Hilary Clinton’s residence in Washington is a penthouse in a large Art Deco tower. Somehow I learn the official password to her private elevator (“Equinox”) and decide to go there for shits and giggles.

I get in the wrong elevator, though. The attendant is a nice woman of maybe 38. She takes me to a floor marked as having 4 units. One of them is labeled “a politician” and is marked with a hand-size bust of Richard Nixon.

When we arrive, waiting in the elevator lounge is a 30-something Richard Nixon dressed in 1988 style. No one thinks this is odd, I suppose that perhaps Nixon had a son or a grandson (I don’t know if he did) and that it would make sense for him to look like his patriarch and hang around the family property.

Some old and very friendly woman notices me in the lobby and strikes up a conversation. There is a man sharpening pencils by hand with a knife. When he leaves he leaves a pencil on a table and I pick it up.

The old lady has me follow her as she wanders into and out of apartments visiting friends. The tower seems divided into units by quarter, with each unit 3 floors on an open plan. A few people are in each one, they seem a bit artsy and refined. The only one I recognize is Chuck Klosterman.

Jean Paul Gautier is looking for his favorite pencil, it is bothering him much. Eventually I remember the pencil I picked up and offer it to him, it is the correct one. He offers me a sharpener-sharpened one in exchange. I have no idea who Jean Paul Gautier is.

We go down some stairs and meet some more people, I have the sense that everyone here is sort of famous and I have no clue who any of them are. We stop in a narrow lobby full of overstuffed and mostly occupied chairs.

I think that this place seems like a cross between artists’ lofts and a retirement home as designed by Wes Anderson. I notice that Wes Anderson is sitting in one of the chairs, wearing a giant deconstructed bow tie and a Mad Hatter-style oversized hat.

I look down to tie my shoe and when I look up everyone has bowls of beef and onion soup that they are dipping bread into. Anderson gently mocks me for not having brought a bowl.

I look over and notice there is a gift shop selling prints, kind of a more upscale version of those college town poster shops where freshmen buy copies of old French absinthe ads. Sitting visible from the door is a large sign mounted on a floor stand saying that THE MANAGEMENT DISCOURAGES DANCING AS A MATTER OF ETIQUETTE AND PUBLIC ORDER with a picture of 1960s police beating hippies. I cannot tell if that is a print for sale or an honest sign.

I wake up.