Dream: the assassination

 (I tend to only dream when I am sleeping very deeply and well, which I haven't been for the last few months... so this is the first extremely vivid dream for quite a long time)

In this dream I am a spy. I think I may be James Bond (is there a girl version of James Bond?), a spectacular spy that will get the target with a lot of flair. My sidekick is my friend from real life W who is a very gentle, reserved and non-violent person. 

We are both fairly out of character in this dream. There's a gun strapped to my ankle under my jeans, and I'm wearing lace up boots like I'm in some terrible Western movie. I am driving a small car, which is fairly typical for us as W does not drive in real life. 

He is navigating through Google maps, flicking back and forth between the map view and the 'earth' view where you can see the buildings. He says that the map must be wrong because the address we are going to is not the same as the one in our brief. I look over at his phone, and all I see is a jumble of buildings. 

Just follow the instructions! I snap at him. 

He ignores me and scrolls through more buildings. We drive on in silence and I realise from the billboards we are driving past that we are in Japan. Finally we pull up to a hotel building across the road from the sea. Here the road rounds back on itself, and the hotel is the only building on the bend, as if it was actually jutting into the sea. 

I pull up at a parking spot just across the road from the hotel. I think to myself that we are lucky to have such a great getaway spot for when we have finished the job. 

We can't park here! W says suddenly. It's only 2 hour parking! 

I look at the sign and feel a twinge of irritation. 

It's not going to take us 2 hours to take out this guy, it'll be fine. I try to convince W.

What if we finish the job, come out and the cops have towed our car? He asks sullenly, arms crossed across his chest. 

We argue this point for a while, and in the end I agree to look for another spot. We drive around the bend and the hotel disappears from view. On the next block, we park under a deep shadow that is cast by the buildings. We walk in silence to the hotel, the tension thick between us. It is so unusual of us to fight that I feel displaced from the situation - why are we fighting? I wonder. 

We enter the hotel through the fancy doors, which a silent Japanese man open for us with a curt nod. 

Passing by the busy front desk, we stand under some chandeliers while waiting for the lift. The lift is one of those ancient contraptions that look like it's being pulled by gremlins in the basement. We enter the lift and the doors close. The wooden panels smell musty and we feel slightly suffocated. 

We emerge onto the 8th floor, where the dining room is situated. 

Why is the dining room on the 8th floor? I wonder to myself. 

We are greeted by a lady who waves us into the dining room. Inside there are a few tables of people, but it is easy to spot our target, a middle aged man in a suit reading a newspaper. 

We take a seat at a table far away from him and discuss how we will kill the man. There are families with children around, and it feels odd to kill someone in this kind of setting. 

The waiter comes by with a pitcher of water and glasses.  

You guys better get something to eat or drink, or it will look too suspicious. He says very quietly as he sets down the glasses. 

We get up and go to the buffet, but all the serving dishes are empty. We decide to get some coffee to at least pretend to drink coffee. The coffee machine is an extremely complicated affair with multiple dials and buttons behind a single pane of smooth glass. There is only one lever that can be manoeuvred from the front and it is titled Creaminess. Moving the dial from left to right increases the creaminess, allegedly, but how is this achieved? My eyes follow the complex circuitry and it leads to a dairy cow some metres away, chewing on grass. 

So increasing the Creaminess dial concentrates the milk from the cow? I wonder to myself. 

We start to have another argument about how creamy to make the coffee, and suddenly I feel very tired. I don't want to have W tripping up this assassination anymore. I tell him to leave but he just stands there with his hand on the Creaminess lever. He refuses to leave and we both fall to a silence. The waiter comes up to us and says something we don't understand. 

And that's how the dream ends. We never even end up assassinating the man!