Crabby is as crabby does.

I am in the busy, populated long house, on the top floor. Perhaps it is the attic because the only way to get up here is to climb a small series of concrete abutments on the balcony, using some wrought iron railings as handholds. I have been exploring but now that I’m done and ready to head back down, I find the way down is much tricksier than the way up. It’s terrifically awkward; the handholds are in the wrong places for facing this direction; and I can’t figure out a good way to turn around and climb down in the same direction I clumb up. I can just foresee (or forefeel) my body weight shifting precipitously and inertia taking me over the balcony railing. *sigh* Another fear-of-falling dream! Anyway, Roze shows up and I lament my predicament to her. "How does one get down from here?" I ask. She offers, "You could always knife down—sticking knife points in the concrete, like Mike does." Of course Mike does. I figure it out without knives and join her below. 

I’ve been thinking that I want to move all the friends I sing with into the long house with me. This iteration of the long house is in a new town, however—Phoenix, maybe? Someplace out west. The legality of vocal auditions as a condition for housing is unclear, but the idea of having the whole group (it is a significantly larger chorus than Bamburía) living in the same house is immensely appealing. And as always the long house is immense—plenty of room for everybody. I recall previous (dream) visits, including this last time when I actually got lost wandering the halls of the second and third floors, and the atrium in the interior of both. I am also concerned that Paul will not want to move here because huge house = huge cleaning.  

As we’re walking down the stairwell, Roze says we have to go take hot showers. Still thinking about moving singers in, I ask Roze how the third floor is (there are still some old residents still living here); she replies, “Crabby. Crabby crabby crabby!” Apparently this means there is a major lice infestation; thus the hot showers.  

Roze leaves me temporarily in the bookshop on the ground floor to wait for a thing to happen. I find a newspaper and read a news story (not just an obituary) about a Ginger Raney having died overnight; her son, hurriedly traveling from afar to see her before she died, was waylaid with car trouble and was helped by a benevolent stranger, but still did not reach his mother before her death. I am wondering whether this happened to Mike Raney. (I cannot at this point remember his mom’s name; when I awake I remember it is Doris.) I start crying in the shop about the story.  

Also, I am naked and I can't remember why. It's mostly ok; certainly nothing that would concern the bookshop employees and anyone who knows me; but the customers walking in from the street seem startled.  

There is an imperious and whiny patron at the register: “I wish to see the [blah blah] books! I don’t want to wait any longer!” He is actually standing behind the register counter, separated from the clerk by, and berating her through the shelves of, a tall bookcase. He is a white, middle-aged, mustachioed, privileged asshole who keeps whinging despite the fact that the clerk is busy helping other customer.  

A William Byrd pavanne is playing on the soundtrack.