"But it's only a... Oh, why not? Yeah, okay. Tell you what. Let's both imagine ourselves in the lodge before we sleep, but in younger bodies. Maybe we...can control where we enter the dream. It'll be easier to explore without an infant to care for. I know this sounds insane. It's only a dream! But still..."They had a light dinner and tried to sack out, but the dread of their situation kept them awake for hours. They chatted with each other for half the night. They finally realized they could. "He hired me," she said. "Paid me to come out here with him, to lie with him, swive him, do other things, filthy things." We've all got to live," I said.She let go of my arm and moved away a bit, sniffed and said, "That's so. My name's Laura."I stuck out my hand, squeezed hers gently and told her my name. "Despite what you see," I said, "I'm a soldier, from Maryland."She smiled at me. "Appearances can fool you sometimes." Yep," I said, spying some lights ahead. We pulled into the yard of a. I told the girls at breakfast that they needed to catch up on their schoolwork. They got their laptops out and started on the work that had accumulated there that week, while they had been so upset. They worked for about six hours on their laptops. I worked on the story I had been writing.We broke for lunch around 3:00 in the afternoon. I turned on the TV after lunch. I wanted to watch some football, so we watched or at least heard part of the late game. There was a lot that I missed because. You know what? I was worried earlier, but maybe this trip wasn't atotal loss after all. There was enough here to get by for a littlewhile at least. Even if none of the other stores we checked out todayhad anything that really worked, we had enough to at least leave thehouse dressed better than we were now. I'd just have to be careful thatI didn't overuse the device or end up changing our proportions aroundtoo much in the meantime.Of course, it was hard to focus on any of this as I tried to.