I love exploring the inner geography. I'm still pondering this dream from last week ...

Jack Bauer and I hire a sailing ship at some port in some unknown South American-looking city. At the Rent A Ship Store. There's a sign, I'm serious, just like at the U-Haul Store.

But this is no trailer.

We sail her north, skimming the waves, sails filled with wind, up the river. Jack is, after all, a sailor. The blue skein of water twists and turns like a serpent through dense rain forest. White birds lead the way. They dart and wheel and screech in the sky above. I trace our course on a map like one in an old MGM pirate movie. The parchment paper burns at the corners and the edges turn as black as night.

We finally arrive somewhere. On a shore. I've no idea what to expect. We disembark.

There's a glamorous looking vixen of a woman with jet black hair and ruby red lipstick (rather like this lady) waiting for us in a stone building filled with shadows. It's a maze of halls and doorways. I think it's a hotel. Or her house. With her luminous eyes and half-smoked cigarette, I feel a little afraid of her dark beauty, especially when she smiles a broad, lustrous smile, showing teeth as white as ivory. I think in the animal kingdom, you'd call that a threat.

Outside the enormous windows of the stone house, we spot a tiger prowling through the trees. Each calculated step brings him closer to his prey. Us. His eyes glimmer wickedly in the darkness, like a painting I've seen somewhere but can't remember except in cartoon caricatures. And I know we are in trouble.

The woman disappears in a flash of perfume.

Suddenly, the tiger is chasing us through the stone house, his long claws scrawling across the stone as we round yet another corner. We're frantically trying to outrun him, but we know we can't. Somehow or other, we manage to lock him in the bathroom. I see his tail wrapped around the claw foot of the bathtub as we slam the door shut. He is growling and snarling and throwing himself against the heavy wooden door, but that tiger can't get out.

We lean against the door, gasping and panting, looking at each other in disbelief at how we managed to trick that big cat, relieved to be alive and not to have been tiger food. Nearly laughing out loud with it. We are giddy.

But not for long.

A big black dog with burly shoulders comes clicking up the hallway.