Last night, my agent took me into a house with a massive master bedroom with burgundy carpeting that seemed to crawl the walls and turn to a burnished velvet. Towards the edges of the room, the carpeting turned to a shiny patchwork of forest green, gold and azure blue. I kept thinking it was too much and that I’d rip it out. But then I pictured my bed in the room and it made perfect sense, as if someone had decorated it with my bed in mind.

My mother and a couple of random people came and went as we examined the kitchen. I noticed that Robie was wandering in the house, which upset me because he wasn’t supposed to be there yet. When I tried to catch him, he ran towards the front door, which I discovered had a dog door next to it built into the wall rather than the door itself. It was broken, with a softball-sized chunk of the flap missing. I panicked, as Robie is never allowed outside, but he came back inside soon enough. I wondered how I could keep him inside but the fear of him leaving melted away.

Everyone left. I explored the kitchen, which was painted a kind of yucky flesh color. I opened the cupboards to the left above the stove and discovered champagne glasses with flowery pale yellow etchings.

As I examined the glasses, an old man came in through the front door, whistling. He explained that he lived there. He looked a lot like my deceased Uncle Ike, with tufts of white hair at the sides of his head and bald on top. His face was wrinkled and freckled with age, and he wore a short-sleeved white dress shirt with his frumpy old man slacks, belt rising high on his bulging waist.

I felt very sorry for him, as I figured I must be taking his home. But he didn’t seem to hold it against me. He appeared reticent but relieved all at once.

I went outside. The house sat at the edge of a parking lot with cracked asphalt. Bright green blades of grass and spiky weeds poked their heads through the fissures. Cars roared past and I worried that it was too loud there, even though I could hear nothing inside the house.

And that’s all I remember.