Gately, the wraith, and the figurants — "For about a year once at…"
For about a year once at age twenty in Malden he’d slept most nights in a home-built loft in the dorm of a certain graduate R.N.-nursing program in Malden, with a ragingly addicted R.N.-nursing student, in the loft, which you needed a five-rung ladder to get up into this loft and the thing was only a couple of feet under the ceiling, and every A.M. Gately’d awake out of some bad dream and sit up with a jolt and thwack his head against the ceiling, until after some time there was a permanent concavity in the ceiling and a flattish spot in the curve of the top of his forehead he can still feel, lying here blinking and holding his head with his good left hand.
Context
Recalled at the wet-start waking from the red-mouth dream: a whole year of nightly bad dreams rendered as pure anatomy — the jolt-upright waking so habitual it wore a permanent concavity into a ceiling and a flat spot into his skull he can still feel. Bad dreams as Gately's baseline weather.