Last night I dreamed the world was coming to an end and I was in Milwaukee . The war was over. I drove home on interstates with numbers so low they had to be south and west, not north and central. I was young, the age when I came home from a different war and crashed with Ann and Marilyn and Sonya on Rio Grande Street in Austin in 1969, three years before I would meet and marry Susan, eight years before my son was born.

But I was talking about Milwaukee , a place I've never been, and how the world was coming to an end. I drove on a freeway past row houses and old factories, perhaps a brewery, this being Milwaukee and all, and even in my dreams I have to build from something if I'm in a place I've never been before. On a sharp, clear day, the sun bouncing off metal roofs, I drive an interstate that does not exist through a city I've never seen and I am surrounded by old friends, some of whom I've never met.

The bumper sticker on the car ahead says MY KID CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT and vanishes with its car heading down an off ramp to somewhere...or not. I am almost always happy when I'm driving even when I have no destination in mind, just wheeling off down a road that, with luck, I've never driven before. Like driving through Milwaukee on this particular afternoon when nothing happens except a few old friends appear, vanish, reappear.

I am in the house on Rio Grande Street and I am in Milwaukee and I am sitting in an old chair. Linda, who never lived there, is on the floor, her cheek against my knee, her long dark hair flows down my leg as I drive past an exit sign that says Khe Sanh—20Km. We were never lovers, Linda and I, for some reason neither of us has ever figured out, but it's right somehow that she is here in Milwaukee as the world is coming to an end.

My friend Don is in the passenger seat as we drive past a baseball stadium, circle it, watch a batter hit the ball and a fielder catch it in the web of his glove, hear the sharp crack of the meat of the bat, the lighter slap of the ball hitting leather. Don and I landed in Chu Lai together and he was the best man at my wedding and now we are driving through Milwaukee and Linda is sitting on my lap, shifting gears as I push in the clutch.

When you're driving through Milwaukee , even if you've never been there, and the sun gives everything a bright golden aura and the world is coming to an end, you need close friends and, aside from Don, all my close friends have been women. When I exit by a park and turn the car down a dirt road that does not exist in a greenbelt in a big city I have never seen before, Linda is sitting by my side, Linda, who married four times, three to history professors.

Twenty-two years ago, at a graduate student party, someone announced to everyone there that Linda wanted to go to bed with me and, at that moment, I told the group that Susan and I were getting married in August. Linda died of thoracic cancer ten years ago, but she's here in Milwaukee and we talk about why we never went to bed together, yet loved each other. At two of her weddings, I gave her away and, I suppose, spent most of our time together doing so.

Dreaming through Milwaukee and thinking of the past I drive by some kind of flour mill, a strange building tall and not very wide or long, old red bricks and huge letters on the side, PIONEER FLOUR, perhaps. I am not married and I have no children and the top is down and there is no smog, no unpleasant smell as I drive through the city which is called Milwaukee but contains parts of Houston and Austin and San Antonio, the cities that bred me, grew me up, and spat me out so many years ago.

I question this dream from time to time, almost wake up, wonder why I am in Milwaukee and why I am driving and whether there is some destination and why the world is coming to an end, but the dream doesn't answer. We drive across a river, Linda and I, and go to the Corcoran Gallery, transported from across the street from the White House to the middle of a park in Wisconsin and we are out of the car and sitting on the floor, beneath my legs glass brick and green light shining through, and a band at the front, a band that no longer exists, a band called Love Cry Want is playing sitar music accompanied by a panoply of instruments from Thailand and Burma. A big man in dreadlocks moans into a microphone as the walls move in and out and the green light hits my face. Linda hands me a small cup with sugary liquid stuff and I drink a little and pass the cup to a guy sitting to my left and watch the walls come to life, breathing in the same rhythm as the music.

I am dreamdriving through Milwaukee and I am on something or perhaps something else and the city begins to shimmer, fracturing into a thousand brilliant colors I have never seen before, not even in this dream where Milwaukee becomes something more than Laverne and Shirley ever thought it could be and Linda and I are making love, not moving, just the smooth vibrations of the car rolling over the freeways of the city and the world is coming to an end.