The People's Republic of Everything

by Nick Mamatas

  We can leave right now if you like. If you’re not impressed. If you don’t want to pick up a bill and take it downstairs to the check cashing place and pay his electricity or his cable or whatever the hell else, Paul says. If you don’t want to give him three hundred bucks for his rent this month. If you want to try somebody else who might cut your husband’s brakes, or shoot him in the fucking face, for twenty times the money. Yeah, that won’t be traced back to you. Have you even practiced crying in the mirror, Merry Widow?

  Tears well up in her eyes. She stands up straight, then her spine wilted. Waterworks. The man made to reach out for her, not thinking. All autonomic nerves, limbs jerking toward the brunette Lil like she needs saving.

  All right, all right, you’re good, Paul says.

  Lil reaches for an envelope, flashes that it’s addressed from Marolda Properties, and puts it in her purse. Now what, she says.

  We wait.

  How about we knock? She raises a tiny fist.

  I wouldn’t.

  Can we smoke?

  No . . . but yes, he said. He reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out a silver-on-bronze case, flicking it open and offering her a cigarette.

  From crimped lips: no light?

  He produces a lighter, flicks it open too. Matches the case. The cherry blooms and the door unlocks.

  Put those nasty things out, The Dreamer of the Day says. You’ll kill us all.

  The apartment is all newspapers, at first. Then she sees other things—boxes stuffed with green-and-white striped print-outs, old black-screened TVs, dusty Easter baskets, a pile of shoes. The Dreamer leads them like there’s a choice—the kitchen is piles up to the Dreamer’s eyebrows except for the path carved out from force of habit, and the living room is newspapers and magazines avalanching from sagging couches and the bedroom is just piles of old man clothes. Hats and green suitjackets and shirtsleeves sticking out like quake victims who didn’t quite pull themselves from fissures. The man has to stand sideways and sidle after the Dreamer. The woman fits, but barely, her elbows tight.

  Lil doesn’t smell a thing except old man: that’s lavender and piss.

  The bedroom—magazines she’s never seen before, filing cabinets on their sides across a twin bed, a rain of hanging plants. A patch of mattress ticking bald and empty; the Dreamer takes a seat there. Paul finds a little bench, sweeps it free of old coffee cans and pipe cleaners and sits. There’s room for her but she stands. The Dreamer reaches and there’s an audible click. A big cabinet-sized television set, framed in trash. Knobs. Black and white, but a nest of cables snaking up from it to a hole punched through the tin ceiling. Her show is on, The Cove of Love.

  Is this some kind of set-up? Lil asks. Is this some kind of joke?

  The Dreamer says, I like this show. You were good on it.

  I don’t watch it anymore, she says.

  Paul pats the bench. She sits.

  Sotto voce Paul says, We really should wait for a commercial.

  On the screen there’s a man. Old, with silver hair. In business wear, but he means business too. Sleeves rolled up. Suspenders, thick and brown. A pile of dirt, a shovel. The sky behind him is swirls of paint, normally bursting with red and purple (the woman knows that matte painting well) but on the Dreamer’s television screen it’s a sea of gray. The man picks up the shovel and begins to dig. A voice, tinny and distant, begs him to stop. It’s her voice.

  That’s a clip from three years ago, she says. Paul hisses at her. She nudges him with her elbow. The bench wobbles under them.

  Yes, the Dreamer says. When Savannah was in that old bomb shelter the gang had cornered her in, and they decided to lock her in. I remember those words, that tone. Tell me.

  Yes?

  Do you have a lot of the same outfit?

  Excuse me?

  When you’re doing something like that. Does wardrobe take back whatever you’re wearing every day and clean it, then dirty it up again so it’ll match, and you wear that suit every day, or is there a rack full of identical pantsuits, with identical tears and identical smudges and burn marks, and you wear a new one every day. You were in that bomb shelter for three months, ten minutes a day.

  They have a few outfits. We have girls who take digital pictures and they try to match the amount of dishevelment. I think we had three of that outfit for that story arc.

  That’s why I like The Cove of Love. I can tell that the director really cares about the show, the Dreamer of the Day says. The other soaps don’t even try anymore.

  A commercial for vegetable oil. A world where people in a room can look out the windows, where women stare off into space and hold up bottles and confide in the universe that some things are tastier than others.

  Why’d you bring her here, Ron? the Dreamer asks.

  I want my husband—the words stick in her throat.

  Ron.

  Ron opens his mouth. She is tired of being married to her husband.

  The Dreamer turns to look at her, to look at Ron too. He’s not a striking man. He couldn’t get a job standing on the lip of a grave on a soundstage, to stare down at the lens of a video camera. A little pudgy; skin like defrosting chicken. His undershirt is yellowed; his eyes an unremarkable brown. Hair a bundt cake around the back of his head. Lil didn’t have lunch today. She couldn’t eat.

  Aren’t you a women’s libber?

  Lil laughs at that. Who even says women’s libber anymore?

  You can get a divorce.

  Maybe he doesn’t deserve a divorce. You want the gory details? Paul told me you’re a no-questions-asked kind of guy.

  Ron, the Dreamer says.

  She looks at the man next to her.

  Here, he says, I’m Ron.

  Savannah—

  Call me Lil, she says.

  Savannah, the Dreamer repeats, I am a no-questions-asked kind of guy. I can’t say I like women’s libbers very much. I don’t care why you want your husband dead, but women like you, Savannah, you want to talk about it.

  I’m not a woman like Savannah, she says. That was a character I played on the show.

  And the show starts again. There’s a hospital. A man turns on his heel and walks off-frame. A close-up of a woman’s face. All redheads and blondes look alike. The Dreamer tells them the character’s name is Trista and that she has something horrible inside her. Then two kids bouncing on a couch, too enthusiastic when the man who meant business walks in after burying Savannah alive. A restaurant scene is next, the rhubarbrhubarb of the crowd scene like the Dreamer’s labored breaths. Then a commercial for people who want to fill a bag with gold and mail it away.

  The Dreamer says, Ron, go downstairs and get us some coffees. Ron gets up and squeezes past the rubbish into the next room.

  Lil puts her hand in her hair, combing it with her fingers. I want my husband dead because he’s been cheating on me.

  Bullshit. Pardon my French. I don’t get many female visitors. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. I know I haven’t kept up my apartment. I’m embarrassed. Ron should have told me you were coming. That you were coming. We could have met in the diner.

  I thought you never leave.

  Maybe I’d make an exception, the Dreamer says. He looked at Lil. His dentures are heavy like two rows of tombstones.

  He is cheating on me. This is third or fourth little whore.

  That’s not why you want him dead. If you wanted him dead, you would have put out a hit two or three whores ago.

  I used to have a career, something to occupy my own days. Now I’m home all day, or at the gym. I can feel her sweat on the sheets of my own bed when I lay down at night. It’s humiliating.

  Humiliating, the Dreamer echoes.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever get another role. I’m forty-one years old. I never crossed over to movies, not even to primetime.

  You’re not the bitch goddess type, the Dreamer says. Not the part for you.

  I want to know that there’s something more to the world tha
n what I’ve already lived through.

  The Dreamer extends a finger and turns off the television set. A single pixel burns in the middle of the screen.

  There’s a lot more. Worlds within worlds. You are having an affair with Ron.

  The irony doesn’t escape me, Lil says.

  You ain’t escapin’ it either, the Dreamer says.

  What?

  Ron told me that you were together. I feel for him. His wife, the big C. In her breasts, and now her brain.

  He’s a good man, Lil says.

  What’s your husband’s name?

  Whatever happened to no questions asked?

  The Dreamer smiles. I do have to ask one question. Not a personal one. Well, it’s about preferences, not information.

  Answer mine first, Lil says.

  Anything for you, Miss Savannah.

  Why do they call you the dreamer of the day?

  All men dream, but not equally, the Dreamer says. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.

  That’s beautiful.

  That’s T. E. Lawrence.

  Who?

  The Dreamer of the Day shivers, visibly disgusted. Finally, he lets . . . of Arabia extrude from his mouth like sludge. And you got two questions out of me, Savannah. More than anyone ever has. I have a weakness for you.

  I apologize, Lil says. I’ll collect another envelope from the foyer on my way out. She says foyer like a Frenchwoman. What’s your question?

  Kill him fast or kill him slow?

  Slow.

  The Dreamer gets up and leaves the room. Lil hears some clatter in the kitchen and gets up. The Dreamer has cleared off the stove. He has a tea kettle out. She almost trips over the junk on the floor.

  Pau—uh, Ron. He’s getting coffees from the diner.

  Ron’s not getting us any fucking coffee, the Dreamer says, gravel in his teeth. Paul’s not getting coffees. He puts his hands on the stove, a little electric number, squeezes his fingers in the gaps between counter and stovetop on either side, and gives it all a shake. A red light blinks to life.

  No apologies for your French this time, monsieur?

  This is how it’s gonna go, the Dreamer of the Day says. He looks up and off to the side, and some random piece of paper up atop a teetering pile in the living room. Ron’s down at the diner, see. He knows the one. It used to be Greek; it’s Russian now. Your husband’s fourth little whore is there. Blonde milkmaid type. Her upper lip curls when she smiles. He likes that kind of thing. You can do it too.

  She can, yes. She does, Pavlovian. Close-ups, she says. You’ve seen the show.

  Well it just so happens that your husband is in the diner too, see? He likes to watch the girl lean over the Formica for tips. He likes to count the seconds other men keep their hands on her ass while she takes their orders. Then he likes to take her up to your home, up to Valhalla on the Metro North so he doesn’t have to drive, doesn’t have to keep his hands on the wheel.

  Valhalla. That’s on my Wikipedia page. You probably have a computer around here somewhere.

  The Dreamer starts rummaging through a cabinet for a cup. He finds one, waves it hooked around his finger, and then finds a second. This on your Wikipedia page? he asks. Your boyfriend Paul Osorio is connected. How do you think he knows me. He’s packing. He sees your husband and is overcome. He pulls out his gun.

  Paul doesn’t carry a gun. He’s a good man.

  He knows the Dreamer of the Day. I don’t know any good men. I don’t meet them in my line of work. No good women either. What did he tell you? That he knew a guy who knew a guy who knew someone who could help you? He is a guy. He’d have done it himself, if you’d asked him, but why would you ask him? He’s a good man.

  Mister, I think I’m going to meet Paul downstairs. I’ll get you some help—my sister is a social worker. You don’t have to live like this. There are nice places. You won’t be lonely either.

  The tea kettle screams. You don’t want to go down there, the Dreamer says. Paul’s already put a bullet in your husband. He aimed for the head but missed because the whore’s a sharpie. Paul got a faceful of hot coffee the second she saw the gun. Right in the eyes. He’s not going to see out of his left anymore. That face—second and third degree burns. Saint Vincent’s isn’t that far away. Both of them will make it to the ER.

  My husban—

  The chest. Bullet just misses the heart. But you said you wanted it slow, so you get it. He bleeds, but he lives. You can go see him later tonight if you want. Take in a movie. Buy yourself a nice dinner. 9 pm. Visiting hours will be over, but they’ll let you in. The night shift, they’re all fans. You’ll cry like you did in court when the government took your Chinese baby away.

  That wasn’t me. That was a character.

  They were your tears, the Dreamer of the Day says. That’ll get you in. Go see him. You’ll think the staph will have come from here. That you’re the carrier, that you infected him.

  He pours two cups of tea. He hands one to Lil. She takes it but doesn’t drink.

  This is the most disgusting place you’ve ever set foot in, he says matter-of-factly. So when your husband gets the MRSA, you’ll think it’s your fault. It’ll get in his blood nice and slow. It’ll take weeks for him to die. He’ll cry even better than you, demand that you visit him every day. Get a hotel room so you can spend all day by his side. He’ll forget the whore entirely, and she’ll be sent back to Moscow till the heat is off. You’ll sneak down to the burn ward to see Paul twice, three times. Then forget it. It won’t matter, though.

  Why won’t it? she asks. She passes the cup from hand to hand. There’s no place to put it down.

  His face will be ruined, but so will your husband’s. The MRSA will do a number on his skin. Boils worthy of Job. Kill him slow. He’ll lose half his nose. Three weeks of rats in the veins.

  Lil throws the content of her teacup at the Dreamer of the Day, but he’s ready. An old New York Post, he swipes it off the countertop and holds it up. The tea splatters all over another disgraced governor in black and white and red.

  The Dreamer drops the paper, steps on it as he walks past Lil. Show’s over, he says. Go home. You’ll see.

  She follows him back to the bedroom. You crazy old man, she says. What the hell? Did you put Paul up to this? Did he put you up to this? What kind of freakshow are you two lunatics running here? Christ, talk about far-fetched. I’ve met some real winners, some deranged fans, but you, you are a fucking fruitcake—

  The Dreamer grabs a great handful of old suits and tosses them on the white tongue of the bed on which he’s sat. The back door of the railroad apartment. He opens it and walks out without a word. Where are you going! You can’t leave! she demands. The door slams shut. Lil rushes to the door, tries the knob. It’s unlocked, but she has to push, not pull. All the trash and boxes bar the way. She can’t squeeze her pinky through the crack of the door for the rubbish. Lil grabs her purse from the little bench, runs through the apartment on tiptoes, sideways along the narrow path through the piles of garbage, and hits the hallway through the front entrance.

  No Dreamer. Lil looks down the well of the staircases. No Dreamer. He’s an old slow man. He couldn’t have made it outside in time. She’s on the second floor; there are no first floor apartments he could have ducked into. Lil stomps down the steps and walks outside to a dusk painted red and blue from the lights of ambulances and a black and white. A radio crackles. A shrieking, thrashing blonde held inches over the sidewalk by a pair of cops gets shoved into the back seat of the cop car. Then, gurneys.

  Lil can’t see her husband. He’s in emergency surgery. Paul she doesn’t dare ask after, not when she sees two men in tanklike suits in the waiting area very patiently not reading the newspapers open in their hands. She doesn’t want to go all the way up to Grand Central. She doesn’t want t
o say to the Metro North ticket clerk behind those bars of bronze, “One way to Valhalla.” She takes in a movie. Cries through it. It’s about someone with cancer. A real tearjerker. She can taste the hospital on-screen. Lil orders a nice dinner in a little place down on Greenwich Street, where the grid of the city collapses against the shore of the Hudson River. Doesn’t eat it. Tips fifty percent for some privacy. Indigo skies go gray. Nine o’clock, she’s crying in the lobby of Saint Vincent’s. Not for her husband. Not for Paul. But her husband, he’s the one she decides to see.

  Lil washed her hands at the restaurant. Again in the ladies’ restroom. She takes her husband’s hand now because he’s unconscious, breathing hard as though deep in his still body he’s running from somebody. She pulls her hand back but it’s too late.

  ____________________

  In the 1990s it was possible, barely, to live in Manhattan while being poor. I was doing it, kind of, as were several of my friends. I knew this guy named Paul, who was very nice, if a bit of a hothead. He also had some eccentric religious beliefs, gray teeth, and was an excellent street fighter. One time I went to his apartment on a semi-desirable block in the East Village and met his girlfriend, who was perhaps about thirty years older than he was. It was the first time I’d ever been in the home of a Level Four Hoarder. The only thing not making Paul and his lover Level Five Hoarders is that they actually lived in the apartment, rather than sleeping outside in the hallway or on the roof. Bundles of newspapers were stacked up to my ears, and tables and bureaus were piled, on their sides, in the corners. There was a single path to a rotting twin mattress, and what appeared to be a working toilet in the corner. If there had once been walls around it forming a water closet, they’d long since been torn down or just collapsed into a heap of drywall and splintered wood.

  They invited me to stay for dinner. Paul’s lover said she was pretty sure she could find a pot, and they had several cans of chili somewhere. I begged off on the meal, but I did stick around for about twenty minutes. I wasn’t even a writer yet, but I memorized what I saw and thought, “I can use this, somehow.” And I did twenty-five years later, for “Dreamer of the Day.”