I thought I'd shredded everything.

I dreamed about work today. That's not unusual - people dream about their jobs all the time - but what was odd was that I haven't had a job in thirteen months. I'll leave it to the experts to figure out why I suddenly manufactured a conversation with my old manager; I just want to tell you about the dream.

I was on some kind of cross-country road trip with about half a dozen people. We were all jammed into a too-small car - a two-door, four-seat, underpowered, non-airconditioned and weak-springed thing like a Neon or a Cavalier.

Our driver stopped for a bathroom break at a shopping mall somewhere. He parked the car out in some remote corner of the lot, a hundred yards from the nearest car or the nearest entrance to the mall. Everyone took turns going in to do their business; the rest of us remained in the car, crammed uncomfortably in the seats. (I don't know why we were too stupid to get out and stretch our legs - who knows why we do what we do in our dreams?)

The last person came back and got into the car; that was when I decided I needed to go to the bathroom. I squeezed out of the back seat - imagine the sardine in the corner of the tin farthest from the opening trying to extricate itself: that's what it was like.

I stood on the pavement, rearranged my clothing which had twisted itself into knots around me, and started across the pavement towards the mall doors.

My cell phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket.

"This is B____."

"Hi, B____. It's Steve G_______," said Steve G_______, who, even until the day he fired me, always used his first and last name when calling me, just in case I wouldn't recognize my manager's voice after talking to him daily for two years. "How are you?"

"Hi, Steve." I was confused. Why would Steve call me 13 months after he fired me? "I'm fine. What can I do for you?"

"Your desk," he said.

"My desk?"

"Where did you get the packets?"

My desk? Packets? What the hell was he talking about?

"There were packets in your desk," he said. "Ketchup, soy sauce, salad dressing. Where did you get them?"

"Excuse me?"

"Those packets of condiments in your desk," he said. "Where did you get them?"

"What?" I asked. Some of those packets would be two or three years old by now, and he wanted me to tell him where I'd got them?

"Jason ate the salad dressing in one of them," Steve said, "and he got sick, so I'd like to know where you got them."

In my dream, Jason was a new hire and my replacement, and I suddenly remembered that there was a half-used packet of ranch dressing in my top-left desk drawer on the day I'd left. I'd folded over the top and closed it with a binder clip so it wouldn't leak. Newbie must have put half a packet of two-year-old salad dressing - that had been open and in a desk drawer for half of that time - on his greens. And now he was sick.

"Uh, geez, Steve," I said, "I don't remember."

I woke up before I had to lie to him again.