeroom affair in Northeast Philadelphia. She had one table, one chair, one bed, one dresser, no paintings or posters on the walls. Although she had a job, a duty, a litany of responsibilities to other people, she sometimes felt like a nomad, a woman unfettered by the shackles of urban life.
    Exhibit Number One: in the kitchen, four boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese that expired two years earlier. Every time she opened the cupboard she was reminded that she was relocating with food she would never eat.
    In the shower she thought about her session with the shrink. She had told him about the dream—not all of it, she would never tell anybody all of it—but certainly more than she had intended. She wondered why. He was not any more insightful than the others, did not have a special sense that raised him above all of his colleagues in his field.
    And yet she had gone further than she ever had.
Maybe she was making progress.
    She walks up a dark street. It is three o’clock in the morning. Eve knows precisely what time it is because she had glanced up the avenue—a dream- street that had no name or number—and saw the clock in the tower at City Hall.
    After a few blocks, the street grows gloomier, even more featureless and long- shadowed, like a vast, silent de Chirico painting. There are abandoned stores on either side of the street, shuttered diners that somehow have customers still at the counters, ice- covered in time, coffee cups poised halfway to their lips.
    She comes to an intersection. A streetlight blinks red on all four sides. She sees a doll sitting in a fiddleback chair. It wears a ragged pink dress, soiled at the hem. It has dirty knees and elbows.
    Suddenly, Eve knows who she is, and what she has done. The doll is hers. It is a Crissy doll, her favorite when she was a child. She has run away from home. She has come to the city without any money or any plan.
    A shadow dances across the wall to her left. She turns to look, and sees a man approaching, fast. He moves as a gust of blistering wind, carved of smoke and moonlight.
    He is now behind her. She knows what he did to the others. She knows what he is going to do to her.
“ Venga aqui! ” comes the booming voice from behind, inches from her ear.
The fear, the sickness, blossoms inside her. She knows the familiar voice, and it forms a dark tornado in her heart. “Venga, Eve! Ahora!”
She closes her eyes. The man spins her around, begins to violently shake her. He pushes her to the ground, but she does not hit the steaming asphalt. Instead she falls through it, tumbling through space, head over heels, freefall, the lights of the city a mad kaleidoscope in her mind.
She crashes through a ceiling onto a filthy mattress. For a few blessed moments the world is silent. Soon she catches her breath, hears the sound of a young girl singing a familiar song in the next room. It is a Spanish lullaby, “ A La Nanita