From what I hear, the widow Smolinksy used to be a decent person, but living much of her adult life with her ageless father and his Torah-spouting dragonmouth sucked the goodness right out of her. She does, however, have some spectacular dreams because of her Father. Her dreams are like mythical giants. Some people dream dogs or robbers are chasing them, but Sarah dreams that God is chasing her. Jewish people believe God is a shapeshifter, therefore in the widow Smolinsky’s dreams God chases her in the form of an elephant, a walking house, or a clay statue that eats paper.
Whenever God chases her he’s always carrying too much in his hands, and he has to keep stopping to rearrange his load. That’s the only reason she ever gets away. What he carries changes in each dream. Sometimes they’re skeletons, greeting cards, or baby dolls. Last week when the widow Smolinsky came she told me God, in the form of Gary Busey, was carrying hundreds of silver, Liberian 9/11 commemorative dollars.The only person whose dreams were near as mythical as the widow Smolinsky’s were Rachel’s. In fact, it was because of the widow Smolinsky that Rachel first told me one of her dreams. I was at the Sleep Center having just finished a sketch I did of the widow Smolinsky’s best dream (God in the form of a horse made of bees who carried bees made of horses), and Rachel saw it. She didn’t say anything, but turned her head to try to see the sketch. She pointed at the sketch and raised her thumb, and I told her “It’s the widow Smolinksi’s Electra Complex.” Rachel thought that was the title of the sketch and said, “I love your drawing, but I love the title more.” That’s the first thing she ever said to me, which was awesome. The second thing she said was, “Are you Rex Tugwell?” which was just terrible. The third thing was, “Cause someone threw up in the lobby,” which was kind of awesome since that meant Rex would have to clean it up. But since Rex wasn’t working (he was dove-hunting), it was terrible. I stared at her and said, “Oh, I’ll have to clean it up. Um, I draw dreams.” Then she said in this beautiful, kind, wise way, “Really. Huh. I have some dreams you could draw,” which was awesome. And then, “It wasn’t me that threw up,” which was also awesome.
While I cleaned up the worst of the vomit, Rachel was good enough to ignore me. As I was finishing though, she asked if I had a second to talk, and I said “Ptttttttttttt…..cha…rrrrrrr.” She moved to a closer chair and told me she had a dream she'd love to see drawn: it was the end of the world, and Jesus came back and he was about two hundred feet tall. He had all these birds flying around his head, and she couldn’t tell if they were buzzards or a bunch of mini-Holy Spirits. There was lightning all over and a really strong wind. Noah was in the background, driving a speedboat with deer throwing coolers off the side because Noah shouted, “Faster! Faster!” She asked if I could draw it. I told her she could pick it up tomorrow.
When she saw my drawing she burst into laughter. She said she loved it, that she wanted it, that she was going to show it to her girlfriends “immediately,” but when she saw my concern about her laughing, she explained all the things that were “special” about the drawing. She asked if I had never even been inside a church before. I said, “I was raised Jesus. I’m very heavenly.” Again, hysterical laughter. She tried to explain what I messed up, saying Jesus probably never wore gladiator armor, didn’t file his teeth—and when she said there was lightning she meant from the sky not his fingertips. As for the Holy Spirit, it's a good guy, and in no way resembles the library ghost from Ghostbusters. Also, Noah apparently was a man.
I knew then if I was going to win this woman, I would have to find Jesus, and the kind who has a beard, not a moustache.
