The Dreaming Field

by Ron Savage

  “So it’s true.” A voice whispered down the tunnel. “Actually, I hadn’t been sure…until now.” The sound of footsteps: clicking heel and toe, heel and toe, a distant rhythm growing louder, closer. “What a wonderful thought, me going home, and you and the Feebs setting up house here. A millennium is a long time, Benjamin, even in a place that has no time.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Want me to explain why you’ll lose? I mean, we are supposed to give advice, huh? Isn’t advice part of the bullshit?”

  Benjamin peered into the tunnel, watched the dim figure emerge, the hobnail boots, the worn jeans.

  “The Twit-Who-Is has always been too simplistic.” The voice and the footsteps seemed to blend together. “What’s the thing? ‘A selfless act from a selfish man’? Talk about naïve. Un-fucking-believable. Totally out-of-touch, you know? And that business Keeper thought of—proving the opposite to steal your improbable success—the ‘selfish act from a selfless man’ number?—equally juvenile. These guys are stuck so far in the past, we’re gonna need a crowbar to pop their heads out of their asses.”

  Benjamin hated to admit it, but he saw no difference between Simon and Jonathan. Oh, yes, they were different people, different needs and histories: unique personalities, certainly, though no clear cut hero or villain. One man seemed just as capable as the other to do a selfless act. Or a selfish one, for that matter.

  “I’ve been thinking about our little Feebs.” Snatch was standing ten, perhaps a dozen yards away from Benjamin, the shadows of the tunnel hiding him, and his voice brushed the walls, echoing faintly. “Tell me, strictly between us, have they changed? The more you’re with them, I mean.”

  “I suppose…yes.” Why is he staying in there? If we’re going to talk, why doesn’t he show himself?

  “Wouldn’t you say the situation was simpler when we didn’t know them?”

  “Why are you hiding?”

  “Answer the question, please.”

  “Yes, simpler.”

  Laughter now, hushed and thready. “Once—years ago, mid-Sixties, I think—a child had been kidnapped by an incredibly clever man who had done such things before. He enjoyed murdering children in the most unimaginable ways. The parents had gone on television…do you know television?”

  “Of course I know—”

  “Hey, spare me your indignation, okay?”

  “Get to the point.”

  “And don’t rush me.” Silence. Then Benjamin heard a released breath; and, again, Snatch’s voice. “…in my hotel room, I watched them plead for their daughter’s life. They said her name over and over. Marie this; Marie that. Marie liked Frosted Flakes for breakfast. Marie adored peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Marie’s dog Princess really missed her, and would sniff the bed and closet, wondering where Marie was. The pleading went on for a half-hour, I could visualize every detail of the child’s life. Her parents also had pictures and movies: Marie on a black and white pony, wearing her cowgirl hat and leather chaps; Marie blowing out the candles on her fourth birthday; Marie in her Snow White costume on Halloween.”

  “And the situation stopped being simple,” Benjamin said into the dark tunnel.

  “…yes. It wasn’t simple, anymore. They wanted the man who enjoyed killing children to know her. To know who he was going to kill. Always best to kill a Thing. True in war; true in peace. Cut the Child-Thing’s throat. Cut out the Child-Thing’s tongue, and cut the Child-Thing’s vagina. But don’t kill our Marie. Please, don’t kill our Marie on the black and white pony.” The heel-toe click of hobnail boots against the asphalt, sounding against the tunnel walls; and Snatch, talking as he walked: “Time to give the One-Who-Is a TV, Benjamin. Keeper, too. Let the assholes get to know Marie. And the Feeb boys, Simon and Jonathan, can’t forget them. What do you say, Ben? Wanna come with me and steal us a TV?”

  “How can you be so righteous?” Benjamin squinted, trying to see him. Nothing, not even a shape. “You murdered Simon’s friend, his parents.”

  “—Yes…I did.”

  The whisper came from behind Benjamin. He turned, facing the empty street that lead into the city. “Where…where are you?”

  “I killed Jonathan’s father, too—or at least did the set-up—and dear, pretty Wendy. I never claim to be untainted. But I’m still playing by the rules. And the rule is, don’t do the task for them. I’m merely clearing the way, shaping the environment; making my advice more…meaningful.”

  Benjamin scanned the vacant dark street. “You will stop this killing.”

  “You came here to tell me this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that Simon isn’t selfish? What an archaic term—selfish. If I had his bitch of a mother humpin’ my goddamn gonads for eighteen years, I wouldn’t trust shit, either. And Jonathan with his need to please. Somehow, the Twit-Who-Is has confused hunger and sainthood.”

  “Will you stop the killing?”

  Snatch appeared in the road, maybe fifteen feet from Benjamin, a Lucky stuck in the corner of his mouth. “Why don’t we discuss it. C’mon, friend, we’ll take a walk in the park; talk about old times.” He held out his hand, the fingers pale and long. “Let me give you the fifty cent tour.”

  “I’m asking you a question.”

  “And I’m saying, we’ll discuss it. Or are you afraid of my cozy little town? Is that it, Benjamin? You afraid?”

  A rare feeling but present: fear, numbing the legs, constricting his throat. The only other time Benjamin remembered fear seizing him this way was on his first meeting with the flock, when everyone fell to their knees. Had they been crippled by the sight of him? A concern for them, mostly. This fear wasn’t so noble. Being afraid for his own safety brought another heavy dose of shame, something close to loathing.

  Benjamin stepped out of the tunnel and immediately collapsed.

  I can’t breathe.

  …help me.

  Snatch squatted next to him, the Lucky dangling in his mouth, right eye squinting from intrusive curling smoke.

  “Having trouble, Benny?”

  “Please…help me.”

  “Your friend Simon can waltz around this place like it was goddamn Roseland. You know Roseland? Probably not.” Snatch inhaled, then blew a steady line of smoke into Benjamin’s face. “The boy’s not all sweetness and light. See, that’s your problem—you’re too fuckin’ good for your own good. How you gonna survive here, Benny? Gonna hold your breath for the entire millennium?”

  Benjamin began to cough. The spasm shook his body. He gasped as a heavy, dark pain swept into him.

  And he screamed.

  “Well, well, how sensitive we are to the suffering of…what?…the flock?” Snatch tossed the cigarette away, brushing Benjamin’s hair from his face. “That’s it, isn’t it? You feel them.”

  “Yes. All the time.”

  “And hear them? Can you do that?”

  “Yes, that, too.”

  “Know what I do when I hear them? When they’re begging? I tell the assholes they’ve got the wrong fuckin’ guy. I say, ‘Hey, you’ve obviously mistaken me for somebody who gives a shit.’ Learned it from the Feebs. Pretty good, huh?”

  Benjamin spasmed, again. “I’ll let them know…you’ve been killing…whoever I need to tell.”

  “Try not to be tedious.” Snatch sat down on the blacktop. He took a metal comb from the pocket of his jacket and smoothed back his Elvis hair. “There are three ways to live here. You can be like the Feebs, all that begging and pleading and shit. Or you can be like you and take on their pain. Or—and this is the better choice—you can be like me, a bit…hum…callous. See, basically, I’m a good guy, but I’ve been living in a bad neighborhood.”

  “I’ll tell…them.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell…about the…killing.”

  Snatch gently stroked Benjamin’s cheek. Then he leaned in and whispered, “You’ve obviously mistaken me for somebody who gives a shit.”


  NINE

  1997

  Philadelphia

  I

  An early afternoon sun flooded Simon’s studio, sun through the large skylight and windows, shimmering white walls, the paint speckled, dark oak floor; the room, long and narrow. He was sitting on a stool, gazing at the picture of Dora that covered most of the back wall, not a portrait but a scene, that theater in Media, Pennsylvania.

  Dora had posed for the painting, the Dora he’d met at the Walnut Street Gallery the night Benjamin displayed his…

  …wings…

  …my God, his wings.

  The last time Simon saw him, four years ago now: there in the dimness of the gallery, the two of them alone; and Benjamin saying,

  Where is your faith?

  You need encouragement.

  The cloak unhooked, wings fanning out and up the length of him, luminous membranes amid a few bright ceiling lamps, the uncompromising radiance flowering, consuming all such lighting, consuming even his consciousness: yes, well, encouragement was one thing; that stuff was something else, entirely.

  Faith for what, Benjamin?

  You’re like a scared lover.

  A flashy evening…

  …and you’re gone.

  No spending the night, no note, no nothing. Do I wait by the phone and curse you for your indifference? Do I go on with my life, swearing we never did Show-But-Not-Tell?

  Do I pretend I’m still a virgin?

  Give me a hint.

  ‘Encouragement’ for WHAT?

  Just explain my part in your madness; fill in the blank: “I’ve let you see my wings because_____________.” Or, “Simon, ole sport, I’ve been driving you bat-shit for twenty years because_____________.”

  None of that had occurred, of course.

  And if he wasn’t obsessing about Benjamin, it was Dora. He hadn’t seen her, either. Three years and six months. She’d posed for him, two days shy of a year, their relationship starting when she walked through the front door, yet at the picture’s completion, Dora simply vanished from his life. Like he had Black Death or something.

  What’s WITH everybody?

  Now his agent wanted to sell the painting. Simon had become retentive. He’d shown it, even lent it out along with several other pieces for a retrospection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art—summer ‘95— but to sell the painting? No, that he couldn’t do. Wouldn’t do it. Nathan Katz had done everything except get down on his knees; the last offer, a hundred and seventy-five thousand. Simon didn’t need the money. What he needed was Dora, and he’d thought about her constantly since she had left.

  From their first meeting at the Walnut Street Gallery, Dora not only became the center of his life, she had changed him. Simon sold his parents’ home, moved to a townhouse on Locust Street in Center City near Rittenhouse Square, an old and thoroughly expensive area. Dora didn’t just redecorate, she renovated. The place crawled with carpenters and drywallers for months, steaming off wallpaper, breaking partitions, re-plastering, on and on. And in her spare time, she renovated him, too. Simon returned to physical therapy, gaining partial use of his bum right leg, enough to lose the cane but not the limp. She did more, though. Or their love did it. Dora had untangled Simon from his isolation. He compared this awakening to Frankenstein’s monster, feeling that burst of electricity shooting through his brain, his chest, his cock. The subject of whether or not the monster had a cock was heatedly discussed by both parties. Dora’s point being, why have the Bride of Frankenstein if the guy didn’t have one? Simon disagreed; saying, the intricacies of such surgery during that time wouldn’t have been available. On the positive side, had the procedure been available, the monster could have picked his own. Simon certainly had one, and he’d done more fucking in that year than he had done in his entire life. They fucked everywhere: hallways, the kitchen, closets, the bathrooms, on stacked drywall. Once he painted a red bull’s eye around her pussy with acrylics.

  Dora.

  Jesus, I miss you.

  Clouds slipped beneath the sun. The windows and skylight filled with long golden beams between cracks of gray. Simon studied the canvas on the back wall, the images: Dora, wearing her white nightgown, a breeze fluttering the material and those dark ringlets. She hovered just above the stage, arms outstretched, Virgil’s sprawled corpse beside her on the floor. Over twenty years ago now, and Simon still remembered the details.

  His own Dora wanted to know whose body was attached to her face. Is that what you like? Voluptuous women? He had taken her in his arms, and they made love on the wood floor; Simon whispering, “…no, I love you. Haven’t you guessed that?”

  She hadn’t, though—never sure of his love—or so he thought. Many nights he awoke to find himself alone in the bed, and he’d wander into the studio and there she would be, sitting on the floor in his T-shirt, staring at the half-finished canvas, seemingly in a trance.

  “Dora?…hey…Dora?”

  But on those nights, with the moon glittering about her, the room all silver and shadows, on those nights, Dora didn’t answer. He helped her up; she, burying her head in the corner of his shoulder. With two fingers to her chin, he slowly lifted that lovely face and saw the tears.

  Why?

  Why are you sad?

  Why are you doing this?

  She had no idea.

  The day Simon completed Dark Theater, the name she had given the painting, Dora seemed happier than he’d seen her in awhile, preparing dinner for them—a celebration, she declared, the studio replete with candles, the ceiling and walls alive in yellow wavering light. A night of champagne, cold chicken and chocolate strawberries. They made love, a bed this time, the sex fierce, maybe desperate, all teeth and nails and cries. Dora on top of him, sweat slick on her body, the bony hips, the small breasts; Simon, tasting salt, his lips and tongue to her neck, arms, nipples: time had stepped away, that’s how he remembered it, time had folded into itself and left them to feed on one another.

  Later, his eyes blinked open—4:36 by the digital clock on the nightstand—and he was alone again. Dora hadn’t been in the studio. He’d raced from room to room, his right leg flaring pain to his toes, calling her name, feeling a deep panic swelling inside him.

  Then Simon stopped.

  There in the downstairs hall, he felt the panic shift to something heavy and foreboding, a sense that weighted the very center of him. He returned to the studio, standing at the doorway, looking beyond the square of silver moonglow from the skylight, looking to the rear wall and his canvas. Simon walked slowly toward it, attention never leaving the image of Dora. And he knew what had happened; knew it intuitively, completely. How could anyone in his or her right mind sell that picture?

  II

  Clouds had dissipated, the afternoon sun shockingly bright in the studio. Simon, still sitting on the wood stool and watching the painting, as if expecting the woman in the white nightgown to leap out. He, recalling everything, saw the events play before him, the first day Dora appeared on his front porch.

  “You…you probably don’t remember me,” she said.

  “Why wouldn’t I remember?”

  She seemed nervous, arms crossed protectively to her chest; and wearing black, of course, black turtleneck, black jeans, the short dark hair and angular body, more boyish than female. And that face. God, what an incredible face. Oh, he remembered, alright. You didn’t forget her face, not if you were breathing and conscious.

  “I-I thought I’d come over,” she said, staring down, staring off to the side, staring at anything but him. “The phone’s so, you know, impersonal and all. And I didn’t have much to do today…and I—”

  Simon interrupted. “Please. Come in.” He opened the screen door. “…Come in, it’s okay.”

  She glided past him, head tilted away, checking out the living room, quick little glances, maybe judging her safety by the furniture. Dora’s thoughts flew into Simon’s mind all jumbled, pieces of sentences: Christ, what am I doing…nice chair, comfy…he m
ust think I’m a…Ohhh, I love the lamp…blah blah blah, a protective buzz.

  “Listen,” she said, finally looking at him, a brief glance and back to the furniture. “I won’t pose, you know, nude. I mean, my body isn’t exactly great to begin with, and…” as Dora fumbled through her words, he wondered what she’d do if he walked over and kissed her. “…and I’m too pale, actually. I’ve been wanting to go to one of those tanning things, but you…”

  And that’s what he did.

  With his cane in one hand and his arm about her waist, Simon drew Dora to him, though he didn’t have to do much; she, going most of the way by herself, arms wrapping around his neck, tongue in his mouth, her lips hot and dry. Simon felt the room slipping from under him.

  The cane dropped.

  Then they dropped, Dora rolling on top, unzipping his fly, pulling out his already hard cock; and whispering, breathy, “…I…I…have to do this…” stroking him while shaking her loafers to the floor, the other hand tugging down her jeans and, yes, black panties; still whispering, “God, I’m sorry, Simon. I really am…” stroking his cock so vigorously he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from coming; and she, saying: “…put the goddamn thing in me, please.”

  He did that, too. Grabbed her small ass; felt the bones of her hips; buried himself inside of her. He couldn’t recall a whole lot afterward, what she’d said, whether Dora had pulled off her turtleneck or left it on. He remembered a whimpering noise, her squeals, and the teeth in his neck and the tiny drop of blood on his lower lip. The thought of her being a vampire crossed his mind, but he had also done his share of biting.