The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  “Yes, Mr. Bailey,” said Ruth, blushing.

  “Call me Clarence,” he said. “There should be sheets and blankets in that closet … Do you know why there’s a bed in this room? Mrs. Bailey used to say that artists never have money and that a good agent ought to take care of them even when they’re not bringing in any money.” Mr. Bailey laughed.

  “It may not be the most reasonable idea, but I’ve always liked it,” and again he laughed, carrying out the last pile of photos and tossing them on a divan in the next room. “Don’t you?”

  Ruth nodded.

  They heard a door close.

  “Odette always leaves without saying goodbye. Apart from her unfortunate name, that’s her only defect.” He smiled. “Don’t think she’s cross with you, she’s like that with everybody. In some ways she’s savage. But a wonderful secretary. And a good person.”

  Ruth nodded again. She looked out the window. The sun had set.

  “Have you had dinner?”

  “I’m not hungry, thank you.”

  “If I told you you’re too thin, Mrs. Bailey would scold me,” said the agent, “so you can pretend I didn’t say it.” He smiled and looked at her for a second in silence. “Well, I’m an old man,” he said. “I go to bed early. Are you afraid of being alone?”

  “No …”

  “Sleep well, then.” He looked around the bare little room, shaking his head. “Minimal, I’d say. But in time we can make it more comfortable.”

  “Do you think so?” said Ruth, and laughed. As she hadn’t done for such a long time.

  Bailey laughed with her. “Next Sunday, if you like, you can come with me to visit Mrs. Bailey. I know it would please her,” he said, as sadness clouded his eyes again, “even if she can’t show it …” He glanced around the room again. “Ah, I knew I was forgetting something. The keys. Here, take mine and lock yourself in. Tomorrow we’ll have them make copies.” He reached out a hand and stroked Ruth’s hair, awkwardly, like a grandfather. “Good night, Ruth,” he said at last.

  “Good night, Clarence.”

  Ruth waited till she heard the door of the agency close; then she opened the closet and took out sheets and blankets. She made the bed — it was a cot against the wall, in the far corner of the room, covered with cushions that disguised it as a swaybacked divan. Then she set the green crocodile suitcase on the bed and opened the two little locks. She took her grandfather’s photo and set it on a shelf. Then she took the red lacquer heart that had been her farewell gift from Christmas and she held it tightly. She slid the suitcase under the bed and lay down in her clothes.

  “Good night, Christmas,” she said softly and closed her eyes, as if expecting him to answer.

  In the middle of the night she awoke with a start. She ran to the door of the agency and locked it. “Go away,” she murmured; “Go away, Bill.” When she came back to bed she slipped the lacquer heart around her neck. I’m afraid, she thought. I’m afraid of everything. She shut her eyes and hoped she’d fall quickly back to sleep. “You were even afraid of Christmas, you idiot,” she said aloud. And then, for the first time, she felt a kind of tenderness for herself. The tears she was weeping came not from desperation, but acceptance.

  Ruth was yielding to herself.

  She sat up, unbuttoned her blouse, and unwrapped the gauze bands from around her breast. She looked at the red marks they’d left. She rubbed them gently, lovingly. And she let the cheap red lacquer heart caress her bare skin. She gathered up the gauze and threw it in the wastebasket. She came back to bed, put her blouse on again, and as she fell asleep holding the heart tightly, she found that without the constriction of the gauze strips she could breathe easily again.

  “Until you have your own regular round of appointments, you can earn extra money by developing other people’s photos,” said Mr. Bailey the next morning in his office. “The darkroom is an excellent school. It helps you understand a lot about how photos are shot and it puts you in contact with the magic of photography. Oh, and you’ll find two piles of books in your room. The first pile is all technical manuals. I want you to study them. The second is a selection of the best photographs in the world. Look through them carefully. Then I’d like you to make a list of the ones you like and the ones you don’t like. And from each of those two groups, you should choose the ones in which you see nothing of yourself and the ones in which you see some trace of you. And once you’ve done that, you’ll need to select four pictures. One that you would never have made; one that you’d like to make; one that you wouldn’t be capable of making; and the one that most nearly describes you. And then I want you to shoot all four of those photos. You won’t have the same subject and the setting may not be the same, of course, but I want you to do the best you can to replicate them. Paying special attention to the light and shadow. You can use any of my cameras. Choose the one you think is most appropriate for each of those photos.”

  Over the next four weeks Ruth learned how to print and develop and, as Mr. Bailey had predicted, she discovered the magic of photography. The subjects came out of the darkroom shadows like nebulous ghosts rising from the paper. At the same time she was learning the mixtures of reagents and fluids. She tried the cameras that Mr. Bailey had made available to her, along with magnesium flashbulbs, tripods, and exposure time for the glass plates. Her nose learned to recognize the smells of gelatin, potassium bichromate, bromide, and silver chloride. At night she pored over the manuals and the history of photography, from the ancient Arab experts to the primitive contact plates, to daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and sensitive gelatins. And going through the books of photographs she began to connect with the soul of photography, with the huge narrative possibilities that an image fixed on paper offered.

  When she felt she was ready she came to Mr. Bailey. “I’ve done it. Here’s the list you asked me for and these are my four photos.”

  “Well done.” Said Clarence. “Now you’re ready for your first assignment.”

  “Aren’t you going to look at them?”

  “Now why would I do that?” said Clarence, narrowing his little sharp eyes. “I would never be able to tell you what you’ve understood about yourself. You’re the only one who could know that … don’t you agree?”

  Ruth was swept away by that answer. She turned the product of her work in her hands, thinking, and at last she understood and smiled at him.

  “Yes, Clarence, I do.”

  “Fine. You’ll be going to Paramount. Tomorrow afternoon at four. You’ve got an appointment with Albert Brestler at stage five. He’s a very important person. Adolph Zukor always listens to what he has to say.”

  “And I’m supposed to photograph him?” Ruth asked, astonished.

  “No, you’ll be photographing his son Douglas. He’ll be seven years old tomorrow. Brestler’s arranged the birthday party in stage five. Many little boys and girls. You’ll photograph them while they play and blow out the candles on the cake.”

  “Ah,” said Ruth.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t like to photograph people when they’re laughing.”

  “Well, then, photograph them when they’re not laughing.”

  Ruth didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “Anything else?” Clarence asked distractedly.

  Ruth seemed about to speak. But she pressed her lips together and went out of the office.

  When she reached stage five she felt uncomfortable. The children’s mothers were wearing enough jewels for a première. The children wore ridiculous eighteenth-century costumes. Powerful spotlights lit up the whole stage bright as day. A gilded throne had been set up on a platform at the center of the hangar. Little Douglas Brestler was sitting on the throne with a crown on his head and scepter in his hand.

  “Are you the photographer?” asked the birthday boy’s mother when she saw her arriving. She looked her over critically, then with the same hand gesture she’d use with a maid, she said, “Well, go on, then, girl, get moving.” T
hen she forgot about her, as if she didn’t exist.

  Little by little Ruth felt more comfortable. Neither the parents nor the children paid any attention to her. As if she was invisible.

  She shot a series of photos of Douglas staring gravely at one of his presents — a little airplane whose wing had been broken by one of the child guests. Then she photographed the little vandal with his cheek reddened from his mother’s slap. And Mrs. Brestler with her mouth full and a dab of cream on her chin. And another mother digging a long red fingernail between her teeth to extract a scrap of food. Another dabbing at a run in her silk stocking. But most of the photos were of children. Sweaty, tired, their ridiculous eighteenth-century ruffs soiled with chocolate, with jabots yanked awry. She photographed the ones who, exhausted, curled up in a corner to sleep. Or a little fight. The tears of a little girl whose satin tutu was ripped. She also photographed them all together, from a high gallery where she’d climbed. Jostling around the dessert table, as if they were starving. It looked like a battlefield.

  “What the hell kind of photos are these?” Albert Brestler was asking Clarence when Ruth came back to the office one afternoon the following week. “Does this look like a party? I say it’s a funeral. My wife is furious.”

  Ruth felt like dying. The office was empty. Odette had already gone home. The side door of Mr. Bailey’s office was ajar, so she stood outside it and listened.

  “What did you want to tell me, Mr. Brestler?” Clarence said soothingly. “I don’t think you want your money back, you wouldn’t have come in person for that. Am I right?”

  Ruth saw Brestler sit down, going through the photos silently, with a frown on his face. “The more I look at them. The more I …” he paused, sighed. “They’re — they’ve got …”

  “Yes, I thought so too when I saw them,” said Clarence.

  Brestler glared at him. “But don’t send her out to shoot a fucking birthday party. You’re famous for getting it right, I’ve always given you credit for that. But this time …” He slapped the photos on the desk, angrily. “My wife got it right the first time. This is a funeral.”

  Ruth wanted to sink under the floor. Neither of the two men was speaking now. A dense silence had descended on the office. She would have liked to go away and not listen to them. But she couldn’t manage to move.

  “If I had suggested this girl for something more important, would you have given her a chance?” asked Clarence, smilingly.

  Brestler grumbled. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I thought not,” said Clarence, keeping his shrewd eyes on Brestler.

  Brestler shook his head, went through the photos again. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He breathed in a long gust of smoke, held it in his lungs, and let it out slowly. “They’re good,” he said at last.

  “Yes, they’re very good.”

  Ruth could feel herself blushing. Now she really wanted to escape.

  “Oh, all right,” said Brestler. “Who do you think she should be photographing?”

  “People who don’t laugh.”

  “People who don’t laugh,” grumbled Brestler impatiently. “What does that mean? Dramatic actors?”

  “Dramatic actors, exactly.”

  “And who else?”

  “Let’s start with dramatic actors,” said Clarence, in his quiet voice. “If the photos are beautiful then even the ones who laugh will want her to shoot them … and they won’t laugh while she’s doing it.”

  “What’s this girl’s name?”

  “Ruth Isaacson.”

  “Jewish?”

  “I’ve never asked.”

  “They say being Jewish opens a lot of doors in Hollywood.”

  “Well then, I guess I’ll have to ask her,” he glared.

  “Go to hell, Clarence,” Brestler said, getting to his feet. He pointed a finger at a picture of his son. “But I’m not paying for these. And make sure you send over a baby photographer so my wife stops hollering at me. Next thing you know, she’ll be asking for a divorce.”

  “How about the one we used last year?”

  “You said he was dead!”

  “Really?” smiled Clarence. “I must have mixed him up with someone else.”

  Brestler laughed and went out of the office whistling.

  Clarence picked up the birthday pictures and looked at them, “Come in, Ruth,” he said. “What are you doing out there all this time?”

  Ruth froze. She came in, her face red with shame at having been discovered, “Clarence, I’m sorry …”

  “From now on you’re the photographer of moody stars,” said the old agent, laughing. “How about that? All right?”

  45

  Manhattan, 1927

  “Okay if I come in?” Christmas asked, poking his head inside the office of the owner-administrator’s office at 320 Monroe Street.

  “Yeah, sure, pisser,” responded Sal Tropea from behind the desk where he was going over account books. His voice had grown even deeper with age.

  “I’ve got two tickets for Funny Face, at the Alvin,” said Christmas, waving them in the air.

  “So what?”

  “It’s a musical.”

  “So?” Sal repeated.

  “Take Mamma to see it,” said Christmas, resting the tickets on Sal’s ledger.

  Sal looked him up and down. “Where’dja get that suit?”

  Christmas smiled smugly, stroking the dark blue worsted sleeve. “Nice, huh?”

  “I ast ya where ya got it. Ya mother wants ya should wear da brown one.”

  “I’m not doing anything wrong,” Christmas frowned. “Santo gave it to me.”

  “Who?”

  “Santo Filesi.”

  “Da one who’s getting’ married?”

  “That’s him.”

  “He a friend o’ yours?”

  “For a long time.”

  “Nice folks,” said Sal, pulling the account book closer to him, letting the tickets slide to the desk top, without his touching them. “They pay right on time, every month.” He sighed. “But dis weddin’s got me worried. Weddins cost a pile o’ money. Why da fuck do they think they gotta do it?”

  “They’re for tonight,” said Christmas, pointing to the tickets.

  “I think this month I ain’t gonna make ’em pay no rent,” said Sal, looking at the ledger. “Prob’ly couldn’t do it anyways. So dat way I don’t gotta get mad an’ look like some kinda asshole.” He looked up at Christmas. “Howzat for a weddin’ present?”

  “Will you take her?”

  “You don’t never answer no questions.”

  “Neither do you, Sal,” said Christmas. “Are you gonna take her to the theater?”

  “Youse got a head even harder than Cetta’s,” Sal grumbled. “Izzat a good weddin’ present or ain’t it?”

  Christmas sighed. “Yeah, Sal, it’s a great present.”

  “Yeah, I think so too,” Sal grunted, satisfied. “Didja know dat little guy, the longshoreman …”

  “… can lift a ton with just one hand, yeah, Sal. Everybody’s known that for years,” Christmas interrupted him.

  “Good guy, though.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Sal. I get the idea,” Christmas said impatiently, reaching for the tickets.

  Sal’s huge paw — the strangler’s hand — pressed Christmas’ wrist down, hard. “Now ya gotta wash out ya mouth wit’ soap, pisser.”

  “All right, Sal. Let go, I have to go to work.”

  “So what show is it?” asked Sal, releasing his grip and leaning back in his wooden desk chair with iron wheels.

  “Funny Face.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It just opened. A musical, with–”

  “Where’dja say they’re puttin’ it on?”

  “Alvin Theater, West Fifty-Second,” said Christmas. “I know, I know — you never heard of it. It’s a brand new theater, too, they just finished …”

  “So why’s it named Alvin?”

>   “How should I know, Sal?” Christmas sounded exasperated.

  Sal laughed and clasped his hands behind his neck, crossing his legs. “It was a Mister Pincus what built it, yeah — a big shot; but a coupla my old pals wuz in it with him,” he sneered. “Da owners is Alex Aarons and Vinton Freedly. Alex an’ Vinton. Al an’ Vin. Alvin. Maybe I don’t know shit about no shows, but I don’t miss much about real estate.” Sal flashed his teeth in a satisfied smile. “See? Ya got a lot t’ learn, pisser,” and he laughed. His voice sounded more and more like a belch.

  “Okay, you win,” laughed Christmas.

  “Goin’ back t’ dis musical …”

  “It stars Fred and Adele Astaire. Fred Astaire’s the one …”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Ya mother been bustin’ my ear drums from mornin’ t’ night with dat song where she’s all alone in dis big city. So is he a faggot, this Fred whatchamacallit?”

  “Astaire. No, why would he be a faggot?”

  “He’s a guy what dances,” said Sal meaningfully.

  “He’s no faggot,” said Christmas. “Why is it always so hard to talk with you?”

  “How do ya know he ain’t a faggot?” Sal went on, unruffled. “A guy what dances, right? They’re all of ’em faggots. Pansies. Why would he wanna do stuff a girl does if he ain’t a pansy?”

  “I saw him with a woman you couldn’t even dream up, she was so beautiful.”

  Sal looked at him. “So ya tellin’ me this Fred Whatzisname ain’t a pansy?”

  “No, Sal. He’s not. How many more times do I have to say it?”

  Sal looked back down at the ledger, flipping back a few pages. After a while he glanced up at Christmas again. “Anything else?”

  “So you’ll take mamma to the theater tonight?” asked Christmas, who had no intention of giving up.

  “We’ll have to see.”

  “Sal, how long is it since you took her anyplace?”

  Sal’s gazed narrowed. And his thoughts went back to that evening at Madison Square Garden. Right after he’d come out of prison. “What are ya, some kinda pimp?” he barked at Christmas. Then he shook his head. “Too long,” he muttered.