IT WAS ME, Mingus, and his old pal Banastre, who used to play bongos for Juliette François, the chanson singer. Mingus had on his beret, and the seaside humidity was fogging in his glasses. Banastre was at the wheel, in his “Frankie Say Relax” t-shirt and graying, shoulder-length hair. Both Mingus and Banastre are girlfriended men now, betrothed to Thursday and Wednesday’s Tinder dates, respectively, and they like to give me advice about how a real relationship should work, and how much time and energy one must invest to extract the golden nectar held within. “Every gift should be more expensive than the last,” noted Banastre, “and every vacation more luxurious than the first.” “That sounds like a lot of hassle,” I said. “I don’t need that in my life.” “But you must be in a relationship,” said Banastre, glancing into the rear-view mirror at me riding solo in the back seat. “You absolutely must.” “Why?” “Because anyone who isn’t in a relationship is a loser!” “I think what dickhead is trying to say here,” jazzed Mingus, “is that it would do you good to have a steady woman.” At that, he put on “IX Love,” and we listened to the fine bass line at the beginning and that was the end of that part. We drove on through the high reeds along the inlets and bays of the West Sea until we reached the beach house, which is where the party was. It was some gathering of horribly average people though, who were talking about Pipedrive and Bolt and there was some suspicious white dip that might or might not have herring in it. Something about it was too Nordic Silicon Valley meets Melrose Place for my liking, even though it was a cool house, multistorey, with high peaked roofs, and hammocks strung from high beams, cushions on the floor, curries simmering above tiny flames, Indonesian in style, and a sauna downstairs, of course. From the deck nearby, I could see a small island beyond the beach, with a rickety wood fence, and some colonial tombstones. Somehow I wanted to get to the cemetery island, where I thought it would be more peaceful, but to get to the stone bridge that led there, one had to squeeze through a tiny corridor, and I just didn’t fit, and most of the bridge was submerged in sea anyway. One of the party girls came over to me and told me not to even try getting there. At the party, there was a certain hippie woman with braids and floaty, dreamy, way-high eyes, the eyes of any lady who has dropped too much acid. Nightmare Hippie Girl was wearing a black shirt that read “Quicksilver Messenger Service.” We went to the toilet and began to kiss, and then I pulled those hefty breasts out of her shirt and began to consume them. It felt dry and tacky though, you know, and tired and soulless, and there was no love in it all. I wanted to go home, now, but Mingus and Banastre were having none of it. “Relax, man,” said Banastre. “Hang with us. Want some fish soup?” Then another man came in through the screen door, looking like a yuppie extra from Weekend at Bernie’s, with his sweater tied around his waist, and announced, “The weather is looking grim out there, folks.” It was. Dark storm clouds dotted the horizon, and the air was thick with portent and pre-lightning humidity. The water level started to rise, and I realized there was no way to leave the house. There was no way. I looked over the bay again at the cemetery island. Then I tried to call my daughter to ask if she was all right, but nobody answered. I went down the steps and saw my bag floating toward me, rising on the crest of the water. I must have left it on the beach sand when we arrived. The outside of the bag was soaked, but everything inside was still dry. I went back inside, found a hammock and just lied in it. I took out a paperback and began to read it there. It was The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. The strange acid girl was there in the corner, sipping her soup and staring at me with her quicksilver eyes. Mingus and Banastre were somewhere off having sex with their girlfriends in the sauna. “But you must have sex with your girlfriend in the sauna,” Banastre had said before heading in. “You absolutely must.” Miss Quicksilver eyed me. “I love you,” she mouthed. Would we be joining them for a perfunctory sauna shag? Not yet. The hammock was just too comfortable and someone was playing a gamelan. I read about Marlowe’s private eye adventures in 1930s Los Angeles. I must have dozed off after that.

THE SITUATION AROUND THAT, like many things, makes me uncomfortable and so I prefer not to speak of it. Instead, let me tell you about my dream, which involved a Spanish maid of all things, or rather, all people. Her name was Esmeralda, and she had small, soft, palm-sized breasts. I know this because as she was tidying up, she approached me. My wife had gone out and left behind a small shrine in the corner of the house, which consisted of a fire burning, and then a woven blanket placed over it, stitched in the parish fashion. “It is very beautiful,” Esmeralda acknowledged it, and then, lifting her shirt, implored me to touch her chest. It was comforting to touch Esmeralda’s breasts that way, they were very soft, and this seemed to calm Esmeralda who, after enjoying the sensations, pulled her shirt down and went about cleaning up the rest of the house. I rather enjoyed it too. I am not one for taking advantage of the help, but if a woman asks you to grope her breasts, then you grope her breasts, no questions asked. Later, I went down to the port where another confidant, a blonde woman who happened to be a bus driver, asked me to ride the entirety of her route with her. To soften the deal, she played Led Zeppelin’s “Gallows Pole” on the transport bus, so that I would feel more comfortable. It was an autumn day in Tallinn, sunny but drenched with morning rainfall, and the bus rode from the port up toward that tram stop called Kanuti, where it seems five roads and six tram lines all merge into a tight circle. All the while Robert Plant was singing, “Hangman, hangman, wait a little while,” and the bus driver was looking back at me and winking. It seemed I was to spend the night with her at the end of the line and the map showed that the bus would leave Tallinn and then make stops in Upstate New York and Ontario before reaching Manitoba. It was going to be a long night. At Kanuti though my friend Erland got on, looking much the rogue figure with his shoulder-length hair, like he should be in the Swedish Guns N’ Roses or something. When I told him the plan he immediately tried to talk me out of it. “All of these bus driver ladies are the same,” Erland told me, shaking his head. “Trust me, this has happened to me so many times. They invite you on the bus, play your favorite music, take you back to their hotels at night,” again he shook his head. “So, what’s wrong with that? She seems okay.” The bus driver turned her blonde head toward me and winked again. “No, no, no,” said Erland. “That part’s fine, but afterward, she is going to expect you to be in love with her.” “Me? In love with a Tallinn bus driver?” (“Oh, yes, you got a fine sister,” Robert Plant sang on. “She warmed my blood from cold. She brought my blood to boiling hot, to keep you from the gallows pole.”) “Hey, this is a good song,” said Erland. “It’s Led Zeppelin III.” “Well, as I was saying, if you go out there with her tonight, she’s going to expect you to love her forever after that. Do you really want to love her forever?” I deliberated the proposal, but reached no certain conclusion. “Let’s just get off this bus, go get a coffee or something. I know a café in the Old Town.” When the bus pulled into Rocca Al Mare, we gave her and the others the slip. We went inside and hung out by the arcade until the next bus came to take us downtown. Then I remembered that Erland wasn’t vaccinated and didn’t have his QR code, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Nobody had been checking codes anyway.

LAST NIGHT I WENT to see Lou Reed in his garage. This is actually a second building on his property out on Long Island that he has also converted into a studio, and which serves as well as a makeshift museum for Velvet Underground memorabilia. I thought he was going to dish on the creative good stuff, but like too many pro musicians, he just wanted to talk business. “And that’s when our new manager came in and we actually started making some money,” and so on.

There were also some never-before-seen promotional photos for The Velvet Underground & Nico featuring Nico dressed up in banana yellow, with the rest of the band crowded around her in their vintage 1967 hipster attire, and the Chrysler building in the background. Nico looked quite sexy in the photos. That banana yellow brought out her charm. How did I never notice that Nico was so sexy? How had this fact of the universe avoided me?

For whatever reason, I decided not to impart this observation to Lou Reed. Maybe he would get jealous? And wasn’t he bisexual or something? Better not to tell Lou. “But Lou, why do people like this album so much?” I asked. “So many people tell me that this is their favorite album. Why this one? Do you really think it’s that good?”

“If you’ve never heard something that sounds like that before, then I think you would be inclined to think that it’s good,” said Lou licking his lips. “If you’ve never had that experience before, you are more inclined to remember it. That is how ‘Venus in Furs’ becomes a seminal event in any person’s life, that very first time they hear it.”

Who was I to argue with the man? “Do you remember where you were, the first time you heard it?” he asked. I remembered it quite well. There was a high school girl I knew who spoke admirably of bondage. She became my imaginary “Venus in Furs” plenty of times. “Do something new and they will love you for it, eventually,” said Lou. “Andy taught me that.”

“But what about John,” I pressed on. “John who?” “John Cale, your viola and bass player. I always loved his story. He moves to New York from Wales and joins the Dream Syndicate, and then Velvet Underground. The two coolest named bands that ever were.”

Lou just shook his head as he rummaged through stacks of shelved demos from circa 1969-70. This is the part of Lou Reed’s garage that he refers to as the Velvet Crypt. Apparently, they cut a whole other album around the same time Loaded came out that no one has ever heard for legal reasons.

“You know, the problem with John is that he was never good at making any money in the music business,” said Lou. “I had to take him under my wing for a while, show him the ropes. I hear he’s raking it in now.”

He said it with some satisfaction, but also a hint of sadness, as if he had been waiting here in his garage every day for the Welshman Cale to ring him, waiting while thumbing through old tapes and smoothing and and rerolling old Velvet Underground posters, waiting for his old buddy to thank him for his advice. The call, alas, had never come.

THE MCCARTNEY PALACE was never called such. Rather it was referred to in French as the Palais McCartney. A large white and glass structure on the edge of a field of sumptuous flowers. A long drive in, both sides of which were lined with cars.

There was a soiree at Palais McCartney, and the man himself was supposedly there somewhere to welcome guests to the gala, but I never caught sight of Sir Paul. Instead my friend Jaak, the Estonian man of letters, invited me back to his house, which was not a palace, to show off his collection of novels, novellas, poetry, and various trophies he had been awarded from diverse writerly entities, organizations, and unions. He had at least a dozen of these golden statues on one shelf which he gestured to wildly, an arm tossed in the air, as he explained one thing or another.

Then we went back to the Palais McCartney for lunch, which was really terrible, I mean the kinds of steaming metal buffet meals one gets in the worst roadside motels in the States. How could this be? I thought McCartney was deep into food, you know. The Kasemetsad were there, and other members of the Estonian intelligentsia.

Later there was some kind of rupture in the space-time continuum and we were all herded behind a chain-link fence on the edge of a field at night watching the stars. There was a Frenchman there lecturing everyone on the proper way to pronounce Jeanne d’Arc. “It’s d’Arc, not D’Arc.”

Then there was a UFO landing of celestial polar bears, who began to devour everything in sight. Meantime I was trying to do an interview with some British entrepreneur, who kept asking me, “What is that noise in the background?”

To make matters worse, a woman went into labor, so she was giving birth while these bears of the stars ate up everything they could sink their teeth into. I remember climbing that chain link fence, leaping over, landing on my feet and running still.

Looking back to see the agony of the woman in childbirth. How could McCartney leave us here like this? And what had happened to Jaak? He was just here a minute ago. The last thing I can recall is a silvery thread slipping and undulating through the cosmos, teasing me up and into a new and different black comfort. Freyja was there, and I succumbed to a deeper and restorative sleep.

THIS TIME I WAS DRIVING a kind of plastic toy car, like the kind our eldest used to have, down a winding seacoast road lined with pines rising up onto knolls and hills. It was a place like Maine, Scotland, or Washington State. That kind of place. The temperature had just begun to dip below freezing, and there were patches of black ice on the road. I went over a patch of ice, spun around many times, and collided with a black Mercedes parked by the beach.

However, as my car was made of plastic, there was no damage, and the owner, a lanky, stiff-upper-lipped British Lord Mountbatten type, merely chided me and told me to “be a little more careful next time, young man.” I apologized and turned my car around and began to ascend the same seaside hill, now covered with fat flakes of wet snow. From its base, I watched a car drive opposite me. It went over the same patch of ice, lost control, went up the embankment, crashed into a tree and was thrown into the side of the other hill, where it exploded into a violent blaze. “Oh, no,” I thought, watching the red and curling fiery flames. “That guy is definitely dead.”

I drove on up nevertheless to get a good look. A small crowd had gathered to watch the vehicle burn, and a crane was lifting parts of the wreckage into the air. I didn’t understand it, but they had also lifted the corpse of the driver, and as he was suspended overhead, his head came loose and fell into my arms. I briefly recognized a beard — it was a man — and a hat and then dropped the head in shock and began to run back toward the beach, leaving my car behind.

Now I saw there were dozens of corpses piled up in the woods. I kept running and reached an intersection, where my father happened to drive by in a blue sedan and said, “Get in!” And so I got in the passenger’s seat, buckled my belt, and away we went up some road into the hills. “Did you see the crash?” he said. “Terrible.”

THERE WAS A HATCH in the living room floor, one I hadn’t noticed until last night. And there was someone living under the floor whom I could only see when she lifted the hatch to watch me, only to disappear again into the darkness. I want to say it was a younger woman with blonde hair. Her skin, at least, was light. Her eye color could not be discerned in the twilight.

She only lifted the hatch, watched my movements, and then closed it when she saw I was watching. I tried to wake my daughter to tell her about the woman living in the cellar and the heretofore undiscovered wooden hatch in our home, but when I went to rouse her, something strange happened. My father was in her bed instead, wearing an old-fashioned knit cap.

“What is it?” he said. “Dad! What are you doing here?” “Oh,” he yawned. “I just came in here to get some sleep.” “Dad, there’s a hatch in the living room. A young woman is living under the floor.” “Oh her? She’s always been there. Now, please, boy, let me get some sleep. We can talk about her in the morning.”

I walked back into the living room and saw her rather pretty face from underneath the hatch. Then she shut it and retreated back away into her hiding place.

LATE FOR A BOOK EVENT in Tallinn, the big moment set to start at 8 pm but it was already 7, and there was no way to get there on time, by train or automobile, so I just didn’t show, nor did I inform them I wasn’t coming.

Instead, I paced the corridor of my home, a ramshackle shanty house in a cold northern town, a frosty, eerie, tight little space, like that middle floor in Being John Malkovich, where one could hear the crackle of wood furnaces. My neighbors were in the hall too, Freja and Josefine, ladies reminiscent of HC Andersen’s 19th century Copenhagen grimy backstreets, floating in and out, so shapely in their old-fashioned dress, gesturing emotively, and talking as if I was there and not there, an audience but not a participant to their lament.

I went down the stairs, stepped outside, and was at last in the open, now a deserted ranch in the mountains, an old cowboy film set like the Spahn Ranch in Los Angeles, except I was the only person there and it was snowing. I liked it there at the Spahn Ranch. It was peaceful, truly calm, cold, crisp and quiet. Nobody could bother me there now, not the Danish girls, not the event organizers, and at last nobody knew where I was. I imagined all those disappointed people at the book event in Tallinn, and how they were messaging me and calling me in a digital frenzy, and “How come he doesn’t respond! See pole normaalne! It’s just not normal!”

Yet it was just so peaceful at wintry Christmassy wonderful Spahn Ranch, and Charlie Manson was nowhere to be found. Eventually I did return to civilization, sat down in some vacant highway diner, ordered an omelet and some coffee, took a deep breath, and looked around. What a strange night. Sueiro of all people came walking in, but it was high school Sueiro, with the chunky hair, converse, you know, looking like Chris Cornell. I was afraid he was going to lecture me about missing the book event, but instead he told me it was cancelled on account of Covid-19. There had been no event. Imagine that. All that stress for nothing!