The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

  "Hold off on that," I says. "Joe wants to see him alone. Give him a little one-to-one congratulations, I guess. Kid, don't wait around. Just--" Just scat was how I meant to finish, but I didn't have to. Blakely or Katsanis, he was already gone.

  You know what happened after that.

  If the kid had gone straight down the hall to the umpire's room, he would have gotten collared, because the locker room was on the way. Instead, he cut through our box room, where luggage was stored and where we also had a couple of massage tables and a whirlpool bath. We'll never know for sure why he did that, but I think the kid knew something was wrong. Hell, he must have known the roof was going to fall in on him eventually; if he was crazy, it was like a fox. In any case, he came out on the far side of the locker room, walked down to the ump's room, and knocked on the door. By then the rig he probably learned how to make in The Ottershaw Christian Home was back on his second finger. One of the older boys probably showed him how, that's what I think. Kid, if you want to stop getting beaten up all the time, make yourself one of these.

  He never put it back in his locker after all, just tucked it into his pocket. And he didn't bother with the Band-Aid after the game, which tells me he knew he didn't have anything to hide anymore.

  He raps on the umpire's door and says, "Urgent telegram for Mr. Hi Wenders." Crazy like a fox, see? I don't know what would have happened if one of the other umps on the crew had opened up, but it was Wenders himself, and I'm betting his life was over even before he realized it wasn't a Western Union delivery boy standing there.

  It was a razor blade, see? Or a piece of one. When it wasn't needed, it stayed inside a little tin band like a kid's pretend finger-ring. Only when he balled his right fist and pushed on the band with the ball of his thumb, that little sliver of blade slid out. Wenders opened the door and Katsanis swept it across his neck and cut his throat with it. When I saw the puddle of blood after he was taken away in handcuffs--oh my God, such a pool of it there was--all I could think of was those forty thousand people screaming KILL THE UMP the same way they'd been screaming Bloh-KADE. No one really means it, but the kid didn't know that, either. Especially not after The Doo poured a lot of poison in his ears about how Wenders was out to get both of them.

  When the cops ran out of the locker room, Billy Blockade was just standing there with blood all down the front of his white home uniform and Wenders lying at his feet. Nor did he try to fight or slash when the bluesuits grabbed him. No, he just stood there whispering to himself. "I got him, Doo. Billy got him. He won't make no more bad calls now."

  *

  That's where the story ends, Mr. King--the part of it I know, at least. As far as the Titans go, you could look it up, as ol' Casey used to say: all those games canceled out, and all the doubleheaders we played to make them up. How we ended up with old Hubie Rattner squatting behind the plate after all, and how he batted .185--well below what they now call the Mendoza Line. How Danny Dusen was diagnosed with something called "an intercranial bleed" and had to sit out the rest of the season. How he tried to come back in 1958--that was sad. Five outings. In three of them he couldn't get the ball over the plate. In the other two . . . do you remember the last Red Sox-Yankees playoff game in 2004? How Kevin Brown started for the Yankees, and the Sox scored six goddam runs off him in the first two innings? That's how Danny Doo pitched in '58 when he actually managed to get the ball over the dish. He had nothing. And still, after all that, we managed to finish ahead of the Senators and the Athletics. Only Jersey Joe DiPunno had a heart attack during the World Series that year. Might have been the same day the Russians put the Sputnik up. They took him out of County Stadium on a stretcher. He lived another five years, but he was a shadow of his former self and of course he never managed again.

  He said the kid sucked luck, and he was more right than he knew. Mr. King, that kid was a black hole for luck.

  For himself, as well. I'm sure you know how his story ended--how he was taken to Essex County Jail and held there for extradition. How he swallowed a bar of soap and choked to death on it. I can't think of a worse way to go. That was a nightmare season, no doubt, and still, telling you about it brought back some good memories. Mostly, I think, of how Old Swampy would flush orange when all those fans raised their signs: ROAD CLOSED BY ORDER OF BLOCKADE BILLY. Yep, I bet the fellow who thought those up made a goddam mint. But you know, the people who bought them got fair value. When they stood up with them held over their heads, they were part of something bigger than themselves. That can be a bad thing--just think of all the people who turned out to see Hitler at his rallies--but this was a good thing. Baseball is a good thing. Always was, always will be.

  Bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE.

  Still gives me a chill to think of it. Still echoes in my head. That kid was the real thing, crazy or not, luck-sucker or not.

  Mr. King, I think I'm all talked out. Do you have enough? Good. I'm glad. You come back anytime you want, but not on Wednesday afternoon; that's when they have their goddam Virtual Bowling, and you can't hear yourself think. Come on Saturday, why don't you? There's a bunch of us always watches the Game of the Week. We're allowed a couple of beers, and we root like mad bastards. It ain't like the old days, but it ain't bad.

  For Flip Thompson, friend and high school catcher

  Some stand-in for me in one of the early novels--I think it was Ben Mears in 'Salem's Lot--says it's a bad idea to talk about a story you're planning to write. "It's like pissing it out on the ground" is how he puts it. Sometimes, though, especially if I'm feeling enthusiastic, I find it hard to take my own advice. That was the case with "Mister Yummy."

  When I sketched out the rough idea of it to a friend, he listened carefully and then shook his head. "I don't think you've got anything new to say about AIDS, Steve." He paused and added, "Especially as a straight man."

  No. And no. And especially: no.

  I hate the assumption that you can't write about something because you haven't experienced it, and not just because it assumes a limit on the human imagination, which is basically limitless. It also suggests that some leaps of identification are impossible. I refuse to accept that, because it leads to the conclusion that real change is beyond us, and so is empathy. The idea is false on the evidence. Like shit, change happens. If the British and Irish can make peace, you gotta believe there's a chance that someday the Jews and Palestinians will work things out. Change only occurs as a result of hard work, I think we'd all agree on that, but hard work isn't enough. It also requires a strenuous leap of the imagination: what is it really like to be in the other guy or gal's shoes?

  And hey, I never wanted to write a story about AIDS or being gay, anyhow--those things were only the framing device. What I wanted to write about was the brute power of the human sex drive. That power, it seems to me, holds sway over those of every orientation, especially when young. At some point--on the right or wrong night, in a good place or a bad one--desire rises up and will not be denied. Caution is swept away. Cogent thought ceases. Risk no longer matters.

  That's what I wanted to write about.

  Mister Yummy

  I

  Dave Calhoun was helping Olga Glukhov construct the Eiffel Tower. They had been at it for six mornings now, six early mornings, in the common room of the Lakeview Assisted Living Center. They were hardly alone in there; old people rise early. The giant flatscreen on the far side started blatting the usual rabble-rousing junk from Fox News at five thirty, and a number of residents were watching it with their mouths agape.

  "Ah," Olga said. "Here's one I've been looking for." She tapped a piece of girder into place halfway down Gustave Eiffel's masterpiece, created--according to the back of the box--from junk metal.

  Dave heard the tap of a cane approaching from behind him, and greeted the newcomer without turning his head. "Good morning, Ollie. You're up early." As a young man, Dave wouldn't have believed you could ID someone simply by the sound of his cane, but as a young man he had never
dreamed he would finish his time on earth in a place where so many people used them.

  "Good morning right back at you," Ollie Franklin said. "And to you, Olga."

  She looked up briefly, then back down at the puzzle--a thousand pieces, according to the box, and most now where they belonged. "These girders are a bugger. I see them floating in front of me every time I close my eyes. I believe I'll go for a smoke and wake up my lungs."

  Smoking was supposedly verboten in Lakeview, but Olga and a few other diehards were allowed to slip through the kitchen to the loading dock, where there was a butt can. She rose, tottered, cursed in either Russian or Polish, caught her balance, and shuffled away. Then she stopped and looked back at Dave, eyebrows drawn together. "Leave some for me, Bob. Do you promise?"

  He raised his hand, palm out. "So help me God."

  Satisfied, she shuffled on, digging in the pocket of her shapeless day dress for her butts and her Bic.

  Ollie raised his own eyebrows. "Since when are you Bob?"

  "He was her husband. You remember. Came here with her, died two years ago."

  "Ah. Right. And now she's losing it. That's too bad."

  Dave shrugged. "She'll be ninety in the fall, if she makes it. She's entitled to a few slipped cogs. And look at this." He gestured at the puzzle, which filled an entire card table. "She did most of it herself. I'm just her assistant."

  Ollie, who had been a graphic designer in what he called his real life, looked at the nearly completed puzzle gloomily. "La Tour Eiffel. Did you know there was an artists' protest when it was under construction?"

  "No, but I'm not surprised. The French."

  "The novelist Leon Bloy called it a truly tragic streetlamp."

  Calhoun looked at the puzzle, saw what Bloy had meant, and laughed. It did look like a streetlamp. Sort of.

  "Some other artist or writer--I can't remember who--claimed that the best view of Paris was from the Eiffel Tower, because it was the only view of Paris without the Eiffel Tower in it." Ollie bent closer, one hand gripping his cane, the other pressed against the small of his back, as if to hold it together. His eyes moved from the puzzle to the scatter of remaining pieces, perhaps a hundred in all, then back to the puzzle. "Houston, you may have a problem here."

  Dave had already begun to suspect this. "If you're right, it's going to ruin Olga's day."

  "She should have expected it. How many times do you think this version of the Eiffel has been assembled, and then taken apart again? Old people are as careless as teenagers." He straightened up. "Would you walk outside in the garden with me? I have something to give you. Also something to tell you."

  Dave studied Ollie. "You okay?"

  The other chose not to answer this. "Come outside. It's a beautiful morning. Warming up nicely."

  Ollie led the way toward the patio, his cane tapping out that familiar one-two-three rhythm, tossing a good-morning wave to someone as he passed the coffee-drinking coterie of TV watchers. Dave followed willingly enough, but slightly mystified.

  II

  Lakeview was built in a U shape, with the common room between two extending arms that comprised the "assisted living suites," each suite consisting of a sitting room, a bedroom, and the sort of bathroom that came equipped with handrails and a shower chair. These suites were not cheap. Although many of the residents were no longer strictly continent (Dave had begun suffering his own nighttime accidents not long after turning eighty-three, and now kept boxes of PM Pull-Ups on a high shelf in his closet), it was not the sort of place that smelled of piss and Lysol. The rooms also came with satellite TV, there was a snack buffet in each wing, and twice a month there were wine-tasting parties. All things considered, Dave thought, it was a pretty good place to run out the string.

  The garden between the residence wings was lush--almost orgasmic--with early summer. Paths wandered and a central fountain splashed. The flowers rioted, but in a genteel, well-barbered way. Here and there were house telephones where a walker suddenly afflicted with shortness of breath or spreading numbness in the legs could call for assistance. There would be plenty of walkers later on, when those not yet arisen (or when those in the common room got their fill of Fox News) came out to enjoy the day before it heated up, but for the time being, Dave and Ollie had it to themselves.

  Once they were through the double doors and down the steps from the wide flagstoned patio (both of them descending with care), Ollie stopped and began fumbling in the pocket of the baggy houndstooth check sportcoat he was wearing. He brought out a silver pocket watch on a heavy silver chain. He held it out to Dave.

  "I want you to have this. It was my great-grandfather's. Judging by the engraving inside the cover, he either bought it or had it given to him in eighteen ninety."

  Dave gazed at the watch, swinging on its chain from Ollie Franklin's slightly palsied hand like a hypnotist's amulet, with amusement and horror. "I can't take that."

  Patiently, as if instructing a child, Ollie said, "You can if I give it to you. And I've seen you admire it many and many a time."

  "It's a family heirloom!"

  "Yes indeed, and my brother will take it if it's in my effects when I die. Which I'm going to do, and soon. Perhaps tonight. Certainly in the next few days."

  Dave didn't know what to say.

  Still in that same patient tone, Ollie said, "My brother, Tom, isn't worth the powder it would take to blow him to Des Moines. I have never said as much to him, it would be cruel, but I've said so many times to you. Haven't I?"

  "Well . . . yes."

  "I have supported him through three failed businesses and two failed marriages. I believe I've told you that many times, as well. Haven't I?"

  "Yes, but--"

  "I did well, and I invested well," Ollie said, beginning to walk and tapping his cane in his own personal code: tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap. "I am one of the infamous One Percent so reviled by the liberal young. Not by a lot, mind you, but by enough to have lived comfortably here for the last three years while continuing to serve as my younger brother's safety net. I no longer have to perform that service for his daughter, thank God; Martha actually seems to be earning a living for herself. Which is a relief. I've made a will, all proper and correct, and in it I've done the proper thing. The family thing. Since I have no wife or children myself, that means leaving everything to Tom. Except this. This is for you. You've been a good friend to me, so please. Take it."

  Dave considered, decided he could give it back when his friend's death premonition passed, and took the watch. He clicked it open and admired the crystal face. Twenty-two past six--right on time, as far as he could tell. The second hand moved briskly in its own little circle just above the scrolled 6.

  "Cleaned several times, but repaired only once," Ollie said, resuming his slow ambulation. "In nineteen twenty-three, according to Grampy, after my father dropped it down the well on the old farm in Hemingford Home. Can you imagine that? Over a hundred and twenty years old, and only repaired once. How many human beings on earth can claim that? A dozen? Maybe only six? You have two sons and a daughter, am I right?"

  "You are," Dave said. His friend had grown increasingly frail over the last year, and his hair was nothing but a few baby-fine wisps on his liver-spotted skull, but his mind was ticking along a little better than Olga's. Or my own, he admitted to himself.

  "The watch isn't in my will, but it should go in yours. I'm sure you love all your children equally, you're that kind of guy, but liking is different, isn't it? Leave it to the one you like the best."

  That would be Peter, Dave thought, and smiled.

  Either returning the smile or catching the thought behind it, Ollie's lips parted over his remaining teeth and he nodded. "Let's sit down. I'm bushed. It doesn't take much, these days."

  They sat on one of the benches, and Dave tried to hand the watch back. Ollie pushed his hands out in an exaggerated repelling gesture that was comical enough to make Dave laugh, although he recognized this as a serious matter.
Certainly more serious than a few missing pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

  The smell of the flowers was strong, heavenly. When Dave Calhoun thought of death--not so far off now--the prospect he regretted most was the loss of the sensory world and all its ordinary luxuries. The sight of a woman's cleavage in a boatneck top. The sound of Cozy Cole going bullshit on the drums in "Topsy, Part Two." The taste of lemon pie with a cloud of meringue on top. The smell of flowers he could not name, although his wife would have known them all.

  "Ollie, you may be going to die this week, God knows everyone in this place has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, but there's no way you can know for sure. I don't know if you had a dream, or a black cat crossed your path, or something else, but premonitions are bullshit."

  "I didn't just have a premonition," Ollie said, "I saw one. I saw Mister Yummy. I've seen him several times in the last two weeks. Always closer. Pretty soon I'll have a room visit, and that will be that. I don't mind. In fact, I'm looking forward to it. Life's a great thing, but if you live long enough, it wears out before it runs out."

  "Mister Yummy," Calhoun said. "Who the hell is Mister Yummy?"

  "It's not really him," Ollie said, as if he hadn't heard. "I know that. It's a representation of him. A summation of a time and place, if you like. Although there was a real Mister Yummy once. That's what my friends and I called him that night in Highpockets. I never knew his real name."

  "I'm not following."

  "Listen, you know I'm gay, right?"

  Dave smiled. "Well, I think your dating days were over before I met you, but I had a pretty good idea, yes."

  "Was it the ascot?"

  It's the way you walk, Dave thought. Even with a cane. The way you run your fingers through what remains of your hair and then glance in the mirror. The way you roll your eyes at the women on that Real Housewives show. Even the still-life drawings in your room, which form a kind of timeline of your decline. Once you must have been so good, but now your hands shake. You're right--it wears out before it runs out.

  "Among other things," Dave said.