the president, the assassin, and the hotel of ghosts
There was some kind of abandoned building in the old town part of downtown somewhere (not necessarily Portland), a high rise once-fancy hotel nobody was still operating. What had happened was some vagrants or something had all gathered in it and started maintaining it as a micro-community, everyone hiding from something or other in the outside world. There was someone who, before something bad had happened, had been a garbageman in England, and he would collect everyone's garbage now if you left it outside your suite door on a certain day. Since nobody knew anybody's real name or history, he was just called the Dustman. (Seriously, my dream was this specific on details.)

Everybody there was hiding and living in a world without solid identities or jobs, basically homeless and taking care of each other, and a real sense of community had grown out of a mutual need for anonymity, a sort of mass paranoia that lumped us all into a single group. We respected each others' secrets at all costs, and were civil but not close to each other in most cases.

People took pains not to be visible to anyone outside the hotel, to make sure nobody knew an entire community of people were living, hiding, inside this building in the heart of the city. Some people all chose to live near each other on the same couple of floors, three or four floors up (away from casually prying eyes and wanderers-in), so they would have neighbors and not be completely alone. Others would move to the far end of a hallway or a floor away from the others and do their best to politely steer clear of everyone else, and of course that wish was respected in every regard. Still, though, somehow food and supplies were being smuggled in and the reclusive ones had to be included in the provisions.

So one guy in particular -- who was the spitting image of my old boss Steve Dahl: big, broad, kind of hunkered down in a quiet way, with a tired but pleasant expression and eyes that betrayed his nice-guyness; the gentle giant (I wouldn't call Steve that, but this Steve was that) -- lived way up high on the top floor, the suite, and was the most reclusive of all. I too was a character here, and I lived fairly high up, away from the others but respectful of them. This guy, nobody saw him come or go but me, and even then rarely. I think we called him the President or something, something royal and leader-y. The name was ironic, because this guy wasn't a leader at all. He was a sheepish big man who you knew was powerful physically but you didn't get the impression he was powerful politically or even intellectually (not to say he was dumb). Actually, he kind of reminds me a lot of Christian Walker from Powers, for the comic nerds out there. Anyway, we called him the President because of the top floor suite thing and, like the Dustman, nobody here used their real name. Everyone had a nickname.

Well somehow, I don't know if I skipped over it or if I just can't remember it, but somehow he and I became passing friends. I know I was the pushy one, always trying in nice ways to be his friend, and usually meeting with a civil "thanks but no thanks" response, but my tenaciousness eventually wore down his defenses. I even visited him inside his makeshift home from time to time, and brought him some of the food (he was so reclusive he was forced to fend for himself with the food).

Sorry. This is all going somewhere, but I'm trying to get down the backstory details here. It was one of those intensely detailed dreams, obviously.

Naturally people visit or stop by the hotel/sanctuary and whenever this happens, I guess the easiest way to protect our home and anonymity is to pretend it's a functional hotel. We let people stay on certain floors for a night, we take their money, and some of us pretend to be hotel staff in order to assure their stay is exactly like any other hotel stay. Well one day a gruff older man, something between Frank Langella and Robert Loggia, comes in by chance. He asks if we mind if he tours the place, and nobody likes the idea of it but what can we do? I get to be the one to give him a tour around. He becomes intensely curious about the man living on the top floor. All he seems to want to know about is the big man who lives on the top floor -- but of course he's smart, he never asks about anyone living here, or anything. First he asks to rent out that room and says he'll pay handsomely. When I say it's currently occupied he asks for the room nearest it, one floor down. He stays for a week -- long enough for me to call him Mr. Loggia (I remember an awkward and absurd conversation where I backpedal when I accidentally call him this, saying to his face "I'm sure Frank Loggia [sic] is a very cool guy in real life, but sometimes he just plays assholes...").

Once Mr. Loggia is gone, I know he is a threat somehow to the President, he clearly knows his past, and the guy is just too nice and quiet and gentle-gianty for me to not want to help him out. (Picture a John Goodman character, that tender self-effacing smile, that way of carrying yourself like you're apologizing for being so big.) I warn the President about this and he takes it all in with a stone poker face. Finally he says, "Thank you," and "I'll be moving to the seventh floor now" (or wherever).

Jump forward in the dream. The community continues, everyone helping each other out but never asking personal questions. People taking shifts pretending it's a hotel, collecting our money into a pool and using it to buy things we can't smuggle in from whatever downtown crummy jobs our tenants have. Actual communal living in the heart of a big city, respect based on paranoia, all that. People basically decent to each other because we acknowledge that we all have something bad behind us and we don't want it to find us here. Communism by men (and women) with secrets.

And then my parents visit? As antithetical as this seems to the very basis of this world, it doesn't break anything up or shatter the house of cards we all live in -- but it is unwelcome, in a humorous way. I remember being, "Awww Mom, come on, don't visit me here," but that was it. So I pretend I don't know my parents (when we're outside my hotel room) so nobody feels threatened by this, and I show them around. They come in and we plan to have a meager dinner, but I see someone down the hall talking to people: Mr. Loggia. I realize what's happening and I rush my family into my room and tell them I'll be back as soon as I can, I'm really sorry.

I run down the hallway toward the occupied rooms (but somehow away from Loggia?) and I remember bumping into a girl I knew there, maybe one who I liked or who liked me? Anyway I asked her if she knew which room the President had taken, because I guess he hadn't told me, or maybe he was jumping around. She didn't know, but I turn and see Mr. Loggia step into the elevator. I bolt to the stairs and run up seven flights or whatever it is, to the last place I saw him. I knew it was a slow elevator but not that slow, but I had to try.

I get there and hear the elevator ding as it comes to a stop on the same floor as I and I duck around a corner and sprint, exhausted, down the hall. I remember wildly looking around for signs of occupation, trying to find the President blindly. By wild luck (does it count as wild luck in a dream?) I see him coming down the hall out of another suite-like big room, and I yell after him in that yelling-whispering voice. "Hey President," I say, "Which room are you in these days anyway?"

He can't hear me and starts to come my way, but somewhere behind me (hopefully unaware of my running presence) is Mr. Loggia, so I wave him off. Stay there, I try to signal. And, go back inside. He does and I follow. He seems unaware anything is wrong and asks if I want a drink. Out of breath, as I cross the threshold into his room I say, "No time. Mr. Loggia is about two seconds behind me," and I duck into a closet in the hallway. "Just had to warn you." The President's entire face changes. His lips get stern and his eyes get grim. I remember, specifically, thinking, I've never seen that face before.

Mr. Loggia comes inside. They talk for a while, have some kind of "I've been looking for you"/"Well I don't want to be found" conversation, a stand off where it seems like Loggia has all the cards and the President keeps what cards he has close to his chest. Somehow my presence gets discovered (I may actually step out, at some point, on my own; I think I believed if someone else were there Loggia would be less likely to hurt my friend). Mr. Loggia seems amused that the President has made friends here.

"Do you know who he is?" Loggia asks me.
"No," I say, "But he doesn't know who I am, either."
"He might," he answers (and I remember thinking, if he said that about anyone else I'd be concerned, but I don't think I mind if my friend knows me).
I remember this amused movie-villain smirk on his face as he pauses and turns to include both of us in a gesture, and Mr. Loggia says, "My name is Jim [something, Donagan or something], and this is Chris [something with an S, practically Stevedahl, ha]."

I try to be cool and pretend its no big deal that their identities are exposed and I say, "Okay, and I'm Travis Ezell. So what?" But I know suddenly things about him which I feel like maybe (perhaps because it's all my dream?) I always knew. I know that Chris/The President is some kind of government assassin or spy-killer or something, and he's trying to run away from his past. I know that Jim/Mr. Loggia is also a killer, and more importantly he's Chris's boss, and has been looking for him, but also that he's the only one who knows who Chris/President is. I think it's one of those black ops one-boss all hush-hush things, but also I get the impression that Mr. Loggia has been working outside the system too, and maybe wants to make a clean break of it, disappear, that basically he's not trying to drag the President back into the fold so much as lash out in envy (or self-protection? does anyone but the President know who Mr. Loggia really is?). In retrospect, maybe it was that Loggia had been "let go," but either way here he was. And I knew resolutely that Mr. Loggia was a singular threat, not a representative of a larger threat, and with this knowledge I feel bolstered.

The President seems cowed by Loggia's presence, but somehow I no longer feel afraid of him. I step up and start to challenge him and his authority. I remember making fun of his ridiculous black bowtie with white polka dots. And his green shirt with red pinstripes. The more I looked at him, the more clownish he seemed, and I wondered that I hadn't noticed before. He wasn't big and scary, and I told him so. "You look like a pimp, actually," I said, and laughed in his face. I had deflated his menacing aura.

This next bit happens fast and makes no sense logistically: Mr. Loggia is standing against a railing as though in a mall's top floor food court or something, and the President and I are standing further back, still in the kitchen of the President's hotel room. I reached down and made as if to point at and deride his shoes, but instead I lifted Loggia by his ankles and quite simply, before he could do much, levered him backwards and over the railing. We were at least seven stories up and I turned away, unwilling to watch him hit the ground. The President came and stood beside me, looking down, steady-eyed, watching. I remember Loggia didn't make a single sound as he fell, not a scream or a cry or a yelp. He just dropped, the dignified professional recognizing his fate, and with a sort of triple "ba-dum-bump" sound, he hit the ground.

"I hope I did the right thing," I said.
His answer didn't make me feel better. He looked down at the body below and said, "It's too late now." But in my mind, I was sure I had. I hoped.

So the President, Chris Stevedahl, whatever, and I got in the elevator and tried to make our way quickly to the body, sitting in the open lobby of the abandoned hotel. We knew that if it was found it would threaten everyone's safety here. But others got in the elevator car with us and we tried to play it cool.

One of the people in the elevator was the girl I'd asked earlier about my friend's whereabouts. Seeing us together now (a true rarity, as he never left and never hung out with people), she turned to us and said nicely: "You guys are close, huh?"
"Yeah, I guess," I answer.
"What do you guys talk about?"
"Well," I said, "Mostly nothing." Or some form of non-answer.
"Do you talk about...?" she didn't want to have to say it.
I remember turning and looking at him, at this Steve Dahl-looking man, and both of us thinking about how to answer. "Before?" I asked. I actually remember everyone in the elevator stiffening at the very notion of mentioning it.
"Sometimes we talk about before," the President answered, "but mostly we talk about after."
It seemed to satisfy her (and make me seem cool for knowing the most mysterious man's secrets) and we left it at that.

And then my parents got on the elevator! Seriously. They got tired of waiting? I don't know. I didn't talk to them in the dream (the elevator car was huge and packed) but I saw them and felt bad.

Finally, after what felt like forever, the car comes to the surface. As the President and I (and the girl) are at the back of the car, we have to wait for it to empty out and he and I look at each other. We know the body will be found by others before we get to it, and I know that my mom and brother will see it before I can stop them. What do we do?

...

We get woken up by a cat is what we do. That's where this crazy-long detailed dream ends.

Seriously? There's a story here. Something a little like Million Dollar Hotel but also like The Conversation. Problem is, I seem to have a lot of stories that take place in old hotels occupied by off-the-grid ghosts (the suicide story and Minus both do, off the top of my head). But I really think the story in this one is strong, and the characters very vivid.

We'll see.