Dreams of Molly

by Jonathan Baumbach

  Four or five drinks later, when I returned to our temporary residence, she was gone and her small suitcase with her. She had left me one of her paintings—the blackest of the nightscapes, the one I professed to admire—as a parting gift.

  I didn’t miss her for the first few hours of our separation, wrote an abbreviated version of our tragic love story in the ratty notebook I’d been carrying with me.

  The last line was: “He expected to miss her after awhile, after a week or so, but as it turned out the expectation sufficed for the feeling itself.”

  When the story was finished, when the last line that had been playing through my head got itself down on paper, I couldn’t imagine how I would get on another day without her.

  40th Night

  You could see it was an all day rain, but since I was low on funds, I went on to the next village with the idea of doing my strong man performance in the town square. As usual, particularly since I started drinking again, I was short of cash.

  I put up signs in the usual places, but when the time came to begin, there was no one in the audience. Eventually, a carabinieri showed up carrying one of my signs and waving it at me as if it were a weapon.

  I assumed he was ordering me to leave and I packed up my chains, but on the contrary he was insisting that I perform for him even though he was the only spectator.

  He had a folding chair and an umbrella and he opened them both and made himself comfortable.

  I tied the chains rather awkwardly—it was generally Q’s job to tie the supposedly unbreakable knot—while the carabinieri watched intently.

  I went through the motions of failing, which was part of the act and my audience laughed and clapped his hands. “He can’t do it,” he said to no one in particular.

  His skepticism provoked me. I took a deep breath and expanded my chest, expecting the chains to come apart as they always did.

  I panicked at first when nothing happened, but then I thought I hadn’t tried hard enough. So I took a deeper breath, expanding my chest to the breaking point, but the chains resisted me. It then struck me that these were not the chains I had been using. Someone, no friend of mine, had made the switch.

  The small crowd in attendance—I hadn’t noticed them assemble—started throwing things, fruit for the most part. There was also the occasional puh-ching of flying lead and I fled the stage, leaving my equipment behind.

  I ran without looking back until, several miles down the road, I tripped on a loose sixteenth century cobblestone and I fell in a sprawl by the side of the road. The passing thought that held sway was, Whatever else happens, Jack, you can’t get much lower than this.

  41st Night

  I ran into Q (or L) again at the airport in Milan. She seemed to have forgotten that we had separated on bad terms and gave me a hug and told how she had made all this money selling paintings, some of them commissioned portraits, to Americans returning home. She only needed twenty-one more dollars to afford her own ticket back to the states. On the other hand I was sixty-nine dollars short. My Visa card, which I assumed was good, was rejected repeatedly.

  It was almost like old times. Q had a set of chains in her carry-on bag and after a couple of drinks of red-eye for courage I performed for the captive crowd on the tarmac, a glass window separating us.

  That I still had it or had regained what I had lost or was drunk enough not to notice how tacky my act was improved my shaky self-esteem.

  We made a killing, though most of the bills Q collected in her hat were in unrecognizable foreign currency.

  The exchange booth was closed so we had to live in the airport for a while, plying our respective trades.

  To get rid of us, the authorities put us on a plane going back to the states but because of weather or perhaps faulty navigation we ended up in Newfoundland for refueling purposes.

  We made the mistake of getting off the plane with the others during what they told us would be a seventy minute stopover. But as we had no tickets, when we tried to reboard the plane, the woman at the gate denied us entry.

  When Q argued, they arrested her, and when I protested her arrest, they arrested me and though we had American passports, after a week’s imprisonment in a makeshift cage adjoining the food preparation room in the local MacDonald’s, they deported us back to Italy.

  The Italian authorities refused to accept us—there was a fraud charge on the books against us—and we found ourselves once again on a plane going back to the states.

  We fought continually on the plane ride back, and by the time we reached Boston—the destination of this particular flight—we were no longer on speaking terms.

  Q’s passport had expired during the delay and under duress I had left mine in Newfoundland so we were detained together, as it turned out, while the authorities reviewed our situation.

  I made an effort to be polite, though it was unfelt, while Q (or L)—they addressed her as Leonora—remain sulkily tight-lipped.

  They searched our luggage for clues. My chains were seized as undetermined evidence against me. Two bottles of pills were commandeered from Leonora’s case as well as one of her lesser nightscapes.

  While we were detained, we couldn’t help but overhear the following conversation.

  “I’m for going by the book but it’s not clear to me how the book reads on this case,” said official one. “You know what I’m saying?”

  “I’ve seen the new regulations—you’re going to love them when you see them, lots more freedom of initiative, they just ask for creativity—though they don’t actually go into effect until 3:00 this afternoon.”

  “Bummer. What time do you have?”

  “We could always push the clock ahead if we have to, if time in this case is of the essence.”

  “For argument’s sake, let’s say time is of the essence.”

  While this conversation was going on in the next room, Leonora and I shared the occasional desperate glance. We were sitting next to each other at this point, our hands meeting as if inadvertently on the bench between us. The guards were talking in whispers now and it became increasingly difficult to pick up more than an idle word.

  “We’re in this together, whatever it is,” she said, “and I’m not going to be afraid.”

  Momentarily, the door opened and one of the guards entered the room. “I need to use the facilities,” I said.

  “Use whatever facilities you like,” he said. “You’re free to go.” He unlocked the door behind us and held it open, standing absolutely still while awaiting our departure.

  We were standing now but made no attempt to leave. Leonora asked the guard to repeat what he said.

  “It only gets said once,” he said. “That’s the regulation.”

  I took Leonora’s hand and tried to lead her through the door and she took a step or two then stopped at the doorway, refusing the final step to freedom, glancing at the guard, who had not moved since he opened the door for us, who was standing at attention with an almost imperceptible smile, a congested smirk on his inexpressive face.

  42nd Night

  We separated at the revolving doors, exchanged phone numbers and shared a gypsy cab into the city. The otherwise silent driver was the first to notice. “There’s been a pink Cadillac following us for the past three miles,” he said. “I’ll try to lose him for you if that’s what you want.”

  I studied the Cadillac through the back window, recognized one of the airport security people as the driver. “Lose him,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Leonora said.

  The driver, who had an eastern European name with no recognizable vowels, warmed to his task. He got off the highway, indicating his destination at the last possible moment, made a series of sudden haphazard turns, throwing us together in the back seat in compelling ways. The next jolt separated us, but the following intricate maneuver brought us together even more persuasively.

  We rode at dangerous speeds through back alleys, jumped a fence or two, crashed our way through the ba
ck wall of a garage, damaged a few unwary parked cars. If I wasn’t inescapably tangled with Leonora and my hands were not otherwise occupied, I would have applauded the performance.

  When the dust cleared, our oversized pursuer was still in the driver’s rear view mirror.

  “There must be more than one of them,” he said, “or this guy is top of the line.”

  It was a glum realization and we each in turn bemoaned our lot.

  “We’ll pretend he doesn’t exist,” I said. “It’s worked for me before. Just drop us at the nearest motel.” I was intent at taking to its conclusion what circumstance had set in motion.

  “I finish what I start,” the driver said, “or my name isn’t whatever it says my name is.”

  I started to protest but Leonora deflected my argument with a kiss.

  So we drove awhile on back roads with a sense of purpose that made us feel we were getting somewhere. After a while, the driver admitted ruefully and with some reluctance to our being hopelessly lost.

  It was Leonora’s suggestion, but the driver took it up immediately as his own. “Why don’t we just follow the pink Cadillac,” she said.

  “They seem to know where we’re going.”

  Once we got ourselves behind the Cadillac, discovering its two occupants in heated dispute, our former pursuer seemed to have no problem accepting its new role. It led us the grimmest possible version of a merry chase. Eventually, we found ourselves on the highway going against the traffic. Survival seemed a low percentage option.

  The more it tried to lose us with cunning maneuvers, the more determined our driver became to hang on its tail.

  Eventually, it pulled up in front of my former house (or a similar house on a much too similar street) and we took the parking space two doors down.

  We hunkered down in the cab waiting for the people in the pink Cadillac to make the first move. They seemed to be waiting for us to do the same.

  Our driver, exhausted from his exertions, had fallen asleep, was snoring as if it were a jazz riff.

  And, so caught in the grip of our long standing circumstantial passion—actually it was a reconnection this time— Leonora and I spent our first night back in the city, waiting for someone else to make the first move.

  43rd Night

  In the morning the pink Cadillac was gone, taking with it our most persistent topic of conversation. We didn’t have sufficient cash to pay off the cabdriver, who had run up a huge tab on the meter, so Leonora stayed in the cab as hostage to our debt as I warily approached my former residence.

  It was no great surprise that the lock refused to entertain my key so I leaned on the buzzer.

  A man I knew slightly in other circumstances answered the door. “I hope you’re not selling anything,” he said and then he recognized me and closed the door in my face.

  I leaned on the buzzer with renewed persistence.

  The same man answered, a woman who bore Molly an uncanny resemblance standing behind him with her arms crossed in front of her.

  “What in God’s name do you want?” he asked.

  “I want to know what’s going on,” I said. “I used to live in this house. The woman standing behind you used to be my wife.”

  “And?”

  I had no answer to the question of And so we faced each other angrily, perhaps uncomprehendingly, without benefit of language. “Look,” I said, which was everything I had to say.

  “If there is nothing else,” he said and would have closed the door in my face yet again if I hadn’t gotten my foot in the requisite space.

  There was something else, something lucidly inchoate that I was unable to imagine into words.

  “Darling, I’ll phone the police,” said the familiar voice behind him.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary, sweetheart,” he said, and I had to restrain myself from thanking him.

  Leonora, who had worked her way to the bottom step of the stoop, climbed up alongside me. I sensed some kind of belligerent energy coming off her, which set off a distant alarm.

  “You might be a little more civilized about this, you prick,” she said, her arm puckered in the air like a cat’s paw.

  “I’d ask you in,” Molly said, “but the place is an unholy mess.”

  “Nothing can be gained from this,” my replacement, Donald, said, once again locking my foot in the vice of the door. The woman who resembled Molly disappeared briefly, returning with an oversized shopping bag which she thrust in my direction between the man’s arm and his side.

  “This is probably what you came for,” Donald said in Molly’s voice. Perhaps he was lip-synching for her. I was too close to the scene to make an exact determination.

  When I reached for the bag, the hand extending it withdrew. “You have to move your foot first,” someone said.

  “Don’t be a sucker,” Leonora said, which made everyone laugh.

  After that, after the shared laugh, the tone of things changed and we were invited inside to see the improvements they had made in my exile.

  “I was hoping to see an unholy mess,” Leonora whispered in my ear. “You know, I’m beginning to like these people.”

  As we toured the house, which seemed pretty much as I remembered it, we were invited into the kitchen for coffee.

  Donald, who seemed to be wearing one of my old jackets, asked if he could interview me for his new book, which dealt, as far as I could understand his explanation, with the sexual behavior of the recently divorced.

  I said no, said it twice by my count, but as Molly later reported, Donald’s success in life had been dependent on never taking no for an answer.

  Molly muttered something to Leonora and they were gone before I had actually seen them leave.

  “Shall we begin,” Donald said, straddling the chair opposite mine. He riffled through the pages of a notebook before settling on a question. “How often did you pleasure yourself during the first month of your separation from your former mate?” Donald asked, reading the question from a notebook.

  It was none of his business but I could see telling him that was not an acceptable response. “I don’t remember exactly,” I said.

  “More than ten times?” he asked.

  I went through the motions of thinking about it. “Well…” I said.

  “More than fifteen? More than twenty?”

  “It’s possible,” I said.

  “I’ll take that for a yes,” he said, writing something down that seemed longer than the word Yes. “How many times did you have sex with another person during that first month?”

  “One,” I confessed, stretching the truth.

  “What was the gender of your partner?”

  “What?”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Woman.”

  “Was she younger than your former wife or older?”

  “I don’t know... Younger, I suppose.”

  He smiled inappropriately. “Was this someone you had met when you were still living with your wife?”

  “I’d rather not answer that,” I said, perhaps unnecessarily wary.

  “I’ll take that as a Yes,” he said.

  “If you do,” I said, “you could well be making a mistake.”

  “This kind of fencing is not much use to either of us,” he said. “I promise you that your name will not appear with your answers. My assumption is that if you hadn’t met this partner before you and Molly separated, you would have no problem telling me that.”

  We got no further with the interview. Without announcing themselves first, the women reappeared.

  “How’s it going?” Leonora asked. “Getting a lot of good stuff?”

  “We’ll probably need another twenty to thirty minutes,” Donald said.

  “Don’t be such a stick, Donald,” Molly said, giving him a light kick in the leg. “Jake looks all talked out to me. Besides he’s never been able to tell the truth for more than fifteen minutes on end.” Leonora laughed on cue while Donald studied his notes.
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  Odd, I thought, she had never called me Jake before. Was this the wrong house? Was she the wrong former wife?

  44th Night

  Donald never finished the interview with me, but said when I reminded him that he had used his God-given gift for empathy to fill in the remaining answers for me. I was planning to ask him if he had done the same with other subjects as well—the man had no shortage of overweaning confidence—but I never got the chance since he and Leonora disappeared together the next day.

  “Hey, it’s like déjà vu,” I said to Molly, referring to our being alone together, but she was not so easily consoled, and at the same time locked in denial.

  “He always comes back,” she said, “dragging his tail behind him.”

  I didn’t know what she meant. “Are you saying that he’s done this before?” I asked.

  “Never,” she said, “though he tends to be absent-minded and sometimes loses his way.” She giggled at a memory that excluded me. “You know, it could be circumstantial that Donald and your floosie are missing at the same time. What’s your opinion?”

  “Could be they both lost their way,” I said.

  “When we were this official couple,” she said, “you were never this supportive. It seems to me you’ve matured since our break-up.” She offered me her hand for safekeeping.

  Later, after a dinner of left-overs, which seemed fitting, sitting close to me on our old couch, she mentioned that she happened to glance at Donald’s notes from his interview with me and she had a question of her own she wanted to ask.

  I knew no good would come of it, though I pretended I had no objection to being asked another question.

  “Okay,” she said. “This other partner of female gender you mention, okay, this so-called younger person, was she on the scene before we were smart enough to separate?”

  I saw no point in hesitating. “No,” I said