Last night I dreamed I was down in a Latin American country hoping to make a documentary about a revolution in progress there — a group of insurgents trying to overthrow a corrupt military dictatorship.

I’d gotten involved with a band of insurgents going off to free some prisoners from an army barracks in the capital city.  We were ambushed by soldiers along the way and had to try and fight our way out of the predicament.  I got hold of a rifle and fired back at the soldiers and escaped into a wealthy residential section of the city.

I hid my rifle in the bushes in front of a fancy home and knocked on its door.  There was a party going on inside.  I said I’d been invited to the party by the lady of the house.  Someone said, “Aren’t you that American who lives out back in the trailer and takes care of the garden?”  I said I was and they let me in.

Just then the lady of the house came downstairs to join the party.  She was old and bent and wore a heavy white veil.  I shook hands with her and said, “Thank you for inviting me to the party.”  She said, “I’m glad you could come.”

I met her daughter, a tall, strikingly beautiful blonde, who told me her husband had been killed in Peru making a film about a revolution there.  This prompted me to confess what I was doing at the party.  “You should meet my father,” she said.

She led me over to an old man seated in a chair.   He was alert and vigorous.  I told him how I’d gotten into the party and he laughed.  “If my wife were not so hospitable,” he said, “you would probably be dead now.”  Just then two soldiers appeared at the windows leading onto a veranda outside the room.  They pointed guns through the windows, told everyone to freeze and said they were going to search the house for insurgents.

The old man pulled a pistol from his belt, hidden under his coat, and shot both the soldiers dead.  He turned to me and said, “We have to talk.”

Then I woke up.