The Dreaming Field

by Ron Savage

  “I just need to know he’s okay. When he’s better, a couple of weeks…when I know for sure—”

  ”You won’t be alone, Momma. You can come to Philly with me; be with your sister. What’s her name?”

  “Joan.”

  “Uh-huh, you can live with Joan. You like her, right?”

  “…I guess…yes.”

  “And you won’t have to worry about being hurt. You won’t have to put on make-up to hide your bruises, none of that. You can stop being afraid.”

  “I’m going to call 911 now, Johnny.”

  She slipped her hands away from his, walked toward the kitchen. And the telephone. Jonathan stared at Randolph, the gray face, the blank lifeless eyes. The boy touched the side of his father’s neck. No pulse.

  Dead, Momma.

  You waited just long enough, didn’t you?

  From the kitchen, he heard Tamara give the operator their address.

  “…yes,” she was saying, “…yes…an accident.”

  PART II: DREAMING INTO THE WORLD

  And my guide said, “I am the one who takes this living man from circle to circle, and I mean to show him hell.”

  —Inferno

  “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murders are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

  —Voltaire

  SIX

  1993

  Philadelphia

  I

  On the night of his third show at the Walnut Street Gallery, Simon Aaron had downed twenty milligrams of diazepam and allowed his agent Nathan Katz to drive him to the opening, a rare occurrence.

  “You need to get out more,” Nathan said on the way to the gallery. “Don’t get me wrong, I like the reclusive artist shit—mystery’s good for business—but let’s face facts, your life’s in the toilet. You need to mingle.”

  “I’m here, right?”

  “Hey, Sy, I don’t think of myself as just your agent. How long have we been together now? Six, seven years? I’m your friend, probably your only friend. And friends should be honest with each other.”

  “Uh-huh, I love you, too.”

  The friend leaned on the horn, rolled down the window, and yelled at the car ahead to take the lead out of its ass.

  Nathan Katz wasn’t exactly what Simon would’ve called Mr. Sensitive—more a cross between a lawyer and a pit bull—but in their eight year partnership—and it was eight, not six or seven—Katz had brought his work into New York four times, Chicago twice, Paris once, and now the third show in Philadelphia, all of this starting at the age of twenty—not bad, actually—and Simon Aaron was getting known, as the agent liked to call it—making money, please God don’t forget the money.

  Nathan Katz, with his Vitalis hair, what there was of it, and the thousand dollar silk suits, and the diamond pinky ring—let’s not forget the goddamn diamond—ole Get-the-Lead-Out Nathan had done his job, God love him, and the way Simon saw it, screw the sensitivity training.

  “…you don’t leave the house.” His agent doing the usual shtick: “You don’t date. Your right hand probably has callouses—”

  “Left hand.”

  “Okay, left hand. The point is, Simon, I worry. You understand? I worry. You’re a good-looking guy.”

  “You asking me out?”

  “I’m serious. You are a good-looking guy. So you got a handicap. Everybody’s got a handicap. Is that it? The crippled thing?”

  Simon laughed; shook his head. “No, Nathan, the cripple thing’s under control. My gait’s been improving, really.”

  The night Virgil had died, Simon remembered running from the theater and his fall down the embankment, but nothing after that. Dr. Thatcher at Einstein Medical told the Aarons their son had suffered a Basilar fracture, partially severing the acoustic nerve—his left ear fine, but the damage to the right ear left a faint whispery noise—and he also managed a subdural; this, wiping out the motor strip of his right leg. The verdict: maybe permanent; maybe not. Maggie, his physical therapist, seemed to think not. Over the years, Simon had gone from an aluminum crutch with rings that braced his upper and lower arm to a cane; and recently, though seldom discussing it for fear of a jinx, he was limping about the house on his own two feet.

  The Cripple Thing came in handy during adolescence; legitimized abandoning school and keeping Benjamin’s “gifts” at a distance. He focused on sketching and painting, more as an escape than anything else, his father enrolling him in an art correspondence course.

  When Simon thought about that night, the accident itself had been a strange blessing, a double blessing: preventing the crazies and acquiring a career.

  Yes, it brought him Nathan Katz.

  Nathan was leaning on the horn, again. “Hey! You color-blind, or what? Don’t look at me, it’s a green light, for Christ’s sake!” And then to Simon: “The guy’s looking at me, the jerk. What’s with that?”

  “You probably caught his attention.”

  “Nice. I got a jerk up there, and a comedian in here.”

  “Try not to stroke. The veins in your head are showing.”

  “You’re right. I gotta relax.” Nathan blew out a tiny stream of air and wiggled his shoulders. “I’m not a well man, Simon. I mean, you shouldn’t worry, okay? But I got the high blood pressure.”

  “No shit.”

  “Hey, forget it. Like I said, not to worry. I take a pill, bip-bip-bip, I’m great. A regular horse.” As if to demonstrate, Katz reached into the inside pocket of his navy blue suitcoat, retrieved a small amber bottle, twisted the cap with thumb and forefinger, and tongued a green and white pill into his mouth, the entire business under five seconds, including the bottle’s return. “See? A horse,” he said, flipping his hand dismissively, perhaps to ward off possible comments. “My health isn’t the subject. Ignore my health. The subject here is you.”

  “I thought we discussed the cripple thing.”

  “I’m glad you find me so amusing. The cripple thing ain’t the issue, and you know it. What we’re discussing is this reclusive, excuse-me-from-life shit. That’s the conversation.”

  “The monk thing.”

  “Yeah, okay, wise-ass, the monk thing.”

  And what do you say to Nathan Katz? Pardon, Nate, you may see this as a tad bizarre, but a guy named Benjamin—who I suspect is not of our world—gave me some very dubious gifts in the giant heart at the Franklin Institute; and now, every time I leave the house, I have to load up on drugs or I get overwhelmed by people’s thoughts and feelings. Oh. Also, I’m getting a lot better at seeing a person’s future. Not mine, of course; not a fucking glimmer there. Thank God for that, huh?

  And I don’t know why I have these gifts.

  Understand, Nate, old buddy?

  No hint.

  No clue.

  No nothing.

  That ought to do it. I can watch his blood pressure make those little veins in his head go nuts. A two-pill job, easy.

  Simon stared through the tinted window of Nathan’s black Lincoln. They passed the Walnut Street Theater on Ninth, a small group gathered in the warm June night—men in dark suits and tuxes; women wearing evening gowns—the theater crowd.

  “I guess I’m not good company,” he said.

  “No, no. I’m being pushy.” Katz patted him on the knee. “Sorry, kid. You’ve had a lot on you this year. But tonight’s your night, the man of the hour.”

  The year had been catastrophically bad. If given to paranoia, he’d have thought The Fates were plotting against him, stripping away his support, the emotional moorings. His parents died in December, the Ford station wagon leaping a guard rail and exploding in a goddamn ravine on the way to Atlantic City. Utterly insane. Simon even had a vision of this; warned his mother, begged her, but she had given him one of those Oh-Poor-Boy looks—and what other look did he expect after an adolescence filled with psychiatrists?—and she’d used her Oh-Poor-Boy voice, asking him to keep his comments to himself and try not to upset his fath
er, who believed in the visions, or at least wanted to believe in them.

  How could anybody blame her?

  Then there was Virgil, of course.

  A parade of doctors followed the boy’s death, beginning with a court ordered evaluation and three months in The Pines, a private whacko farm, basically, but he couldn’t fault the judge’s reasoning. You don’t go telling the police that a woman had pulled out the deceased’s heart, eaten it, then changed into a guy named Eddy.

  On the day of his friend’s funeral, while everyone was comforting the bereaved, Simon had seen the fellow with the hobnail boots and leather jacket hop onto the mahogany casket suspended over freshly dug earth; seen him whip out his cock and urinate on the flowers strewn across its polished surface.

  “Probably his head injury,” Dr. Thatcher had said. “Hallucinations happen in these cases. Patients see all sorts of things.”

  Where are you, Benjamin? You weren’t supposed to leave me.

  …where are you?

  No, the obvious hadn’t escaped Simon: the systematic elimination of the people he’d depended upon and loved.

  …Benjamin…

  …what do you want?

  II

  Simon had counted seventy-six people, a nice turn-out—and at eight in the evening, so early—the gallery would probably be filled by ten. He sat on a gray metal folding chair in the corner, shaking the hand of an occasional well-wisher, chit-chatting, and working on his second flute of champagne.

  The Walnut Street gallery, a spacious room with dark oak floors buffed to a shine, white walls, and, da-da!, his paintings, massive things, most seven or eight feet wide and three to four feet in height, pictures depicting the dreams: Washington Square; a smoking Broadway dappled in tiny flames, lapping the curb and windows of vacant buildings; one of Eddy and the boy at Tavern on the Green, complete with open pizza box, minus the insects; dark club interiors, the Village and Soho, cracked neon sprays, electric blues and reds, dusty bars reflecting the night’s dim orange fires; the Church of the Ascension on Fourteenth and Union, its brick charred, the broken stained-glass seemed to shimmer under a gray full moon—and the flames, always the flames—flames that crept along the belfry tower in thin vines.

  Other sections of the city had been captured by the artist too: Chinatown, Little Italy. Simon had also traveled to a hundred and seventy-nine East Ninety-third Street, a nondescript three bedroom row house, painting the details, the faces of Groucho, Chico and Harpo (sorry Zeppo) done translucently in oils, ghosts walking amid their burning childhood home. There were twenty pictures, including a full portrait of Benjamin, white hair loose about the cloak, his hands out-stretched, palms up.

  The only places not explored in the dreams had been the subways—the entrances reminding him of gaping, toothless mouths—the concrete platforms where you waited for whatever rumbled through those black tunnels.

  Thanks, but no thanks.

  He’d heard cries coming from down there and other…things and, yes, maybe the wind, or maybe his imagination, which seemed pumped to the max every time he dreamed himself into the city, but you damn well could hear them, the moans, the screams, the voices pleading faintly, hustling, making deals…

  …I’ll be what you want…

  …tell me what you want…

  …jumbled voices mixing with the wind, as though an entire other city lived beneath the earth. And the tunnels lead to them. You only had to follow the tunnels.

  Simon had seen a subway entrance on Eighty-Sixth Street, words spraypainted in dripping cherry red above its steps; and not just bullshit graffiti, not just any words, but the words:

  ABANDON YE ALL HOPE WHO ENTER HERE

  Real fuckin’ cute, Eddy.

  I love an asshole with a sense of humor.

  “Hello?…Mr. Aaron?…Yoohooo.”

  A hand waved in front of Simon’s face, fingers wiggling, nails cherry red, bad color, lady…

  “…I hate disturbing you,” the woman said.

  When Simon glanced up at her, he felt himself instinctively drawing back in his chair.

  “Oh, dear, do I look that frightening?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Must be the hair,” she muttered. “I told him not to get scissor happy, but the man never listens.” Thin fingers reached for strands that stopped at mid-ear, her hair black and straight and done in a severe bob. “‘Very Thirties’, he said, ‘very chic’, and I said, ‘Henry, you’ve turned me into something from a concentration camp.’ But what can you do? They have their own minds. You walk into a salon and your hair isn’t your own, anymore.” She scooted one of the metal folding chairs next to Simon and sat, automatically crossing her slim legs at the knee, tucking in the hem of her black skirt. “I’m Dora Mills from the Bulletin’s Arts. Do you read the Bulletin?”

  “Yes, sure, I do.”

  Perspiration began to form on the back of his neck, his white dress shirt becoming sticky and damp.

  Dora.

  Don’t even think it.

  Her whole body structure is different, too thin, too…angular. But…the face…the dark, See-Through-You eyes…isn’t that her?…or him…and the name. Don’t forget the name.

  Eddy?

  Is that you, Eddy?

  Simon ruffled into her mind, only a moment, but he found nothing but her thoughts on hair: how horribly short it was, and what a fright she must be, and how she never, never had any luck with men—the Simon Aaron types, especially—the sensitive ones; and then she wondered what it might be like to make love to a…handicapped…man.

  Ah, the Crippled Thing.

  No, this wasn’t Eddy. Yet Simon couldn’t ignore the similarity between her and the other Dora, the one under the green stage light, the one with blood on her lips.

  “…Dora,” he said, still feeling uneasy. “…pretty.”

  “My grandmother’s, and someone before her, I think.” The reporter did a nervous, breathy laugh as she rummaged in her over-sized canvas handbag and retrieved a small tape player. “Is it okay?” She didn’t wait to click the recorder.

  “Uh-huh, your family’s lived here awhile?”

  “Us and William Penn,” Dora said, brushing aside the question. “Shall we do our interview, Mr. Aaron?”

  Who is she, Eddy?

  I bet you know.

  III

  Dora seemed harmless enough, the interviewer inspired more with him than his art, or so he thought (flattered himself?); she, actually batting her eyes, even blushing on occasion; and Simon, feeling aroused by this flirtation, her apparent nervousness. God, when was the last time he’d felt that way? Nice-looking, you know? Thirty-ish, on the thin side, black skirt and blouse, very intense, but with a fragile, vulnerable quality: Elizabeth Taylor in her younger, emaciated period. And twenty minutes into the interview, Simon had asked the woman to sit for him, a portrait. Though not discussing the details, he had a new project in mind—images of Virgil’s death—and he wanted Dora as a model for the other Dora, Eddy’s little friend, or illusion, or whatever. The reporter had done another blush, cheeks and neck becoming a blotchy crimson, fingers clawing and tugging at the back of her hair; going, “Oh, uh, sure, uh, of course, yes,” and dropped her recorder as she dug inside the canvas handbag and gave Simon a business card. “There’s also a home phone there, ” saying that while picking up the tape player, long slim legs untangling themselves. Then with a, “…well, thank you…uh, for the interview”—not only standing now but in motion— “…and…and see’ya…soon,” Dora Mills fled across the room.

  Smooth move, Simon.

  Mr. Romance.

  You may be asking for trouble.

  Virgil’s death hadn’t left him. Each day there were at least one or two images, and he thought the new project might resolve the obsession, put the grief to rest. His therapy, so-to-speak.

  Simon was watching Nathan Katz schmoozing a man in a plain gray suit—his back in view—the man holding the hand of a child, the girl five, perhap
s six, red curly hair and an indigo colored party dress complete with crinolines. They stood next to the Tavern on the Green painting. Nathan pointed to Simon, and the man turned and smiled.

  Jonathan Clayman.

  A wave, his smile morphing into a big toothy grin: forever the politician. Simon would’ve recognized Clayman even without the purple scar on his cheek. Jonathan was high profile, the just elected congressman from the 4th district, one of the youngest to be voted into that body, and photographs of him where everywhere, billboards, cabs, buses. Three-quarter shots, mostly; his scar, the singular imperfection, always faced away from the camera. He’d been an in-house student at Penn, both undergrad and law, his GPA left him forty-third in a class of seven hundred and fifty. Law school wasn’t much different, honors included president of the Law Review. At twenty-six, he worked for Mayor Frank Pallo, a man who politically ran not only Philadelphia but—and this a rumor—the state. Jonathan Clayman had walked into Congress without breaking a sweat. There did seem to be a darker side to him, specifically his wife’s death, a tragedy the media seemed unable to clarify.

  “I really like your work,” Jonathan said, firm handshake, his other hand cupping Simon’s elbow; this accompanied by the buddy-buddy campaign grin he’d seen on TV. “You’re a tremendous artist, Mr. Aaron. Absolutely, tremendous.”

  The guy doesn’t know me.

  …not a clue.

  Simon felt a gentle, liquidy current travel through his fingers and up his arm.

  The images vivid…

  Virgil standing at the Eighty-Sixth Street entrance to the subway. Smoke surrounded the boy, mist in the orange-tinted night. A white cloth draped his left shoulder, covering most of his large body, the visible flesh gray and decaying, the angle of his garment partially revealing the gaping hole in his chest. He was signaling, a slow arm motion.

  Here, Simon…