Will I? Is that our ending?—where I will “go” and what I will “do?” Army Special Forces storm parapets, assigning specially trained Hispanic beauty played by J-Lo to talk Noseworthy down, Lo and Noseworthy fall madly in love, perform gymnastical sex feats alongside chimney on roof before coming down, then retire to Wyoming on her Army Ranger pension, live happily-ever-after, eating nice breakfasts and taking long walks in woods?
Joe Hill notwithstanding, I don’t pay much attention to dreams. Most of them go into the ether pretty quickly on me. But on the day of Lucy’s last summons, I had a dream so convincing, so potent, that I was soaked with sweat when the phone woke me. The ringing sounded like it was miles away, coming from across a lake or something.
Just another dream, yes, but it’s the emotions that are real. And maybe your dreams do get bigger when your life gets small. We can check with the experts later on. But this was a big mind-blowing dream about Steff.
In all the years since she split I have never had so much as a chance encounter with Stefanie Olmsted. For all I know she has been living in Petrograd, grown obese on a steady diet of Pushkin Candy Bars. Yet there she was at the small park on Royal Avenue, a block from our old apartment, pushing a baby carriage over the grass. She wore a watch cap like Lucy’s, except that below it flowed her looser brighter tresses, and as she smiled my heart took a shot of high-calibre adrenaline, the big boost of love.
Then I saw that her smile was general, that it was aimed at the world of strangers. Steff was her exact same irresistible self—she hadn’t changed or aged—yet she did not even recognize me.
“I see you have a baby,” I said, basically waiting for her to realize it was me, her true love Stanley speaking. Which never happened, and which was the most searing rejection, a mortification, for it is one thing to be ditched and another entirely to be expunged. Unarguably I was a toad; I should count myself fortunate not to be stepped on and squished as the pretty lady passed me by.
“I have five more at home,” said Steff absently, counting babies on her fingers to verify the tally, a beautiful drifter content to bathe in the sunshine of the morning. “Or is it six?”
That “mere” dream ran me over like a freight train, it fucking flattened me, and the freight it carried was a hefty dose of despair. My impulse was to go right back to sleep in hopes of resuming the dream, or correcting it. (Fat chance, getting to write and direct your own dreams.) Anyway, the telephone was what saved me; Lucy’s voice sounding across the deep lake of sleep, guiding me back to the narrower world. Synchronicity in a minor key.
And looking at Lucy now, I experienced a vast, retrospective, and almost chokingly sincere gratitude. “I can’t give you an ending yet,” I told her, “but I want you to know how terribly grateful I am to you. I mean that, Lucy.” And while this may have sounded artificial (and faux-Brit, the “terribly grateful”) it was absolutely heartfelt. William or no William, I had to resist a powerful urge to embrace her.
“On the contrary,” she said, resting a hand softly on my arm.
On the contrary? I didn’t get that; what I got was that a hand was not nearly enough. Taking her steady gaze for an invitation, I was about to simply wrap her in the balmacaan and carry her inside like Rhett Fucking Butler, but just at that instant we were startled—as physically startled as crows flushed from a cornfield by hounds—by a sudden flaring-up of song. Or what turned out to be song. A surreal soundtrack.
However they got there, stealing upon us, a band of Christmas carolers had arranged themselves in tight formation on the macadam. A newborn photogenic snow was somehow tumbling onto their sleeves and shoulders as though they had brought it with them, a special effect to go along with the soundtrack. Our distraction—my abstraction—notwithstanding, their approach had been noiseless and altogether unforeseeable in this neighborhood where no one lived, where no children played. Christmas in Tech Hell?
Maybe they had spotted us on the landing and, taking us for the lovers in a balcony scene, set forth to serenade us. Or maybe it was just magic; inexplicable magic.
They sang so beautifully (“through all the dark night shining, the everlasting flight”) that I took hold of Lucy’s hand just to be worthy of their rich harmonies. To be or at least to portray the loving couple they envisioned. We held hands, or I did, and we listened (“how still we see thee lie”) as the delicate mesmerizing snow steadily whitened their orchard of red and green parkas.
Then it seems they were gone, and Lucy was gone, and I found myself coming out of a sort of trance, completely alone. No snow was falling, no snow on the ground. For all I knew hours had passed and Lucy was already back at the waterfront, with William.
Inside the building, in the corridor, the silence and darkness seemed absolute—a cruel and perfect hush, an unbroken blackness—until I remembered to breathe and the unearthly serenade resounded (“the hopes and dreams of all thy schemes”) and a dim light above the fire extinguisher declared itself.
I started moving toward it, simply because I could.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Larry Duberstein
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1222-5
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The Day the Bozarts Died Page 16