PEENER (Part III)

“Philly, baby! How’ve you been darling?” May greeted her top client, Phil.

“I told you not to call me that,” he said. “I hate Philadelphia.”

“Please forgive me, sweetheart,” she pleaded as she hugged him. “Can I get you something to drink? Some champagne, perhaps?”

“What’s the point? There’s nothing to celebrate. I can’t get anything onto paper.”

“Nothing?! Phil, please, take a seat. Tell me: is therapy not working?”

Phil sat down in a large mahogany leather chair. “Dream therapy is a joke,” he explained. “I’m sorry to disappoint the publisher, but it’s going to be awhile before I’ll have anything to give them.”

May poured herself a champagne and began to think. “Look,” she said, “I know I’m your agent, but I’m also your friend. So can I give you a suggestion? Have you thought about a memoir? You’re a war hero after all. There’s probably something there that the publisher may be interested in.”

Phil hem and hawed. “I don’t know if I’m ready to go down that road, May,” he said. “I think I’d rather stick with fiction.”

“Okay…alright,” she said, “I have an idea. Now feel free to shoot this down if you want. But please, bear with me. Dream therapy has worked really well with my other clients, but they had to do something a little extra…”

“What do you mean?”

May took a big sip from the champagne. “Well, they kinda had to tinker with the dream emitter a little before they got their desired results.”

“I’m not following.”

“Well…the emitter is, of course, heavily patented so that makes it exceptionally difficult to hack into. A lot of safety measures are put into place so that users won’t experience any, well, unpleasant side effects. But from my understanding, there is a way to break into it to provide, I guess, a more rewarding experience.”

“Okay…”

“Now hear me out,” May interrupted, “I don’t think that there’s anything dangerous to the user about this, it’s just not entirely legal.”

Phil was confused. “May, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You mostly have pleasant dreams? Correct?” May asked. “Well how about instead of GOOD dreams…you have, let’s say, more INTENSE dreams.”

Phil chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know. This sounds crazy.”

“Can you at least try it out?” May pleaded. “Now I know a guy who knows a guy who might know a guy who knows how to ‘tinker’ with the emitter. I can get you set up. What do you say?”

TO BE CONTINUED…