The Beautiful Dream of Life

by Domingo Zapata

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  To my children, the light of my life: Domingo Jr. and Paul

  The king dreams he is a king,

  And in this delusive way

  Lives and rules with sovereign sway;

  All the cheers that round him ring,

  Born of air, on air take wing.

  And in ashes (mournful fate!)

  Death dissolves his pride and state:

  Who would wish a crown to take,

  Seeing that he must awake

  In the dream beyond death’s gate? . . .

  ’Tis a dream that I in sadness

  Here am bound, the scorn of fate;

  ’Twas a dream that once a state

  I enjoyed of light and gladness.

  What is life? ’Tis but a madness.

  What is life? A thing that seems,

  A mirage that falsely gleams,

  Phantom joy, delusive rest,

  Since is life a dream at best,

  And even dreams themselves are dreams.

  —Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Life Is a Dream, 1635 (Translated by Edward Fitzgerald)

  PROLOGUE

  In dreams, everything is possible.” I heard it in a whisper reminiscent of my mother’s voice, as I lay in that exquisite state between a fractured floating sleep and a sobered reality. I had been out on the town the previous night, tossing back considerable quantities of Scotch as I made the rounds, not an uncommon occurrence for me. In fact, I did it almost every night, if you must know—and I do want you to know. I will tell you the truth; I won’t sugarcoat my wild nights and club-hopping and extracurricular pursuits and “biological exploits” and painful wake-ups.

  “In dreams, everything is possible.”

  My mother had first told me this old saying when I was a small child longing to be an artist. I didn’t understand whether she meant “If you believe in your dreams, anything is possible,” or “In your dreams, everything is possible.”

  As an aspiring artist, I was attracted to the abstract meaning of it, to the infinite possibilities that a dream has to offer—a mental landscape that is limitless in your imagination, where anything can and will happen during deep sleep.

  In reality this was the way I conceived my works of art and the way I became an artist: a dream was like a nocturnal canvas, emanating from my soul and dwelling in the profound recesses of my mind, where, on a nightly basis, I devised and revised it, brushstroked and finessed it, until it was ready to be put to paint and color in the physical world—or not.

  HEARING MY MOTHER’S VOICE in my head took me back to my childhood in Mallorca, where I first learned to paint. My most prized possession at the time was a little red box; I still have it. Back then, the little red box was my personal coin safe: it held my meager wages from summer employment, the fruits of labors including the imperfect washing of cars, uneven lawn mowing, and other hastily performed odd jobs. I was saving my money, for what I can’t remember. Probably to buy something for Luisa with the long black hair. That sounds right. Any beautiful girl—with hair of any length—who I was convinced needed my gifts, sounds right.

  My father suggested that I, Rodrigo Concepción, his precocious and hyperactive child, should open my own savings account at our local bank. Skeptical of anyone handling my hard-earned wages, I of course had questions for him.

  “Will they keep these same dollars for me and not let anyone else touch them? This ten, this twenty, all these ones, and change—will they give this money back to me?”

  When my father explained to me that the bank would not return the very same physical stack of bills and coins, but others totaling the same amount, I became very upset.

  “But I don’t want other dollars. Why won’t they give me back exactly what I give them? That’s not fair. And, Dad?”

  “Yes, Rodrigo?”

  “Will they keep my red box?”

  This was my introduction to one of the ways of the world. But it was also an introduction to the way I saw the world: from a different angle.

  It wasn’t that I was miserly or carrying a torch for societal fairness, it was that I didn’t want to be taken advantage of. In the case of the little red box and its contents, I suspected that someone might be pulling a fast one on me.

  THESE WERE SOME of the splintered thoughts I had on a November morning in Manhattan, when I woke up with yet another metal spike pounding away at my skull, after yet another night on the town. I had been an artist for a long time now, and had achieved some success, even fame, but something intangible was missing from my life, and I had been out in search of more. What I had found so far was more alcohol, more drugs, more women. I guess that made my life, if nothing else, a tad exhilarating, if not shameful as well. But that is for others to decide.

  “In dreams, everything is possible.” Even the beautiful dream of life. Then I had such a dream, and I held on to it for dear life, even while I was on the verge of falling into the abyss.

  And now, as I promised, I will tell you what happened.

  part one

  MY WORLD

  1

  SOHO DAZE

  If you had peered through my window and observed my life, you might not have thought there was much to inspire pity. I lived in a SoHo loft with sixteen-foot-high tin ceilings and a smattering of murals left on the walls from the artists who’d worked and lived there before me. It was a privileged existence; even I can’t deny it.

  “Morning, sir.”

  On that day Alfonso, my butler, was right on time with my survival kit: black coffee, Advil, a joint, and omega-3 fish oil tabs served on a silver tray.

  “Morning, Alfonso. My paper?”

  He withdrew it from beneath his wing and extended it. “Yes, sir. Crispy, as you like it.”

  He maneuvered over to the windows facing Wooster Street and opened the shades on the dark and shadowed room. He left the windows raised slightly, allowing the chill of the morning air to pass through. It was always soothing to feel that first fresh gust of the day sweeping from one end of the loft to the other.

  Alfonso was Italian, with slicked-back hair, a furrowed brow, and a slender yet athletic frame. He had trained to be a butler, and his presence was something of an incongruity with the artist loft apartment. I must say the artist in me appreciated his traditional trappings, even though I was a painter of contemporary urban art. I enjoyed the contrast, juxtaposing the classic with the nouveau. Even Alfonso himself could be considered an installation conceived and positioned in that regard. Prop or hired necessity, the man was competent, dutiful, and well apprised that my bedroom constituted a judgment-free zone.

  As the parting gesture to our morning ritual, Alfonso twisted on my bath, and the brass fixtures shrieked as he adjusted them to the perfect temperature. When he left the bedroom, he was as silent as the cool breeze he had let in. I downed my dose, detached and disassociated myself from all things bed, and plopped with little grace into the tub for the big soak.

  In the bath I would try to reconstruct my dreams from the night before. I had always dreamed extensively every night, but lately I often had a difficult time remembering them. Maybe it was my own mind protecting me from myself, rejecting these unsettling nocturnal visions and surreal, eerie fantasies
. I had had no blow to the head and never suffered from hallucinations or endured any type of psychotic break, but as an artist, when the dreams came, I had to follow them. I felt their presence lurking in my subconscious, haunting me.

  While I lay back and tried to recall these elusive phantasms, Rafaela pitter-patted into the adjacent bedroom. Rafaela was more a friend than an employee, and though she was in her late thirties, you’d never know she was no longer the gorgeous twentysomething Colombian model of yesteryear. Her skin was olive, tight, and smooth, her face refined and sculpted, with mesmerizing blue eyes that were all her own. Her South American beauty lit up the loft. I was attracted to beautiful art, destinations, landscapes, and unforgettable faces, and I confess Rafaela’s belleza had indeed been a factor in her hiring. More important than her beauty, however, was her competence: Rafaela kept my overwhelming daily agenda of appointments and commitments straight for me. The demands on my time were way more than I could have managed on my own.

  She also kept me in line. She was a cherished confidante and semi-pro life coach. I had fame, money, and beautiful women throwing themselves at me like I was some sort of god. But Rafaela didn’t “yes” me; rather, she told it as she saw it, a bottom-line type that I desperately needed to help keep my life on track. And man, was it nice to look at her during her no-nonsense lectures. Any lecture. Any time.

  “Rafaela, amor!” I bellowed in desperate Spanish-American-bullshitter slang.

  She was used to my high-velocity hollow charm and said nothing. Carrying her clipboard, she sidled before me barefoot, wearing yoga pants and a stretch top with nipple pops. She took one look at me in the tub and began to reassemble the ponytail mechanism corralling her thick dirty-blond mane.

  “You look like shit, Rodrigo,” she said through gritted teeth as she clamped the tortoiseshell hair fastener in place.

  “I feel vulnerable,” I spun offhandedly.

  She laughed that one off, as she should have. “And you stink of alcohol. You’re still drunk.”

  “Perhaps. But look at me. I’m here all stripped. And insecure. And unsure. Of myself. And everyone around me.”

  “Bah!” she volleyed.

  “Including you.” I smiled then.

  “You missed your calling. You should have been an actor.”

  “And to further my weakness, I’m naked in front of you.”

  “I prefer to call it sexual harassment. On your part. But I’ll let it slide. Today,” she added.

  “Will you turn on the music, please?”

  She snapped on the bathroom stereo, and a wicked AC/DC number made the house tremble.

  “So, did you get biological last night?” she asked, using my own language against me.

  “You know, Rafaela, you’re like an old wife. The dreaded ball and chain. The one that I don’t get to fuck!”

  “Come on, Rodrigo, you probably fucked the entire city last night.”

  I sighed and lit up the joint that was the most essential part of my survival kit tray. Marijuana was crucial to my existence. I was hasty. I was manic. I had the metabolism of four hummingbirds, and I zoomed along at bottle-rocket speed. The morning treatment of weed helped calm me and keep me in bounds.

  Did I have a problem? Of course. A few. But, I kept telling myself, the main one I suffered from was of the hyperkinetic variety. That was the real challenge: to slow down. Everything else I indulged in was a sedative or numbing agent to counter it.

  This was my mood weather pattern on a daily basis: a bit breezy and abstract in the morning, with a touch of clouds that burned off by the midday sunshine, beholden to and in anticipation of a clear and crisp night that, with any luck, may involve moonlight. Or not.

  I pushed aside any stray thought that might upset this delicate balance and remind me that my current lifestyle could result in situations with a strong potential to make me miserable. Maybe even freak me out.

  “Your suitcase is ready.”

  “For what?”

  “You have a plane to catch.” She eyeballed her clipboard and spun down the volume on the stereo. “Time to get dressed.”

  “Don’t turn it off! That’s the best part!”

  “You don’t have time! Tex is picking you up in twenty minutes!” Rafaela went over the healthy options. “I’ll lay out your vitamins. Did you take your omegas?” She did look out for me, and I loved her caring, maternal side.

  “Yes, amor,” I said sweetly. “You’re coming, aren’t you? Art Basel won’t be the same without you.”

  “Later flight.”

  “Promise?”

  “I always come. You know that. Otherwise who would be there to hold your hand once you landed?”

  “I am an actor, you know. And it’s all an act. I play helpless so you’ll stay close to me.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “So that one day, maybe—”

  “Enough! Get ready!”

  Like a child obeying his mother, I got out of the tub, took my vitamins, and dressed. I was ready to go downstairs and meet Tex.

  2

  THE TECH COWBOY

  In the bright morning sunshine, a diamond-black Rolls-Royce Celestial Phantom pulled up on Wooster Street and hummed down to an idle. Michael, the driver, wore the traditional black-and-white garb of a chauffeur and doubled as Tex’s bodyguard. He got out—all seven feet of him—popped open an umbrella, and opened the rear passenger door. Tex emerged in his white suit, obscene yellow sunglasses, and signature red hair. His father had made big money in the oil business, and Tex used some of the spillover funds right after graduating from Texas Tech to found and cash in on several startup Internet companies and smartphone applications. Given the family money, plus what he’d earned on his own, Tex was worth a good billion dollars at this point, and he was a better-than-an-acquaintance friend of mine, for good reason. Tex had bought a fair number of my pieces over the years and always paid top dollar.

  I’d met him at a SoHo gallery art opening, and this self-anointed “King of Fun” had shown me immediately how he’d earned his nickname. We became partners in crime, going out carousing and chasing girls, enjoying generally debauched excursions together to St. Tropez, St. Barts, Ibiza, and other saturated hot spots. Tex had a Gulfstream V, and he traveled well and heartily, and in that regard he was easy to spend time with.

  For all of his twenty-first-century tech success and modern know-how, however, you could never take the backwoods Texas upbringing out of him. Having never been schooled in the finer things, he shamelessly lacked class, etiquette, and sophistication. He wore tacky clothes and bought tacky toys. This redneck geek was American nouveau riche at its finest—he did everything over the top. Hence the extravagant arrival.

  The fact that I was Rodrigo Concepción, an artist and famous for it, made me attractive to Tex. That was clear. Our friendship had to be based on more than merely pursuing ladies after midnight. The truth was, had there been no commercial element to our union, we probably wouldn’t have been friends. Tex would fly all over the globe in his GV to throw down bids at art fairs and fancy auction houses, party like a rock star on a nightly basis, and brag about it. He was savvy enough to recognize that if he bought art and became a known commodity in the art world, it would give his personal profile a boost in the direction of being perceived as cultured.

  I followed Alfonso and my packed rolling bag out the front door. Tex was there to greet us on the front walk, standing under the umbrella held by Michael. We squeezed each other with a warm locker-room hug.

  “Come on, Tex, it’s beautiful out!” I derided him, nodding at the umbrella. Tex had a strong aversion to the sun and would never let it touch his skin if he could avoid it. “You could use a little sunlight.”

  “I hate the fuckin’ sun.” Tex was also a germophobe and always afraid of getting sick, which I found odd for a Texan. It may have been the most interesting quirk about him.

  “Might be good for you.”

  “Cocaine and pussy are go
od for me. You can have the sun.”

  “Just be careful you don’t get burned . . .”

  “Amen,” he allowed. We piled into the vast rear interior of the Rolls, and our voyage to Teterboro Airport was under way. Tex immediately made us a couple of Scotch and Cokes with spring-break-bartender fervor.

  “You know this was the last car trip John F. Kennedy Jr. ever took,” Tex semi-boasted.

  “How upbeat of you. Cheers to better luck.” We tapped lowballs, and as I sipped on mine, Tex downed his in one haul and poured another.

  He reached for his glowing laptop on the side table and placed it before us, then proceeded to fly through about fifty young fashion-model portfolios, mostly naked shots.

  “They’ll all be in Miami,” he stated. “And check this out—” He flipped to a picture on his iPhone.

  “Another Picasso?”

  “Damn straight, just bought it.”

  “How much?”

  “Thirteen million. What do you think?”

  I hesitated and distilled out the envy that was weighing down my voice. “I think you have one of the best collections money can buy.”

  I wasn’t envious of Picasso or the prices his work commanded. It was that Tex could have three squares a day surrounded by some of the world’s greatest art treasures—and they were just accessories to him. Of course, then I thought of other wealthy collectors I knew. Were they really any different? It is, was, and always has been about show—acquiring and having as many treasures as possible.

  Having presented his new acquisition for maximum-impress effect, Tex fiddled with the overhead command center, and some explosive music from a rock band called 4AM took over in a deafening thumpathon. At eleven in the morning. In the midst of my hangover.

  “Tiësto for breakfast?” I remarked, referring to the Dutch DJ who had promoted the band and made them famous.

  “This is their performance live from Rio, 2012. Does it get any better?”