Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,16

sound as boring as the others. Isn't that right?

Lee only glared back at him.

"Ignore it," said Ella.

"And it worked," said Brad.

"What did you think of L. P.?" Lee asked her.

"I've come across him before; I think he's sweet."

"Why do women always say sweet when they mean clapped-out and half-way to senility?" Brad again. "What on earth is sweet about that dry old stick?”

"It's true;" she replied dryly, "that he doesn't suffer fools gladly."

Lee established that Ella was prepared to take the weekly sessions quite seriously. She told him that it hadn't occurred to her that most people were unable to direct their dreams. She was prepared, she said, to take things as far as she could to find out what they meant.

"I'm not," said Brad. "You sound like you're expecting too much from it. I can't see it going anywhere."

"Then why don't you drop out of it?"

"I probably will after a while."

"The group," said Ella to Lee, "would never recover."

She produced her purse to buy another drink. Lee offered twice, but she insisted that she buy her own. While she was away at the bar Brad said, "Listen mate; she's making you dance."

"What?"

"Dance! Dance! She's a vixen."

"A vixen? I don't know about that, but she's got you taped."

"Not a chance! Anyway it's not my tongue that's hanging out drooling: you're making an indecent public display of yourself."

"What?"

Brad got up to go. "I'll leave you to it." He patted Lee on the face. "Dirty."

Ella returned. "Your friend's gone, then?"

"I only met him tonight. He's not a friend."

"He's a reptile. He's got the eyes of a lizard and scales on the inside of his mouth." She crossed her legs.

"I see."

But Ella obviously didn't think of Lee as a reptile, otherwise she wouldn't have taken him back to the house she shared with two other girls about a mile from the university. Lee, for his part, overestimated Ella's style. Once they were behind closed doors he half-expected, wished, hoped that Ella would tear off her erotic black outfit and demand that they make urgent love (beret remaining in place). To say that Lee was more relieved than disappointed when she didn't would be a lie. He was a knot of tension and in Ella's presence his mouth ran dry. Although he was not a complete stranger to the private rooms of the women students, something about Ella's aura—a subtle scent and a kind of leading signal beyond the range and faculty of human definition—intimidated him while at the same time snaring him in a noose of sexual longing.

Ella at twenty was busy cultivating an air which, ten years later, she would be earnestly trying to throw off—that of the jaded adventuress, physically satiated, spiritually exhausted. This blasé image had, as was intended, a contradictory energizing effect on Lee. When he breathed in a single hot draft of this distillation of elements, it worked on him like a witch's potion. He perched nervously on the corner of her bed nursing a chipped mug of chicory-flavoured coffee as she relaxed back into a comfortable armchair, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

Ella's room was a revelation. Those of other female students had always been pale stereotypes of pastel shades, feminine pillowslips and obligatory postcard collections. Entering Ella's room was like walking into a subdued decorated cave or a Bedouin tent. The four walls were draped with hanging fabrics, Indian batiks, Serbian rugs, Greek blankets, Russian scarves, antique lace cloths—a hanging exhibition of textures, a treasury of intricate folds. Slow-burning incense breathed seductive fumes from elaborate brass cups. Ella relaxed in her armchair, rolling herself another liquorice-paper cigarette as she spoke. In Lee's mind she had already fused the mystical qualities of the Tarot Priestess, a 1970s Sibyl, and a contemporary Circe into one exotic being, and had focused them all into a soft dark triangle at the top of her legs.

"I don't do drugs any more; it's a waste of spiritual energy," she was saying. She seemed to be deliberately parodying herself.

"I've come to the same conclusion," said Lee, who had never so much as abused the instructions on an aspirin bottle.

"I'm in and out of TM at the moment.. ." she continued.

"TM?"

"Transcendental Meditation."

"Right."

"Only just recently I got my head into TA . . ."

"TA?"

"Transactional Analysis."

"Right."

"Where've you been living?" asked Ella.

"I've been into TP."

Ella looked foggy. "TP?"

"Teaching Practice.TP. It's a joke."

"A joke," said Ella. "Right." She looked at her watch and glanced at the door.

"You're quite a spiritual entity," Lee tried. It was obviously the right thing