It has been pouring down rain all day and I seem to be coming down with the flu, so it was a good day to be cozy. AJ crawled into bed with us at 7 to watch cartoons while we read the Sunday Times. It�s my favorite time of the week. Later, in an attempt to distract him, we drove to IKEA for the sole purpose of letting him run around Smaland. We walked around the store and wondered whether IKEA is a parody of itself. It is, perhaps, pathetic, that IKEA passes for childcare and a date. But it was pleasant, except for the achy feeling in my joints. On the way home we followed someone in an Expedition with a bumper sticker that read �Happiness is being Swedish.� Who knew?

The afternoon was spent trying to remain vertical, watching the White Sox sweep the Angels, getting stomped repeatedly by AJ in endless games of Uno (the White Sox World Series edition, of course) and roasting a chicken. I now am feeling suitably exhausted without having actually accomplished anything.

It is still raining. And it smells absolutely heavenly outside.

* * * * *
Last night, I had a very strange dream about DK, a friend I met in college, whom I�ve lost touch with.

I feel that I must have told at least part of the story of DK before, because it also involves my friend B, who changed my life and died inconceivably young.

B and her roommate J were a year ahead of me in school and were assigned to welcome freshmen on their first day. They quickly adopted me, although I�d never thought of myself as adoptable. B. seemed to think of me as a project, and I was, for a time, willing to be taken under her wing. I was used to being in charge and I found it kind of a relief to hear someone else�s ideas once in a while.

B was a force of nature. I hope someday I�ll be able to adequately put her into words, but instead her memory is a jumble of moments: walking down deserted Main Street on a midwinter night in flip flops � a native Hawaiian, she never fully adapted to New England footwear -- and her �VFC� coat (short for �Very Fucking Cold), a giant parka with a fake-fur trimmed hood. I remember the look on her face when she was trying to highlight my hair in the dark dorm basement and it started turning orange (she dyed it back). I remember her crazy dancing always begun by an announcement of �I�ve got�.HAPPY FEET!�

The two of us ran the college�s Model U.N. club after a third friend, who was freaking out about her impending graduation, vacated her position as club president. B and I traveled to conferences around the Eastern seaboard, usually listening to her favored Steely Dan in the college issue cars we traveled in. At one of the first ones I went to with her, we met DK and his best friend K. They went to a school about an hour away -- coincidentally, the college my brother ended up attending. We spent a lot of time together on a small committee at a conference in DC. They invited us to visit them at their school. Lacking better plans, we did.

Soon thereafter, B and DK started dating. It was my first time viewing an intense relationship from the outside. I had known DK just as long as B and I knew him almost as well.

With B, I was always part of a threesome. It was either B and her roommate J (who later became my roommate) and I or B and DK and I. The trio was odd, but it worked somehow. B kept trying to set me up with DK�s best friend K. While K and I liked each other, neither of us was remotely interested in the other romantically. For one thing, it was completely obvious to me that K was head over heels for B. For another, DK and I always had more in common. When we were a group of four, things got a little tangled.

In her sophomore year, B got put on academic probation and was forced to take a semester off of school. This came as a bit of a shock, not just to B herself, but to the those of us closest to her. J and DK and I were bereft. I became close friends with J, and have remained friends, although she�s not much of a writer and I�m not much of a telephone talker so we don�t connect too often.

DK and I began to talk on the phone a lot. I began to develop a serious crush on him. To be honest, I�d always had a bit of a crush. But I�m not the kind of person who messes around with friends� lovers. I have a pretty finely tuned moral compass. DK called me one weekend and asked me to come visit. Before she left, B had asked me to stay in touch with DK. She was worried about him. I thought for a minute. I wasn�t sure it was a good idea, but I said yes.

Absolutely nothing inappropriate happened that weekend. But it could have. Easily. Several times. And I wasn�t the only one thinking that way. It was one of the most intense emotional experiences of my life. It was one of many ways in which B changed my life.

The main way she changed it, though, is by being the one person I�ve ever met who totally got me. She knew me better than anyone, better even than I knew myself. This was reassuring for a while, but eventually unnerving.

And then she made a mistake. She came back to school the following year, moved to a different dorm a few doors down the street from mine. We tried to rekindle our friendship, but something didn�t click. I suspected she knew that something�nothing�had happened between DK and I, although we never spoke of it and I�m reasonably certain they never did either. What, after all, was there to speak of?

But she was angry with me, though she couldn�t find fault. Angry that I had gone on with my life after she had left, angry that I was now in charge of the things she�d gotten me involved in, angry that our roles were reversed. She made one of her accusations about the true state of my being, her accusations that were usually unnervingly close to the bone. But this one was not. This one was way off. This one was mean.

And that was it for us. I wasn�t sad or bitter. It was as if a floodgate had opened and everything we�d experienced together and all of the tension of the past months was gone. Just gone.

Although we continued to attend the same college and participate in many of the same activities � thanks to her probation, she graduated with my class instead of with her own � we rarely spoke. I said a cursory goodbye at graduation and didn�t think I�d ever hear form her again.

I got a call from B out of the blue a year after we had graduated. I was working for a small Boston theater company. She had interviewed for a job at my dad�s company, where my dad was head of H.R. He gave her my work number and I was relieved to talk to someone other than one of my sales clients. I was also surprised as hell that she had called me. She told me she and DK, who had continued to date for a few years, had broken up and she was now with K, DK�s best friend, whom she had always liked and who had always adored her. Something was not right with her. She seemed to need to talk, but said little. I was still feeling burned by her and was not particularly warm.

I never heard from her again. She died in 2001 of breast cancer. She was not yet 34. I know she died in her home state. I don�t know what became of DK or K. I don�t know what happened. I wonder if she knew she was ill when she made that unexpected call to me, but I can�t be sure.

So last night I had a dream about DK. The dream was a conversation that, I think, I�ve wished we could have in person. A conversation with the other person who was caught up in B�s whirlwind and eventually left behind. We were standing on a beach talking and here is what we said:

DK: So whatever happened to B?
Dream Harriet (DH): You didn�t hear? I�m sorry, she died five years ago. Breast cancer.
DK: Oh. You were still in touch with her then?
DH: No. I�d lost track. She said something that had hurt me so much that I was done. I don�t even remember what it was anymore. It was more that she was someone who knew me, knew me better than myself. I found it unnerving. This last time she thought she knew me, but she was wrong. And it shattered our relationship.

D nodded as if he understood.

I wanted to ask him about how she ended up with K, but I didn�t. And I knew I probably didn�t need to.

DK: So when are you going to drop the whomper.
DH: The whomper?
He laughed nervously at his choice of words.
DK: Are you married?
DH: Yes. And I have a kid.
DK: Are you happy?
DH: Yes I am.
DK: I�m so glad. Is he good to you?
DH: He adores me.
DK: That�s good.

I woke up before I could ask him what he was doing. And I woke up wondering what the real DK is doing. So I did what any computer literate girl did: I googled him.

D now works for the government as a midd1e eas+ policy advisor. After all the years we spent in Model UN together, he�s now spoken at the real U.N.

* * * * *

I woke up to find that John Kenneth Galbraith had died. Galbraith spoke at our college graduation, which was held on a blustery May day. He was enormously tall � well over six feet, probably closer to seven. The reason I remember this, is because in the middle of his speech at the outdoor ceremony, it started to rain. A couple of students ran up to try to try to hold an umbrella over his head, but they were not tall enough to get it there. He kept speaking as the students nearly bashed him in the head with umbrellas, eventually waving them off apologetically.

I remember little of what he said, other than that he began his speech by informing us that we would not remember what he said and then proceeded to give a speech so interesting that we thought he must be mistaken. But Professor Galbraith, you were right. I don�t remember anything. Except when I remember everything.

3 people said it like they meant it