reams were her gift. Every morning, she'd wake up and tell her husband, Al, how she'd dreamed about angels or daughters or catastrophe. Good or bad, she'd always wake up with a story to tell -- until the day she never woke up at all. Al never had that gift. His dreams were vague, or they'd escape him 20 seconds into his day. He had nothing to jot down like she did, nothing to file away for a conversation over dinner. Even after she died some 11 years ago, he never dreamt of her, could never summon her back into his subconscious. This frustrated him to no end, because, once he was awake, all he did was daydream about her. But then, about 10 weeks ago, in the middle of his deepest sleep, Al Joyner finally saw Flo Jo. She had driven up in a car, smiling, and strolled casually toward him. She was stunning, as always, and wore her hair in a bun, just the way he'd always adored it. He asked her, "What are you doing here?" And her response was, "I'm just coming to check on you." He didn't know what to say next. Their daughter, Mary, was about to graduate from high school, and he wanted to ask, "Are you here for graduation?" But before he could speak, his alarm clock went off. The buzzing jarred him, and his dream was barely intact now. He could see her leaving, climbing back into her car, smiling again. He wanted more, wanted a full-blown conversation, but an instant later, Al was awake, the moment over. He sat up in bed, both agitated and wistful. That was it? That was the whole dream? He hadn't finished. There was so much to tell her, about him and Mary and premonitions that had come true. There was also news to share, news she'd probably beam about. The next night, he went to bed early, hoping Flo Jo would reappear, hoping the dream would pick up where it left off. But when he woke up, nothing. He wanted to punch his pillow. Nothing. An agonizingly slow start She has just been in the air these days, in the ether. Twenty-five years ago this month, Al Joyner won a shocking gold medal at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles … and fell in love with a lady in tights. He has tried to move on with his life, but 25 years is 25 years, and he has begun to sense her again, in the wind, in his mind, as if it were yesterday. Florence and Al Joyner Kevin Winter/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Florence and Al Joyner were track and field royalty. Just in July, for instance, the L.A. Sports Council invited Al and many of the 1984 medalists back to the creaky Coliseum, where one by one they were welcomed by raucous applause. If it wasn't Mary Lou Retton, it was Edwin Moses. If it wasn't Greg Louganis, it was Bart Conner. The audience heard tales of Mary Decker and Zola Budd, Michael Jordan and Bobby Knight. But as Al roamed the grounds and stared at a freshly lit Olympic flame, another story kept rushing back to him, a mystical story no one really knew about, a story he was dying to share: the story of Florence and Al. He had first laid eyes on that woman in 1980, at the U.S. Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore. He can still remember the time (7 p.m.), the place (a sign-in table), their ages (both 20) and her face (gorgeous). She looked so elegant, he assumed she was a trainer. He was wrong. He asked for her name, and she told him, "Florence." He told her his, and that was the extent of their conversation: an insecure man and an introverted woman literally passing in the night. The next day, he saw her warming up for the 100 meters and did a double take. He asked around, and learned she was a UCLA sprinter who would soon be teammates with his talented high school sister, Jackie Joyner. He rushed to find Jackie, who was warming up for a race herself, and said, "Jackie, there's this girl from UCLA named Florence Griffith, and you need to find out if she has a boyfriend." "Yep, she has one," Jackie said. "Well, if they break up, let me know." "She's not going to like you." "What do you mean, she's not going to like me?" "Because I don't like you." That didn't stop Al from digging. He found out Florence's boyfriend was an 800-meter runner, David Mack, and although Al turned sheepish and never spoke with her again in Eugene, he pasted Florence's UCLA track photo onto his bedroom wall at Arkansas State. "I had a girlfriend back in Arkansas who said, 'Why do you have a picture of this girl?'" Al remembers. "And I said, 'That's the girl I'm going to marry.'"