The Dream Merchant

by Fred Waitzkin

  Phyllis hadn’t envisioned actually leaving her apartment. She was an optimistic girl, and she didn’t like being rushed about making her choices. She had stayed on in the swelter of summer expecting things to turn her way when the cool weather came. Network marketing always picked up in the fall when men and women turned down their air-conditioning and once again began to feel like going door-to-door. As she hauled the suitcases to her little black Nissan, she felt tipsy, as though her head weren’t sitting exactly on her body.

  Phyllis hadn’t called Vivian in advance. Anyhow, what could Phyllis have said on the phone with this sheriff standing in her kitchen, wanting to get on with his police work.

  She tried to remain peaceful, as if this were just another happening in her week. The steering wheel of the Nissan had its familiar spongy feel. But she was misty-eyed and thought, if only she could have reached Jim, the whole matter could have been resolved differently. What a shame.

  She rang the bell of her friend’s house and looked through the glass door into the high vaulted living room; beyond that she could see through the open sliding glass doors to the small canal where Vivian’s young boyfriend’s ski boat was tied to the little dock. Vivian had come out of her marriage wealthy but also deeply wounded, and Chris filled a void. The girls had decided that this young man was good for her.

  It was Jim’s kind of house. They had come here for parties and Jim would sit on the tan leather sofa smoking a cigar and holding court with his favorite stories. It was an odd coincidence, one night Jim had discovered that more than twenty years earlier Vivian’s boyfriend, Chris, had known Jim’s son in Toronto. This news quieted Jim while Chris looked on with an over-the-top caring expression.

  It was early in the afternoon, but Vivian smelled of alcohol. The friends embraced and Phyllis tried to keep it cheerful but had to dab her eyes with a tissue. She told her friend that she was feeling a little out of balance and needed a place to rest. For a short while. Do you know what I mean, Viv? I don’t like to feel this way. She circled her finger next to her tilted head, to say “cuckoo,” and managed a smile.

  Phyllis liked things to be comfortable and attractive. It was too crude to say she’d been thrown out of her place and needed a bed to sleep. She didn’t have forty dollars to her name besides the valuable prints in the back of the car. She’d left the family photographs behind in her apartment along with the sectional from the Canada house and some of her best clothes. She’d been rushed and hadn’t made the wisest choices. She couldn’t say to Vivian, Everything is gone. Desperation was outside the orbit of their friendship and so Phyllis used psychobabble language to make her situation acceptable. She had to regain her equilibrium. She needed a place to rest, she said to her friend. Then she’d be fine. Except Phyllis was gulping for air like a fish on the deck. Vivian nodded, but she seemed unsettled or cross. Maybe it was from having to right herself from a stupor.

  Vivian was one of the girls Phyllis went out to lunch with on the waterway. If Vivian thought about it at all, she would have believed Phyllis had money, at least enough to float from good restaurants to parties, cooling down at night with a drink beside the pool. All these women were trying to paint themselves back together. They had money from their settlements but were bracing against demise with a bottle or a younger man. They drove fast cars and looked in on one another with tenderness and shared regret. In the first weeks without Jim these friends had been Phyllis’s lifeline. One of them had a grand yacht and had offered to take Phyllis and the others up to Cape Cod for a week. The nights on the water were gay with karaoke singing and sipping wine beneath the stars, meals you couldn’t imagine. But this afternoon at Vivian’s, Phyllis knew she had passed out of their circle. She was falling very quickly.

  Vivian offered her the little garret above the garage, which was separate from the main house. Phyllis smiled as if things were already much better. The room was put together with two-by-fours and plywood, a rough storage space that was much smaller than the maid’s quarters in Phyllis’s Canada house. She pushed Vivian’s luggage, bikes, and knickknacks aside to fit a cot. Phyllis smiled and said it was perfect, just right to catch her breath for a few days. She also shoved aside Chris’s distaste for her visit. She wasn’t staying here forever. Phyllis had resources, plans for her life, an artist’s eye, people said that about her; she had taste and convictions, and that didn’t go away because Jim had found a new romance. He’d had other women before. He liked women. But he cared for her and always would. They were a special couple; a thousand times she had heard this from his customers: Jim and Phyllis. She became teary and shook her head at Vivian’s question. Nothing, just feeling a little sentimental, she managed.

  Whenever they spoke on the phone, Jim told her he loved her. Now she was crying and tried to wave it off. Jim would take care of her when his new deal came through. It was an arrangement they had. He’d promised her a house by the water and a car when he made his deal. Jim couldn’t explain this to his Israeli girlfriend with her middle-class aspirations and plans for every nickel. It was Phyllis’s secret with Jim, and she relished this intimacy. It became her castle. She couldn’t tell her plans to Vivian, who would have snickered. But Phyllis knew Jim would take care of her.

  * * *

  It wasn’t a comfortable visit. During the month she lived in the little garret, Phyllis found out things and she put them aside, one after another, because everyone was tarnished and holding on, she’d come to that with her changing fortunes; and it wasn’t in her character to make trouble. She tried to carve out a place with a lighthearted manner. Cooked dinner, washed the dishes. Went to bed early. She had known Chris before from Vivian’s dinner parties. He played folk guitar and had seemed a little depressed, a wounded guy who became teary when alluding to his father’s years of rebuke.

  Vivian was a big drinker for years, but now she was a drunk. When she came down for breakfast in the morning with a throbbing head, Chris handed her a Bloody Mary. He gave her refills until she couldn’t stand and then he guided her upstairs into bed and tucked her in with a glancing kiss. This happened most mornings. Phyllis was appalled by his contemptuous smirking face except when he filled Vivian’s glass, and then he oozed with graciousness and concern. You had to live with them to see his malevolence and snickering at the edges of a room, or from the upstairs landing, coarse laughter when Vivian stumbled or vomited on the patio. Vivian never noticed, she was so far gone.

  When the girls called, Chris often said that Vivian was under the weather and couldn’t come to the phone, as though he wanted to keep her numb and wrapped up for his own designs. He drove a new red Mercedes convertible, a gift from Vivian. Phyllis considered mentioning their way of life to the other girls, but then she thought better of it.

  It was an arrangement that Vivian sanctioned, Phyllis reasoned. He was a young guy and was giving her pleasure in the same way that Mara was servicing Jim. Although Phyllis had a theory that scared her and she couldn’t get it out of her mind: When the time suited her Mara would kill Jim with her love. He would die in her arms straining to be a young man. It would be so easy and no one could accuse her of anything. Mara was the devil. Phyllis couldn’t tell this to Jim any more than she could warn Vivian.

  Phyllis had to find her own place and leave this mess, but meanwhile she couldn’t help noticing and she felt sordid standing by. While Vivian slept it off Chris would drive away in the sporty car and a couple of times he came back with a girl, a young blonde with a stripper’s body. Phyllis watched from her garret window. He acted like it was his house. He ordered Phyllis with his inflated airs, Take out the garbage; mop the Florida room. But for the most part, he ignored her while he played the king.

  Phyllis wouldn’t have made trouble, except one afternoon she happened to be inside the house while Vivian was passed out beside the pool and Chris was on the phone upstairs talking to his brother in Canada. Why do I end up with such a pathetic hag when there are so many good ones down here? Chris had sai
d, and then he narrated the ups and downs of managing an older woman with booze while Phyllis listened from downstairs. She’ll give me anything, he boasted. Vivian had signed the papers and now they owned the waterfront house together. Chris was a millionaire. Vivian would do what he asked if he nagged her, or sometimes he did other things until she gave in with a shrug. He fed her alcohol and she staggered around a little but mostly stayed in bed and he lived his life. He invited his brother to come down to Florida and find an old lady, as though this sick arrangement were a laudable career.

  That evening, Phyllis sat out back on a lawn chair next to her stuporous friend and began to discuss what she’d heard. She pushed into it but had trouble getting Vivian’s attention. Vivian was bemused. What was this about? Yes, it was true, he did own half the house. Phyllis wanted to get all the girls together and talk about Vivian and Chris; an intervention was what she had in mind. The girls would find the right solution. It would be okay.

  Solution for what?

  Vivian, you’ll have to stop. You know what I mean. There are lovely places to go.

  Vivian’s eyes narrowed and Phyllis understood immediately, but it was too late to pull her words back. Vivian didn’t want to hear about rehab and her boyfriend’s evil designs. She wanted to go back inside for a drink.

  The following morning, Chris came up the stairs with the fury of a man about to lose everything he had worked for. He shoved open Phyllis’s unlocked door and he grabbed her arm and pulled her out of bed. He held her by the shoulders, real close, shouting and spraying saliva. He wouldn’t let her get dressed or grab her clothes. He chased her down the stairs to her car. She was crying and his rank smell was on her face. Her shoulder hurt and Chris was cursing her and smacking the closed car window with the heel of his palm.

  She didn’t know where to go. Maybe drive to Jim if that woman was off with her kids. Tell Jim what had happened. Phyllis stopped and called him collect from a phone booth. Mara picked up the phone. Jim wasn’t home. Click. She wasn’t letting Phyllis get through. This was not acceptable. She’d have to talk with Jim about it.

  Chris must have become nervous about keeping Phyllis’s things, afraid she would call the police. A couple of hours after Phyllis drove off he phoned Jim and said he was putting her clothes out on the lawn, Jim could come and get them or they would go into the garbage the following morning. It meant Jim would have to drive an hour to Miami fighting the traffic, and he had plans with Mara and the kids. It would ruin their day. Mara was disgusted, which always put him on edge. But he decided he’d better go.

  Jim picked his wife’s clothes up from the lawn; a few soiled underthings were in the bushes, and he stuffed them into garbage bags that he had in the car, a pathetic situation. Then the two men walked upstairs to the little storage room where she had lived and Jim collected the two Monet prints. Chris never said a word, but he looked on with a supercilious expression. Jim thought, even a few years earlier he would have beaten this guy to a pulp, left him quivering on the lawn. But now he didn’t dare. Everything in his life was hanging. He just wanted to get back to Mara and what was left of the evening. Jim was planning to give everything to Phyllis when she next called him—that’s what he told me two weeks later when I arrived in Florida.

  After driving aimlessly, Phyllis had stopped by a park where she and Jim had gone Rollerblading on weekends. It was a beautiful cool spot bordered on one side by the waterway. She sat inside the car watching the boats pass on a Sunday afternoon, tried to collect herself. She was barefoot and wearing only a black slip. She recalled that Jim had said she looked lovely in that slip.

  A few hours later, she drove to the house of another girlfriend. Phyllis stood outside Janice’s door wearing next to nothing, but she still talked in her pleasant dreamy way. She told Janice she needed to stay for a while to get back on her feet. She was having a hard time. She tried to say what she had learned about Chris and Vivian, but Janice raised her hand. Not now, not the right time to talk. Phyllis needed some place to catch her breath, just for a few days. Janice looked at her feet. It wasn’t a good time for her, she said as though she were having issues with someone who was waiting inside.

  Phyllis nodded. I understand.

  Wait a minute, Janice said, and soon came back to the door holding jeans, a blue work shirt, and some old running shoes. She kissed Phyllis on the cheek and closed the door.

  None of the girls would have her—Phyllis was frozen out. Vivian was making calls to each of her friends and complaining that Phyllis had made trouble in her life with Chris. He was feeling depressed because they had invited Phyllis into their home and she’d stabbed him in the back with lies. Phyllis was making trouble because she had been jilted by her husband.

  Phyllis waited three days before calling Jim again. She hated asking him. Because he and Mara lived in a tiny house with two kids. Phyllis hated to impose. Also, it scared her that he might say no. But she didn’t have any money, besides a few dollars in change. She was sleeping in the little car in a parking lot behind the Publix near her old apartment. Jim was sympathetic, but he didn’t invite her to come by. There wasn’t enough room. He wanted to, he said, but Mara wouldn’t understand. We’re trying to make a new life; you can understand that, Phyllis. How would it be for her if you were in my house, sleeping one room away? Jim leavened this tough news with the possibility of their intimacy; the chance was still alive to him. She could imagine his grin and she answered with her own smile. There had been so many sweet embraces. Jim always gave with one hand even while slipping in the dagger. And he always left wiggle room for returning home. Don’t you worry, he said to her. Soon he’d have money; not too much longer and he would be able to help out and she’d be okay, more than okay.

  Then he cleared his throat and he told her about the phone call from Chris. She shouldn’t be concerned; Jim had driven over and packed her clothes into plastic bags. He would meet her someplace and bring them and he’d try to scrounge together a few dollars. The crazy son of a bitch had strewn her clothes across the yard. Jim had found some of her underwear in the bushes. What a bastard. Jim had also brought home the paintings, as he called them, but when he hadn’t heard from her he took them to a gallery in South Beach.

  Phyllis understood now, and the rest of what he said didn’t matter.

  They were beautiful, she managed to get out the words. From our lives, I was trying to keep them, trying to …

  She cried pitifully and Jim said he was sorry. He needed the money to feed his kids and pay the rent. There was nothing else to do.

  What else could I do, Phyllis?

  Jim, how could you? How could you? They were mine. All that I had left.

  He insisted the paintings were his more than hers. He had selected them twenty-five years ago. Don’t you remember, Phyllis?

  You had no right, no right at all, Jim.

  Anyhow, what do you want me to do about it now? They’re gone. I can’t get them back.

  She cried bitterly. She might have rented a little place with the money. Now she had nothing.

  You had no right, Jim. I’ve given you everything and you did this.

  She had forgiven him for the years in Brazil. She didn’t say that, but she was thinking it. She had taken him back and healed him.

  You had no right, Jim.

  They kept going back and forth like this, Jim insisting the paintings were his. He needed the money to keep a roof over their heads. They were tugging back and forth about whose they were. She kept putting quarters into the phone until they were all gone. Then she took a deep breath and said she forgave him. Jim was her only chance. He was all she had left. She had nothing else but his promises. You wanted them so badly. Maybe it was for the best that you took them, she said firmly.

  17.

  Jim was boxed in between Mara’s impatience and Phyllis, who tormented him, especially in his dreams, where he couldn’t shut her out. And he had to deal with me. I asked him, What happened then? What happened next?
He asked me, What should I do about Mara? Who should I trust? He and I were tuned to different channels. For years I had enjoyed my friend’s salon of extravagant stories and schemes with its constant flow of needy glad-handing recruits and pompous up lines. My visits to Miami had been like dipping back into childhood. Really, they were priceless. I’m sure that Jim thrived on my admiration, particularly as he had grown older and was mainly chasing success. The girl had changed everything. Yet it would come to me in painful spurts that Jim and I could put it back together again.

  One afternoon we were able to get away from her for a few hours. He and I pulled out of their driveway with its tragic pile of cheap bikes and battered plastic toys leaning against the flaking stucco wall of their bungalow. We were escaping like kids—Let’s get the hell out of here. We drove nearly an hour to the south end of South Beach and pulled up to the Blue Moon, our favorite spot for drinking and sharing daydreams.

  We were both thinking about old times here, the adventures we had plotted. Jim had always ordered Pellegrino to start while I declined and asked for regular ice water. We would watch the yachts powering offshore from Government Cut and indulged in a favorite fantasy about the sixty-foot sport-fishing boat we were going to design and build. He would get rid of his trawler yacht, which was slow and ungainly for fishing. For years it had sat beneath his condo on Brickell Avenue, a prop for his selling more than a real boat. But someday soon he and I would ride the blue swells together on the great bridge of our new boat and travel to unexplored islands. We could taste these thrilling days trolling our baits in virgin waters. More than once, I admitted I would never have the money for such a splendid craft, but Jim insisted that he would put up my share and make me an equal partner because we were buddies. Then we’d have a spirited argument about the configuration of the staterooms and the color scheme. I always picked up the lunch tab while Jim stared out the window, considering the bigger picture.