Dreams of Many Colored Glass - excerpt

A man finds his life changed – against his wishes – by someone else’s dreams.


Before I got too settled, I wanted more information, so I hunted out Fish Eyes. “Doesn’t he have anyone around? And what about this Marjorie who used to be his wife? Did she have money? Is that why he married her?”
“Is that all you think about: money?” Fish Eyes dropped the wooden spoon. “You can’t trust people who think only about money. And what business is it of yours? She turned from the mixing bowl in front of her to stare at me. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”
“I like to see what makes things tick.”
“It’s more than ticking that makes things work.”
I of course had no compunction about probing further than good manners, and had richly earned my reputation of being willing to prod a vice-principal, a topic, a little sister, or a parent until it exploded. That was when I still cared.
“Did she?”
“As a matter of fact she did, not that it is any of your business.”
“So where did her money come from?”
“Her father. His family had money. Marjorie grew up used to it.”
“So that’s why he married her? So Fritz got into shady activities to get her what she wanted?”
“Who said that? The grandkids lying again?” Fish Eyes picked up a rolling pin.
“Nope. Nothing. Nada.” I held up my palms in surrender. “Haven’t met the grandkids. I was just wondering, and no one wants to tell me anything.”
“No one wants to tell you things that are none of your business.”
“So how did Fritz earn his money, if Marjorie came already equipped with it?”
Smash! The rolling pin came down on a piece of wax paper, and the brown sugar beneath that canopy shivered into tiny pieces. “Business. He was an inventor.”
“Of what?”
“Of things you can’t see.”
“Like what? Electrons? Pixie dust? Batman during the daytime?”
“Like things inside electric connections that nobody had thought of before. He was a smart man. Still is.”
“Then why doesn’t he have them here? There aren’t any electrical connection books in the library.”
Fish Eyes sighed again. “It was what he did, not what he loved. He loved Marjorie.”
“Who fell in love with a guy who made little tiny things inside electric plugs.”
“That’s it. Now maybe you can stop asking questions and go back to work, while I bake this coffee cake.”
“Why aren’t we having pie?”
“Because Fritz likes coffee cake.”
I wandered back to the office, thinking about electricity and coffee cake. If Fish Eyes was right, and Fritz’s invention hadn’t been reinvented, every time someone turned on a light a couple more pennies dropped into Fritz’s bank account. Let there be light. I wondered if God would sizzle me for the blasphemy. No, obviously not: Fritz didn’t allow frying near the lamps.
I gave the photos that Fritz had on the shelf in his office one more glance before I settled back to work. Lots of money, lots of lamps, no visitors. The answer had to be in that collection of faces, and I was going to find it.
“Tell me about the rest of Fritz’s family. Like the grandkids,” I asked Fish Eyes another day. Unfortunately she was in a less talkative mood.
“You better be careful, or you’re going to see more than you bargained for.” She pressed her lips into wrinkles and stared into the pot of soup she was cooking.
When I remembered our conversation later, I thought she had certainly been right: It was like saying Moby Dick was about more than catching fish.