Fevers break often in the middle of your dreams. You know when it happens. The very nature of everything changes, as if you’ve been sleeping with your toes balled up and someone comes into the room and straightens them.

Take this dream. There’s a man wearing very dirty clothes. It’s quite possible that the man has never changed his clothes. You know he must have because you can’t be born in clothes that will fit you your whole life. Some time a long time ago, though, he put on these clothes. These are probably it for him.

You look down in your hands and see that you have a set of clothes that are neatly folded and pressed that look exactly like his. When clean, this man wears a white jumpsuit with a little patch over the front pocket. Why not give him the new clothes? He has no reason to turn them down. He must like these workman’s clothes.

You walk up to him. He hasn’t seen you. He’s been fiddling with a ball of something so dirty that it’s probably at best a dirty ball and maybe something worse. The smell of the man is overwhelming. You feel yourself choke and sweat as you get closer to him.

“Here,” you shout the words at him as if his stench is so terrible that it’s muffling sound, “take these clothes.”

He takes the clothes and immediately, somehow, he has them on. The smell is gone. His beard is gone. His hair is cut and combed. He gives you a big smile of white teeth and good intention. “Thank you,” he says. “As a reward for your good deed, I bless you with the following: You will soon understand your father’s love of bad soft jazz. You will no longer see the woman with the baby carriage. You will soon find out what your mom does all day. You will get a receive a set of these clothes that fit so well that you won’t want to change them.”

You wake and your fever is gone as if it were a song that ended abruptly.