The Boy Who Granted Dreams

  “So you’re taking her?”

  “Maybe …”

  “Come on, Sal!”

  “Oh awright, Jesus Christ!” Sal picked up the tickets. He laughed. “I made ya sweat though, huh?”

  “And don’t tell mamma I gave them to you,” said Christmas. “She’ll like it more if she thinks you bought ’em for her.”

  “Didja get us good seats or am I gonna look bad?”

  “A box.”

  “Box, box … when I took her, it wuz da front row …”

  “So long, Sal. I have to go,” and Christmas turned to leave.

  “Hold on, pisser.”

  Christmas turned back, his hand on the doorknob.

  “What’s happenin’ wit’ da radio broadcast?” Sal asked him.

  Christmas shrugged, a look of disappointment on his face. “Still nothing,” he said.

  “Whatta they waitin’ for? How long does it take ’em?” Sal struck his hand on the desk top, causing the ledger to bounce. “It’s been two weeks already, jerkoffs. What they think, do they think they can keep ya waitin’ around? Rich assholes, jerkoffs, pieces a shit …”

  Christmas smiled. “Thanks for helping Santo,” he said as he went out.

  “Yeah, so long, pisser …” Sal muttered. Once alone, he blew a violent puff or air from his nostrils, like a bull. He banged his fist on the desk again, got up and threw open the window. “Ya want I should send somebody over there, break a coupla legs?” he shouted down to Christmas in the street. “All ya gotta do is say the word, I’ll send two guys over t’ break their fuckin’ legs!”

  Karl Jarach couldn’t believe it. After keeping him waiting for almost three weeks, they’d told him no. At first they’d gone around and around, saying they didn’t have the right time slot for it, then — when he pressured them — they said it would be a vulgar program that no one would care about. That no listener could follow it, that it would never work. Idiots.

  The top level at N.Y. Broadcast was made up of idiots. And that was exactly what he’d said to Christmas after going down to the repair shop to tell him that the program wasn’t going to happen.

  “White folks,” said Cyril. And he spat on the floor. He gave Karl a scornful look.

  Karl saw the disappointment on Christmas’ face. “I’m sorry,” he told him. “I’m really sorry.”

  Christmas smiled faintly, then turned and asked Cyril, “Don’t we have a few Jewish weddings to celebrate?”

  His boss picked up a large carton and two hammers. He looked outraged. “I need some too,” he said, casting another heavy look at Karl.

  Karl watched them go to the back of the shop, open the box and begin smashing old radio tubes.

  “I have to go back up,” he said. But neither Christmas nor Cyril heard him. Or maybe they pretended not to hear, thought Karl. He went away, with his shoulders drooping, back up to the seventh floor.

  “Something terrible happened, Mr. Jarach,” said his secretary, rushing breathlessly towards him.

  “Something else?” asked Karl glumly. He went into his office and looked out. New York was putting on the dark wrap of the approaching evening. Many workers were already out on the street, hurrying towards the subway. Another day was ending.

  “Skinny and Fatso,” said the secretary.

  “Skinny and Fatso, what?” Karl asked crossly, not turning to look at her.

  “They were in a car crash. They can’t come and do their program,” she said mournfully. She was a big fan of Cookies, the two vaudevillians’ comedy broadcast.

  Karl just looked at her without speaking. He didn’t care what happened to those two imbeciles.

  “Should we just play music?” asked the secretary.

  “Yes, fine …”

  “What kind of music?”

  “Any kind. Whatever you like.”

  She waited for a second, and then walked out of the office.

  Karl stared out the window again. People were hurrying home. Good night, New York. He thought. And all at once a shiver went along his spine.

  I’ll be damned, he thought, and ran out of the office. “Mildred! Mildred!” he shouted to his secretary as she was going into the elevator. “Never mind,” he said. “Go on home, I’ll take care of it.”

  “But Mr. Jarach …”

  “Go on. Mildred.” He urged her out of the elevator and told the operator, “Second floor, right now.” As soon as the elevator doors opened Karl rushed to the Concert Room. “Where’s Maria?” he asked anyone he saw.

  Maria already had her coat on when he found her.

  “You can’t leave yet,” Karl told her, gasping for breath. “Listen, we don’t have much time. Do you remember which soundman recorded Christmas’ test?”

  “Leonard.”

  “Leonard, fine. Go find him for me right away. Have him give you the wax, the recording, and meet me — where do we broadcast Cookies from?”

  “Studio nine.”

  “Third floor?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good, I’ll see you there,” said Karl, squeezing her shoulders briefly. “Now hurry,” he looked at the gold watch his father had given him. “We’ve got less than five minutes.”

  In studio five on the third floor the soundman and the N.Y. Broadcast announcer were waiting for the music they would be sending out over the airwaves.

  “Are we ready?” asked Karl, entering the studio.

  “Yes, but …” said the soundman.

  “It’ll just be a moment,” said Karl, pointing a finger at him to silence him, and he turned back anxiously towards the door.

  Just then Maria ran inside, holding the wax disc in her hand. “Here it is,” she said.

  “Play it,” said Karl, passing it to the soundman.

  “What’s this?” asked the announcer, reaching for the microphone.

  Maria and Karl looked at each other.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life,” said Karl with a radiant smile.

  “I’m ready,” said the soundman into the interphone.

  “Thanks Maria. You can go home now,” said Karl.

  “I wouldn’t miss this for anything in the world,” Maria smiled. “But I’m going to listen to it down in the repair shop.”

  “Tell them hello from me,” said Karl.

  Maria nodded and left the room, closing the soundproof door.

  “When you’re ready. Fifteen seconds to air,” the soundman’s voice came crackling.

  “What do I say?” asked the announcer, sounding worried. “Ten seconds.”

  Karl looked at him, then pushed him to one side. “I’ll do it,” he said, and he turned to watch the soundman, waiting for the cue.

  The soundman counted, folding his fingers in the air, Five, four, three, two, one. He dropped his hand.

  “This is New York Broadcast, your radio,” Karl began, modulating his voice. “Tonight, because of a technical problem, Cookies will not be heard,” Karl clenched his fists, hoping no one was going to switch to another station. “But we are proud to present to you for the first time anywhere our new and groundbreaking program starring Christmas …” Karl stopped. Christmas what? he thought wildly, bathed in cold sweat. “Yes, just … Christmas, ladies and gentlemen,” he said smoothly, “and in a few minutes you’ll begin to understand why I can’t reveal his full name. He’s no one you’d want to know. A dangerous man … And the program has a name, too–” Karl stopped again. A title, He needed a title. “Can you hear me, New York? Diamond Dogs!” he announced. He signaled the soundman.

  The studio was suddenly in darkness.

  “Raise the rag!” echoed through the room. Silence. And then again, “Raise that rag!” The echo of his cry died away.

  Karl wiped a hand across his forehead. It was sweaty. What the hell, he thought, sitting down. He felt happy.

  And then came Christmas’ velvet voice, saying “Listen, New York. Can you hear me in the d
ark?”

  46

  Los Angeles, 1927

  “Ruth, you have a visitor,” said Mr. Bailey, tapping on the darkroom door without opening it.

  “I’ll be right there,” said Ruth in a happy voice. She was pleased with the photos she was developing. They were of Marion Morrison; who’d been a football player, part of the famous Thundering Herd, the U.S.C. football team. He was a big tall boy who hadn’t smiled even once during the photo session. Not even when they took a break. At the moment he was only a prop man at Fox studios, but Clarence said he was going to be a big star. He told that to Wilfred Sheehan, the head of Fox. Ruth didn’t care about any of that. The only thing she cared about was that the young man had never cracked a smile. She’d made him pose outdoors, not in the studio. Clarence had said he’d be perfect for westerns, and so Ruth had taken him to a vacant lot, nothing but sand and weeds, like the desert, on a day when rain threatened. The photos were dark, with high contrast. Marion Morrison’s imposing figure stood out against the background. Hands in pockets, easy stance. But something else came across in Ruth’s pictures: a sense of great solitude. As if he were the last man left on earth.

  “Come, Ruth,” Mr. Bailey said again.

  “Yes, all right, I’m done now,” she said, hanging the last photo up to dry. “Who is it?” she asked happily.

  “Come, dear,” was all he said.

  Clarence sounds tense, she thought. She opened the darkroom door and came out.

  “In my office,” said Clarence.

  Ruth crossed the corridor and hesitated just before she went into the office. She rested her hand on the shiny brass knob, turned it, and pushed the door open.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” said Mr. Isaacson, standing beside the desk.

  “Hello, Papa.”

  “You haven’t been to see us for a long time,” said her father.

  Ruth came into the room and closed the door behind her. “I know,” she said. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know if she should hug her father, or stay there unmoving, like a stranger. “How’s Mamma?” she asked, just to break the silence.

  “She’s in the car,” said Philip Isaacson, turning towards the bright window of Clarence’s office and glancing down at Venice Boulevard. “She didn’t feel up to climbing the stairs … she hasn’t been well recently …”

  “Is she drinking a lot?” Ruth asked brusquely.

  Mr. Isaacson looked down, without answering her. “We’re leaving,” he said.

  “Leaving?” Ruth said in surprise. “Are you going back to New York?”

  Her father shook his head, sadly. “No. Your mother wouldn’t be able to bear it …” He was still looking downward. “We’re moving to Oakland. I sold the house in Holmby Hills for a pittance and I’ve taken a job in Oakland. They’ve just opened a new cinema there … anyway, they needed a manager, and I … Well. You know those films for adults? Your mother was right. Again. That’s not our world. Those people are entirely coarse and vulgar. It was killing me, and then … well, the earnings were nothing much. In Oakland we’ve rented an apartment near the theater, and … while it lasts, that’s where we’ll be.”

  Ruth took one stiff little step towards her father. And then another and another. When she was next to him she put her arms around him. “Papa,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

  Philip Isaacson seemed to deflate at the contact with his daughter. His eyes grew moist. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and blew his nose. In that moment, Ruth could feel all the weakness of the man. But she didn’t despise him. After all, he was her father. And it wasn’t his fault if he wasn’t the father that his daughter wanted, needed. She pulled him to her again, hugging him. Tightly. Forgiving him for all that he’d never managed to be.

  “I’m a photographer,” she told him, holding him as if he were her child, not her father. “And it’s all thanks to you. Thank you, Papa. Thank you.”

  Mr. Isaacson burst into tears. A brief series of sobs. But when he looked at his daughter again, there was a spark of joy in his eyes. “My wonderful child,” he said, laughing and weeping at the same time. “You’re like my father. You’re like Grandpa Saul.” He took her face in his hands. “You’re strong, Ruth, and I thank heaven every day that you’re not like me. It would have been terrible to bear the burden of that, too.”

  “Don’t say that, Papa,” said Ruth. “Don’t say that.”

  “If you’re ever in Oakland, come to see us. West Coast Oakland Theater, on Telegraph Avenue,” said Mr. Isaacson, extracting himself from Ruth’s embrace. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his elegant jacket and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s five thousand dollars. That’s all I can give you, sweetheart,” he said, handing it to her.

  “Papa, I don’t need it. I’ve got a good job …”

  “Take it, Ruth. Your grandfather used to say that we’re people who can only express their feelings through money,” he said. “Take it.”

  Ruth reached out and took the envelope.

  “But I did give you the Leica, too, didn’t I?”

  “That’s the most beautiful present anyone ever gave me,” said Ruth.

  “There’s one last thing,” added her father, hesitantly. He swallowed and looked down again. “I didn’t know about it …” He looked at Ruth with faint bitter smile. “But perhaps I wouldn’t have done anything differently …” He touched his wedding ring, turning it around his finger, unsure about going on. “I don’t know if it’s right for me to tell you. Please don’t hate her, Ruth. Don’t hate her. She always thought it was for your own good …”

  “What, Papa? Who?”

  “Your mother, Ruth. I never knew about it, but recently … since you’ve been gone, she … talks a lot, you see … it’s the alcohol … and so she …”

  “Papa,” Ruth urged him.

  “That boy who saved you …”

  “Christmas …?”

  “That boy … he wrote you many letters. At the Beverly Hills Hotel and then at Holmby Hills. And your mother … your mother never let you have any of them. And the letters you wrote to him … she always tore them up, too.”

  Ruth couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. She felt as though someone had punched her in the stomach.

  “Don’t hate her, Ruth … she really believed she was doing something good.”

  “Yes,” said Ruth softly. She turned her back on her father and went to the window. She looked down at the street. She saw a brown car parked across the street. And inside the car she thought she could see a gleam of metal above the dashboard, on the passenger side. Her mother’s silver flask.

  When she turned back, her father wasn’t in the room any more.

  47

  Manhattan, 1927

  “You’re fired,” said Neal Howe, general manager of N.Y. Broadcast. He was seated behind his inlaid cherry wood desk, polishing his eyeglasses with a dazzling white linen handkerchief on which his initials stood out boldly. His face was sharp, with narrow veins making a spider web across his cheeks. The skin of his skull, under the sparse hair, was red. He wore an impeccably tailored gray suit with military ribbons and medals across one side of the jacket. When he seemed satisfied with the clarity of his glasses, he put them on and stared at Karl and Christmas, who were standing in front of him. “Perhaps you’re asking yourselves why I took the trouble to communicate that to you personally,” he said with a malignant smile. He pointed a bony finger at them, “Because what you did, if we were at war, would be called insubordination. And you would be punished by court martial.”

  “So are you planning on hanging us?” asked Christmas, thrusting his hands in his pockets, with an insolent look. He looked at Karl from the corner of his eye and was amazed to see how pale and still he was.

  The general manager made an abrupt gesture. “Don’t try to be funny, young man,” he said in a piercing voice. “And when you’re in front of me, keep your hands out of your pockets.”

  “Otherwise, what’ll
you do? Fire me?”

  The general manager’s face turned livid.

  “Please, Mr. Howe, just listen to me,” said Karl in a faint voice. “The boy has nothing to do with this. It was my idea. He didn’t even know we were going to broadcast it … you mustn’t take it out on him.”

  “Mustn’t I?” the general manager gave a nasty laugh.

  “What I meant, sir, is that–”

  “Forget it,” said Christmas, laying a hand on Karl’s arm. “He wants us to beg him and then he’ll go ahead and fire us anyway. That’s his game. Don’t you understand? He’s not doing anything out some sense of justice. He just likes humiliating people. Don’t waste time and don’t give him the satisfaction. Let’s get out of here …”

  “How dare you, young fellow?” roared the general manager, leaping to his feet, red-faced.

  “Hey, don’t bust a gasket, fuzzynuts,” Christmas laughed in his face and turned to leave. “Are you coming, Mr. Jarach?”

  Karl looked at him with a cloudy stare, as if he couldn’t quite take in what has happening.

  “Turkus! Turkus!” shouted the general manager.

  Into the room came a man with a pugilist’s face and wearing a security uniform.

  “Throw them out! Kick them out of here!”

  The uniformed man reached for Christmas.

  “You lay one finger on me and Louie Lepke’s gonna come stick an icepick in your throat,” Christmas said, looking ferocious.

  The man looked doubtful. His arm stopped in midair.

  “Ya want the real cops t’ find ya cadaver in a stolen car dumped on some buildin’ site over in Flatbush?” Christmas asked the security cop. He turned towards Karl. “We may as well go, Mr. Jarach,” he said. He took Karl’s arm firmly and led him towards the exit, going past the guard who was standing there looking bewildered.

  “Turkus!”

  “So long, fuzzynuts,” said Christmas as they left the office. Karl followed him like a sleepwalker.

  “Jarach! I’m going to make sure you never get a job in radio again!” the general manager screamed after them apoplectically. “Turkus! Kick them! Or else you’re fired too!”