The PlayFinder™

THE STORY: As the author comments: “DEEP SLEEPERS takes place in a dream. As such, it celebrates the peculiar logic and theatrical excesses of that territory.” In the present instance the dreamer is one Wally Tuttle, who has to wake up so as not to be late for an important business meeting, but can’t. Trapped in his dream with him is his toothsome secretary, Miss Fuller (clad only in a bikini), who tries everything she can to jar Wally back to reality—including shooting him with a pistol (no effect) and pushing him out the window (this doesn’t work either). The problem seems to be that he is in her dream as much as she is in his—and both of them have lost the ability to separate the real world from the realm of dreams and fantasy—and perhaps don’t want to. As the complications multiply Miss Fuller magically roasts a chicken in her desk drawer; races in the Indy 500; and goes skiing and scuba diving (from her desk); while Wally’s deceased mother and father suddenly materialize, she as a chatty “Avon lady” on her way to go bowling with the Queen, and he as a lecherous, alcoholic drag queen. And, inevitably, sex also rears its head as Wally begins to realize that Miss Fuller is actually quite fetching in her skimpy costume. In the end Wally does awake from his dream (and performs nobly at the crucial business meeting), but there are lingering aftereffects which neither he nor Miss Fuller can fully comprehend—but which suggest that the path to true love and happiness is perhaps illogical, and unfathomable, at best.