Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 24

by Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant, Jedediah Berry

  She knew you weren't supposed to want a script for real life. She felt ashamed, needy, and much stupider than everyone else.

  But the degree of resentment wakened in her chest, somewhere behind her ribcage, and reminded her that it wasn't her fault. She was better than other people: talented, unique. Not everyone had a scar like hers, so unmistakable that you couldn't help but notice. She got mentioned in the reviews for every show she was in. “Maybe that was the scar. ‘Cause I have it and they don't.” She took a deep breath. She felt better.

  "I'm not going to be here forever,” she promised the mirror. “I'm going to be famous and—and I'm going to understand things. ‘Cause I have it and they don't."

  * * * *

  VIII.

  Once upon a time a man with a scar across his face was walking down the cracking, shuddering sidewalk when he saw a woman with a scar across her face. Hey, he thought, someone with a story like mine.

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  The Broken Dream Factory by Dennis Danvers

  The Broken Dream Factory was shut down. This was not entirely unexpected. I'd worked here twenty? Twenty-five? Twenty-seven years, and not a day went by I didn't think, this could be my last.

  That's what I liked about it—the uncertainty, the danger even—but now this, to be shut down like some common biscuit factory because of depressed profits, labor unrest, unfair foreign competition—whatever mundane drivel it turned out to be—didn't seem right. What about a comet smacking into it? A crazed, broken-hearted psycho gunning everyone down because he couldn't take it anymore? An implosion of despair so intense that the whole place was sucked into the howling abyss? Or all of us who worked here these many years, just slipping out one night under a full moon and driving away in dark cars quieter than the cicadas? Not this. Not a sign on the door:

  GOING OUT OF BUSINESS

  Many thanks to our loyal customers and employees.

  We will miss you.

  —The mgmt

  Mgmt? What mgmt? I never saw anybody around here answering to that description unless that stands for mean, grim, mealy-mouthed toadies. Many thanks? Twenty-seven years of heartache, and you get many thanks? At least they could have nailed the sign up, shown some sense of history and drama, but no, it was taped. A couple of raggedy-ass strips of duct tape held it in place. A good rain, and the mgmt would be washed away.

  I lit up a smoke. We couldn't smoke outside, that was the rule, had to light up indoors in the bar, or in the bathroom laying out your rig, trying not to look in the mirror, into the cameras, into yourself. Smoking helps externalize things. Put your pain into the puff, they used to tell us. Those days were over now. No pain to puff, so they told me. A new world.

  It'd been awhile since I'd seen it by the light of day. It was okay. It smelled like exhaust, but it was nice to be in the sunlight for a change. A day off. Who couldn't use a day off? I should enjoy it, I told myself.

  * * * *

  I tried. I really did. I walked around town, but everywhere I went it was all the same. What's happened to everyone? I kept asking myself. It was like a zombie movie with smiley faces, only now the zombies drove and their children were driven, from parking lot to parking lot, then plod, plod, plod, inside, then out again. Doesn't anybody here miss their broken dreams? Don't they feel an emptiness inside now that the ache is gone? What will they sort through on long, lonely nights if not the bitter shards of what was not to be? I followed them through automatic doors, pulled along by market forces. I tossed my cigarette into the current and watched it float away upstream.

  I walked up to a clerk clad in a polyester tunic, a solid bright color like a plastic toy. Would it hurt if they could wear old tweed jackets or knitted cardigans, something with some character, some life, some sense of loss, of life's unraveling? He wore a saucer-size button on his chest that read Ask Me! “Where are your broken dreams?” I asked.

  "We don't carry those anymore."

  "Why not?"

  "People don't want ‘em."

  "I beg to differ."

  "Sorry. We have a no begging policy. We take cash, credit cards, checks, money orders, easy terms, and hard labor. No shop-lifting, no begging."

  "Do you know anyone who does carry them?"

  He didn't even pretend to stop to think. “No. Why would I know such a thing? I work here. We have American Dreams on special, aisle W. You'll be much happier with one of those."

  "Maybe I don't want to be happy."

  "Then I can't help you, sir. We're all about happiness here."

  "You can't be happy all the time."

  "We have something for every minute of the day, 24/7, 365 days a year."

  He talked about time as if he knew what it was. He thought it was all about numbers and motion, like lions are about whips and chairs. He didn't have a clue. He was happy all the time. “What about when there are no more years? No 24/7? No 365? The whole universe is one big broken dream. When the sun goes supernova, are you going to be happy then?"

  He shrugged. “I'll be dead."

  "Perhaps you already are and just haven't noticed. But what about when you are dead? Happy then?"

  "Of course. I'll be in heaven. That's on aisle W too, at our guaranteed lowest price on the planet. Is there anything else I can help you find?"

  On the planet. And what planet would that be? I wondered. “No. I'm pretty sure not.” He had to be wrong. Surely not everyone was like this heaven-peddling idiot. Otherwise, I thought, it will only be a matter of time before I'm just like him. Most things, I learned in my years at the Broken Dream Factory, are a matter of time.

  * * * *

  I approached a young couple, their cart piled high with dreams. Fresh dreams, frozen dreams, some-assembly-required dreams, do-it-yourself dream kits, sweet dreams, 100% all natural organic dreams. No broken dreams of any kind.

  "I couldn't help noticing you're not getting any broken dreams. Would you like to?"

  The husband said, “They don't carry them anymore. We did get an American Dream. It's the big one on the bottom there. Does that count?” He thought it was a contest. He thought I'd give him a prize if he had the right dream in his shopping cart.

  "The American Dream's more like an evolving concept, isn't it?” the wife said. “You mean good old-fashioned broken dreams like old people talk about, right? Failed love, scorned art, shattered idealism—stuff like that."

  "Right."

  "They don't carry them anymore."

  "But if they did, would you want some? Do you wish they carried them? Do you miss them?” But I knew the answer before I asked.

  They traded a look to double-check they could speak with one voice as usual. “No way,” the husband said. “We've got it too good. Look at all this.” He pointed to the cart. Right on top was a collection of authentic replicas of dreams once entertained by exiled princes, now restored to their original opulence. Beside it was a six-pack of visionary dreams—each a unique, fully-imagined future guaranteed to evoke a sense of wonder.

  Makes you wonder. If the future was that easy, how come we keep screwing it up?

  "You might like some of the stuff they've got in mystic visions,” the wife suggested. “My sister's into those. Snakes eating themselves, wheels of fire, many-headed beasts. Great stuff. But dark, you know? Real dark. That's why I thought you might like it.” She smiled at my darkness.

  "Please. I don't want to buy anything. I'm trying to understand what's happened to my life—this world I live in but don't belong in anymore. I worked at the Broken Dream Factory for twenty-seven years, and they closed it down today, taped a sign on the door."

  She nodded, her smile growing thin. “Well, good luck with that."

  I wondered what it would take to break her dreams, immediately scolding myself for that uncharitable thought. We didn't work that way—pressing our wares on the unwary. Each broken dream was fully adjustable for any imaginable misery the customer might desire, but the choice was theirs. “Thanks,” I
said. “Enjoy your dreams."

  * * * *

  Outside the sun seemed too bright. I squinted in the blaze trying to decide what to do. A young man drunk on certainty offered me the dreams of Jesus, and I respectfully declined. He wanted to give me an argument like they do: Broken dreams?—if it's broken dreams you want, you can't do any better than the Lord's story: The wilderness, the temptations, the rigged trial, the torture and death—one heartbreak after another. But it doesn't stay broken, does it? Three days later, and he's not only alive again, he's at the right hand of God. What kind of mortality is that? He feels man's sufferings? I think not. He has to know how it ends before it even begins, right? A little pain, eternal paradise. Where's the suffering? This is not a broken dream. Was Lazarus a happy man when he died the second time? I doubt it. He'd understand what I'm talking about. I finally drove the believer away with my doubts. It wasn't really fair. He was an amateur, and I was a pro. At least I used to be. Now I was just unemployed.

  He promised to pray for me as he fled. “You better!” I shouted after him, “God is listening! He'll hold you to it!” But I don't think he heard me. People are always saying, “I'll pray for you.” I don't think they follow through, do you? It was early yet. Do you think that guy remembered every poor unfortunate soul he was going to pray for that day? Not me. He probably forgot like the rest of us. I'd pray for him if I believed in that sort of thing.

  I cut across the park through a lane of evergreens. The needles made a carpet that soothed my tread. I had to calm down. I could feel myself spiraling out of control. You might think somebody who worked making broken dreams would be out of control all the time, but that wasn't true when I was working. I won't say I didn't bring my work home sometimes, but there was a calm after a hard day at work that I looked forward to, a sense of accomplishment, bittersweet, of course. What am I going to do without that? I asked myself. I'll have to learn not to do the thing I love. There, I'd said it. I loved making broken dreams. This was a revelation even to me. Enlightenment seemed to shimmer in the air before me. I was about to step into this cloud of knowing, perhaps to finally understand myself...

  When out of nowhere, a pack of pounding runners rushed round me talking scores and wagers and a sudden death overtime concluded with some heroics narrated out of my hearing, beyond my interest. They think they've tamed time, I mused, even sudden death overtime, because they've won a wager. The gazelles think they're lions. Well, as the woman told me, good luck with that. Fools or not, the wisps of my enlightenment scattered in their wake. So what if I loved making broken dreams? The broken dreams didn't love me in return. Not enough anyway, or else this wouldn't be happening.

  * * * *

  I bought a bottle of undying hope at the corner store and went home, sat in the kitchen and drained it dry, sat hopeless in the dark until Jane came home. “What're you doing sitting in the dark?” she asked me, turning on the lights, unloading a bag of groceries bigger than our refrigerator. What are we going to do with all that stuff? I thought. If we eat it all, we'll be too big to leave the house. There was enough meat there that if you put it all together, you could've make a pretty good-size dog. I imagined having a dog around the place to play with. I like dogs. I imagined him running out into the street, the horrible squealing sound of brakes.

  "The factory closed today,” I told her.

  "Good,” she said. “Now maybe you can get a job you like, something that makes you happy instead of miserable all the time."

  "What're you talking about? A job doesn't make you happy. If you like it, it's not a job, is it? And if it's your vocation, your passion, it's never enough, so life itself is a longing unto death.” Maybe I'd had my enlightenment after all, and now I was revealing it to Jane.

  "Whatever. Do you want to go out? There's a new Italian/Ethiopian fusion place. You eat lasagna with your hands. They have terrific breadsticks."

  "No thanks. Do you remember the time—"

  She slammed a ham on the counter with a silencing smack, rattling every utensil in its hook, making the salt shaker jump and fall over, roll a quarter turn and stop. “No. Don't even start. I don't want to talk about broken dreams anymore. Not ever again. You're the only one who cares. You're the only one who's ever cared."

  "That's not true."

  "Face it, Stran. The world has changed. Nobody uses typewriters. Nobody believes in ghosts. Nobody wants broken dreams."

  "Cherishes. You don't just want a broken dream. You cherish it."

  "Screw it, I don't care. Where do you think you are? Living out on the moors? Manning the barricades? Sailing to Byzantium? Colonizing the stars? People have had it with broken dreams. More to the point, Stran. I've had it with broken dreams."

  "You can't mean that."

  "I can, and I do."

  "But don't you remember the night you said—"

  "I told you not to start.” She turned, walked down the hall into the bedroom, and closed the door behind her, leaving me alone in the hall with the memory of the night she said forever, but never meant it now.

  * * * *

  It's my house, I thought, but I can't stay here anymore. You devote your life to shattering idealism only to find out the one person you thought believed in you never really did. It was fitting I guess, to discover this now, now that there weren't any broken dreams anymore, just ashes in your mouth, a sick, embarrassed feeling in your gut. Sorry about my life, everyone, I was just being stupid.

  I didn't want to drink any more, not there anyway, in my own kitchen, so I sat for a long time thinking of somewhere to go like some pitiful character in a literary novel from the 60's remembering broken dreams, until he rises, seizes the broom and sweeps out his kitchen! Not me, I decided. Let Jane sweep the kitchen or not. She can have the existential moment and the dishes. I'm leaving.

  So I left. I didn't even pack. Who packs at a time like that? What would you take?

  I stopped at an obscure tavern with lots of neon and drank a cognac, an absinthe, a punch of crushed lotus, and a shot of mescal with the worm. Then I took the crosstown express to the moors. They were windswept. Wild. Haunted.

  The ghosts scarcely noticed me. I used to flirt with madness when I worked the night shift just starting out, so I knew a thing or two about getting an apparition's attention, but these proved elusive. Finally, I got right in the face of a beautiful wraith and said loudly, “Who are you haunting?"

  "What?” She was listening to ghostly music, loud. She talked too loud as people do listening to their own soundtrack. The music leaked from her diaphanous earbuds like nails being pried from boards by a tinny tornado.

  "Who are you haunting?” I shouted.

  "Nobody haunts anymore. Leave me alone."

  "If you're not haunting anyone, why don't you pass over to the other side?"

  "I doubt they have anything over there we don't have over here twice as good."

  "But you're dead. You don't belong here."

  "You could've fooled me.” She swept her ghostly arm across the landscape. The moors were criss-crossed with roads like whip lashes. Big houses like enormous tombstones lined the road. Dead people lived inside with their cars. Their mothers lived over the garage. Their mastiffs were the size of housecats. Heathcliff was a housecat. Cathy was fat. The moors were no more.

  Jane was right. The world was a plain plane. But I couldn't just give up. The world needed broken dreams now more than ever. Warped visions, pointed remarks, twisted individuals.

  * * * *

  Maybe Wanda? She was my only hope. She'd told me she never wanted to see me again, but I figured if she heard they shut down the factory, maybe she'd relent. We worked on heartaches together for ten years until we started taking our work home, calling each other up at four in the morning, listening to “Missing You” on auto-repeat through a whole shift. She wanted me to leave Jane. I said I couldn't because she'd been there for me when I needed her most, had believed in me, or so I thought. Wanda had herself reassigned to mortality
. They always needed people there. I transferred to despair. Almost ruined my liver.

  I called her. I'd purged the number from my phone, but I still had it in my own tortured memory. I used to recite it to myself, a mantra of temptation.

  "Hi Wanda."

  "Stran Fellowes. Why are you calling me?"

  "Have you heard?"

  "Of course I've heard. That doesn't explain why you're calling me."

  "We're the only two who care."

  "How do you know I care?"

  "I just know."

  There was a long silence. In the distance I could hear a dog barking. I wasn't sure whether it was here or there, her distance or mine. “So I care. So what?"

  "We've got to stop it."

  "What're you talking about?"

  "We've got to break into the Broken Dream Factory and start it up again. I can't do it by myself. I need you."

  "What about Jane?” She said it with a sneer, still angry, still hurt, still rehearsing it on lonely nights like it was yesterday. She cared all right.

  "I've left her. You were right. She doesn't understand me."

  "She's never understood you. Why leave her now?"

  I knew it was true; there was no point denying it. “I had my broken dreams before. Now that they're gone, knowing she doesn't care ... I just can't do it anymore."

  A train whistle blew, drowning out the dog. Again I couldn't tell if it was my end or hers. Mine, I thought.

  "Okay,” she said. “I'll meet you there. Are you going to break my heart again?"

  "Probably."

  Her laughter was like ashes. “I guess nothing's certain, huh?"

  "I still love you."

  "I know. Me too. Save it for tonight. Sundown?"

  "Sundown."

  I hung up, and dog and train fell silent. They were at her end, her place, Cheap Motel next door to the Galaxy Drive-In. We used to make love in her bed with the curtains open watching The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. The memory filled me with hope, waiting to be crushed like plump grapes.