In my dream, I'm sitting with Zink -- a very dear friend -- and maybe one or two other people. Zink is asking me for a loan, and I understand quickly and easily how hard it must be for him to do this. He was a very proud and independent soul.
I look into my wallet, where I've got a number of paper bills, I know I will need or want some cash for some upcoming events, but feel that I can easily loan him a pair of $20 bills. I take them out of my wallet and start to hand them to him. He holds up his hands to indicate that I misunderstood something.
He says: "Um, actually, I'm going to need roughly $1500." I'm a bit taken aback, but know I can adjust my resources to loan him that, but it will take a bit of time to secure the cash.
He is then explaining something about the need for the money -- something about a BMW and a financial arrangement with my younger brother, David. (For the record, I'm pretty sure that Zink and David had never met in life -- and both of them are now deceased.) I don't understand what Zink is explaining to me, but am not surprised. When Zink was not being straightforward, he could get purposely obscure.
A phone rings. It's a 20th-century-type land line. I answer it. It's a woman who wants to talk to me about this very topic of an outstanding bill and how we hope to pay it.
There are now 6 or 8 other people in the room, and most of them are talking. Much too loudly to allow me to hear what this lady is saying. I ask them to be quiet, and they tone it down a bit, but continue to chat. I move to an adjoining room where it seems to be considerably less noisy. But then someone in that area begins to vacuum the floor.
Fortunately, the phone is on a very long line, so that I can move to yet another area, where it is, thankfully, quite quiet. I continue my conversation with the lady on the line.
She starts to explain the situation in more or less the same words that Zink had been using and specifically mentions the BMW -- so I'm sure now that we're talking about the same subject. But the terms she's using are much like the obscurity that Zink was creating.
I ask her to back up and explain the entire situation from the very beginning, rather that picking up the issue mid-stream. I assume she's started the conversation the way she had because she assumed that I knew what this was all about.
She's quiet for a bit, and then asks me essentially the same question: Why don't I explain to her what I understand about the situation? I think she's talking to someone else in her office, getting instructions as to what to say next. And then I realize that it's likely she is a representative of a collections agency rather than having anything directly to do with the reason that Zink and/or David got into a financial arrangement with.. whomever they did.
I wake up.
