Congress, two days before a national default rolls in, appears to be occupied with multiple parallel daydreams, the unrealistic ones each unrealistic in their own way. Since Monday afternoon, there has been word every hour that a Senate deal to reopen the government (until January 15th) and not renege on the debts of the United States (or not until February 7th) would be closed any minute. The deal involved more “income verification” for people getting help buying insurance under Obamacare—the health-care version of a voter-I.D. law—and delaying a fee on insurers meant to protect those with less healthy subscribers (helpful for union plans), plus talks, in December, to keep alive the vision of bipartisan budget compromise. But there were two concerns to wish away: that Ted Cruz, or another unhinged Senator, would use parliamentary moves to delay a vote until it was too late to avoid all-out default, and that House Republicans would just scream and say never.

They’ve already begun to yell. “We’ve got a name for it in the House: it’s called the Senate surrender caucus,” Congressman Tim Huelskamp, of Kansas, said, according to the Times. On Tuesday morning, the Republicans briefly seemed to have their own bill, which looked a lot like one that has already been rejected by the Senate, but with the threat of worldwide economic ruin mixed in. Darrell Issa, the California Republican, referred to it as “enhanced.” (He also told the Times that the Republicans began their Tuesday meeting by singing “Amazing Grace.”) But by the time the Republican leadership came out to introduce it, the bill already appeared to be dead—not Tea Party enough. Eric Cantor was left to talk sourly about “fairness.”

“There have been no decisions about what exactly we will do,” John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, said at the same press conference. There haven’t been for a while. He talked, too, about finding “a way forward.” Boehner sounds like an addict trying to take things one day at a time. The rationalist view has been that, in the end, Boehner will let the Senate bill—or some viable compromise that could pass with Democratic and Republican votes—come to the floor for a straight up-or-down vote. We’ll see, in the next two days, whether the only dream he’s chasing is one in which he comes out of this with his caucus intact, with ideological cover, like a child who pulls a blanket over his head and thinks it will make the voices going on about the economy collapsing disappear.

The Times had a story this morning suggesting that women in the Senate played a distinct role in that chamber’s compromise, in part because they were among the few Senators still talking civilly to their counterparts in other parties. And it’s probably no coincidence that two of the Republicans, Susan Collins, of Maine, and Kelly Ayotte, of New Hampshire—whose other Senator is Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic woman—are from less-polarized New England. It’s not clear whether this is about the collaborative capabilities of women or simply the exposure of these Senators to realities other than their own. (Sarah Palin, on the Mall this weekend, didn’t seem awfully collaborative.) It does seem that the Senate women are being, at the moment and on average, less ridiculous than the men. It’s not clear yet whether that will help.

Those men are doing things like holding secret meetings, as Ted Cruz did, with House hardliners at a restaurant called Tortilla Coast, according to Roll Call; the leadership found out because Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Whip, just happened to be at Tortilla Coast, too. (When a similar collection of House members plotted to overthrow Boehner a while back, they chose Bullfeathers.) At this point, it would hardly be a surprise if Lloyd Blankfein happened to stop by for an enchilada and some talk about crashes. Meanwhile, Felix Salmon, of Reuters, points out that the default has effectively already begun. This is the day everybody has to wake up.

Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty