The Dream Merchants

by Harold Robbins

  The stranger held out his hand and smiled. “I’m Joe Turner of Graphic Pictures Company. I came up to show Johnny how to operate the moving-picture machine that was delivered yesterday.”

  Peter took his hand and shook it. “Glad to know you,” he said. “But I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment. Johnny left here the day before yesterday.”

  Turner looked disappointed. “He couldn’t hold out?”

  Peter shook his head. “Things were pretty bad. He went back to his old job.”

  “With Santos?” Turner asked.

  “Yes,” Peter answered. “You knew Johnny?”

  “We worked for Santos together. He’s a good kid. Too bad he couldn’t have held on for a few more days. Moving pictures would have pulled him out of the hole.”

  “In Rochester?” Peter laughed.

  Turner looked at him. “Why not? Rochester isn’t any different than any place else and moving pictures are the biggest thing in the entertainment field and getting bigger every day. Ever see them?”

  “No,” said Peter. “Never even heard about them until your man delivered the machine here yesterday.”

  Turner took a cigar out of his pocket, bit the end off it, and lighted it. He blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at Peter a moment before he spoke. “You look like a fair man to me, Mr. Kessler, so I’m going to make you a proposition. I guaranteed Johnny’s machine to my office. If I have to pull it back, I’m hooked for the freight and installation charges even if the machine is never used. That’s over a hundred dollars. You let me run a show for you tonight, and if you like it you open up and give it a try.”

  Peter shook his head. “Not me. I’m a hardware man. I don’t know nothing about moving pictures.”

  Turner persisted. “It doesn’t make any difference. It’s a new business. Just two years ago a man by the name of Fox opened a picture show without any experience and he’s doing all right. So did another man by the name of Laemmle. All you have to do is run the machine. People will pay to see the pictures. There’s good money in it. It’s the coming thing.”

  “Not for me,” Peter told him. “I got a good business. I don’t need any headaches.”

  “Look, Mr. Kessler,” Turner said, “it won’t cost you anything to see it. The projector’s here already. I got some cans of film outside and nothing better to do with my time. Let me run a show for you, and you can see for yourself what it’s like. And then if you don’t like it, I’ll pull the machine out.”

  Peter thought for a moment. He wanted to see the moving pictures. The few words the drayman had said to him the other day had excited his imagination. “All right,” he said, “I’ll look. But I’m not promising anything.”

  Turner smiled. He held his hand out to Peter again. “That’s what they all say until they see it. I’m telling you, Mr. Kessler, you may not know it but you’re in the picture business already.”

  Peter invited Mr. Turner to have supper with them. When he introduced Turner to Esther, she looked at him questioningly but didn’t say anything. He hastened to explain: “Mr. Turner is going to show us some moving pictures tonight.”

  After they had eaten, Turner excused himself, saying he had to go downstairs to set things up. Peter went along with him.

  As they walked into the penny arcade together, Turner looked around. “Too bad Johnny had to leave. This was just the thing he needed.”

  Then Peter told him why Johnny had left and about the note Johnny had written.

  Turner listened attentively while he worked, and when Peter had finished, he said: “Anyway, Mr. Kessler, you don’t have to worry about the money Johnny owes you. If he said he’d pay you, he will.”

  “Who’s worried about the money?” Peter asked. “We liked the kid. He almost seemed like one of the family by now.”

  Turner smiled. “That’s the way Johnny is. I remember when his folks were killed. Johnny was about ten years old then. Santos and I were discussing what to do with him. He had no other relatives, so he would have gone to an orphanage, but instead Santos decided to keep him. After a while Santos used to say Johnny seemed just like his own kid.”

  Turner finished his work in silence and Peter went upstairs to get Esther. When they came down, all the lights in the store were turned off. They sat down self-consciously in the dark where Turner told them. Excited as Peter was about seeing the moving pictures, at the same time he was glad there weren’t many people on the street to see him.

  “Ready?” Turner asked.

  “Yes,” Peter answered.

  Suddenly a bright light flashed on the screen that Turner had set up in front of where they sat. Some printed words, which blurred, then became clearer as Turner focused the lens. Then the words were off the screen before they had a chance to read them and there was a train, small in the corner of the screen, smoke belching from it. It was moving toward them, growing larger every second.

  Then it was upon them. It seemed to leap from the screen into their faces.

  Esther made a small cry and buried her face on Peter’s shoulder, her hand grasping for his. Peter held her hand tightly. His throat was dry, he couldn’t speak, and his face was pale with sweat.

  “Is it gone?” Esther asked, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

  “It’s gone,” Peter answered, surprised that he could speak.

  Almost before the words had left his mouth, they were on a beach and some girls were going swimming and they stood around and smiled; and then they were on a ferryboat coming into New York Harbor and the familiar buildings looked so real that they were tempted to reach out and touch them, but before they could they were out at the race track in Sheepshead Bay and the horses were running and the crowd was milling around and one horse, running mightily, finished ahead of the others and it was all over. A bright light flashed on the screen again, hurting their eyes.

  Surprised, Peter still found Esther’s hand in his. He heard Turner’s voice saying: “How did you like it?”

  Peter stood up, still blinking his eyes. He saw Turner smiling at him. He brushed his hands over his eyes wonderingly. “If I didn’t see it myself, I still wouldn’t believe it.”

  Turner laughed. “They all say that at first.” He turned on the store lights.

  Then Peter first saw the crowd. They were standing in the street, their faces vague and anonymous, pressed up against the windows of the store, their eyes filled with the same wonder and amazement as his. He turned to Esther. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” she answered. “I never saw anything like this before.”

  The door opened and the crowd came pouring in. Peter began to recognize people and faces. They were all talking at once.

  “What is it?” one of them asked.

  “Moving pictures, from New York,” Peter heard Turner reply.

  “You going to show them here?”

  “I don’t know,” Turner answered. “That depends on Mr. Kessler.”

  The crowd looked at Peter.

  Peter stood there a second without speaking, his mind still filled with what he had just seen. Suddenly he heard himself saying: “Sure, sure we’re going to show them here. We’ll be open by Saturday night.”

  Esther grabbed him by the arm. “Bist du meshuggeh?” she asked; “Saturday is the day after tomorrow!”

  He whispered to her: “Crazy? Me? With all these people wanting to pay to see moving pictures?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Peter began to feel big, his heart started to pound. He would open by Saturday night. After all, Esther didn’t say no.

  ***

  It was a little less than six weeks later that Johnny came back to Rochester. His valise in one hand, he walked up the street toward the arcade. He stopped on the sidewalk in front of the building. The hardware store was still the same but the penny arcade was no more. The old sign had been taken down and a new one put up: Kessler’s Nickelodeon.

  It was early in the morning and the
street was still deserted. Johnny stood there looking at the sign for a minute; then, shifting his grip on the valise from one hand to the other, he walked into Peter’s store. He stood in the doorway for a second, his eyes getting used to the darkness in the store.

  Peter saw him first and came running up to him, hand outstretched. “Johnny!”

  Johnny dropped the valise and took Peter’s hand.

  “You did come back,” Peter was saying excitedly. “I told Esther you would. I told her. She said maybe you wouldn’t want to, but I said we’ll telegraph him anyway and find out.”

  Johnny grinned. “I didn’t understand why you wanted me—especially after the way I powdered on you. But—”

  Peter didn’t let him finish. “No buts. What happened we’ll forget. It’s over.” He looked around him for Doris; seeing her, he called: “Go upstairs and tell Mamma that Johnny’s here.” He drew Johnny farther into the store.

  “I felt you should come back. This was your idea, you were entitled to something from it.” His gaze fell on Doris. She was still standing there, looking at Johnny. “Didn’t I tell you to go upstairs and tell Mamma?” he demanded.

  “I only wanted to say hello to Uncle Johnny first,” she answered plaintively.

  “All right, then, say hello and hurry up to Mamma.”

  Doris came over to Johnny gravely and held out her hand. “Hello, Uncle Johnny.”

  Johnny laughed and picked her up and held her to him. “Hello, sweetheart, I missed yuh.”

  She blushed and squirmed out of his arms and ran to the stairs. “I gotta tell Mamma,” she said, and ran up the steps.

  Johnny turned to Peter. “Now tell me what happened.”

  “The day after you left, Joe Turner came in, and before I knew it I was in the picture business.” Peter smiled. “I didn’t expect it to be such a big thing though. It’s too much for me. Esther has been working the cash, but I’m too tired at night after a day in the store to run movies too. So we decided to ask you to come back. Like I said in the telegram, you get a hundred a month and ten percent of the profits.”

  “It sounded good to me,” Johnny said. “I seen a lot of these nickelodeons around and they’re getting to be a big thing.”

  Later they walked into the nickelodeon. Johnny looked around him approvingly. The machines had all been taken out and rows of benches had been placed in their stead, only the Grandma fortune-telling machine remained undisturbed in her corner near the door.

  Johnny walked over to the machine and rapped on the glass. “It looks like you were right, old girl.”

  “What did you say?” Peter asked, looking startled.

  “The old girl here told my fortune the night I left. She said I’d be back. I thought she was nuts, but she knew more than me.”

  Peter looked at him. “In Yiddish we have a saying: ‘What is to be must be.’”

  Johnny looked around the store before he answered: “I still can hardly believe it.” He thought back to the time when he got Peter’s telegram. He had shown it to Al Santos.

  “I don’t know why this guy wants me back after I skipped out on three months’ rent,” he had said.

  “Two months,” Al Santos corrected him. “You sent him one month’s rent last payday.”

  “I know,” Johnny answered, “but I still don’t get it.”

  “Maybe the guy likes yuh,” Al said. “What yuh goin’ tuh do?”

  Johnny looked at him in surprise. “Go back. What do you think I’m gonna do?”

  Johnny took his hand off the fortune-telling machine. “How many shows a day do you give here?” he asked.

  “One,” Peter answered.

  “From now on we’re giving three,” Johnny said. “One matinee and two evenings.”

  “Where we get the customers?” Peter asked.

  Johnny looked at Peter to see if he was joking. Satisfied that Peter was entirely serious, he answered: “Peter, you got a lot to learn about show business. I’ll tell yuh how we’re goin’ to get the business. We’ll advertise. We’ll plaster billboards all across the countryside, we’ll advertise in the newspapers. We’re the only picture show in the whole section. People will travel to see it, if we let them know about it. Besides, it doesn’t cost us any more to run the film three times a day instead of once. We only pay one rental for it.”

  Peter looked at Johnny with a new respect. “The kid’s got common sense. Right away he figures out how we could do three times more business,” he thought, feeling a sense of relief flow over him. Now that Johnny was back, he began to realize that he didn’t have to worry about the nickelodeon any more.

  “That’s a good idea, Johnny,” Peter said aloud, “a very good idea.”

  Late that night when Peter fell asleep he was still thinking about it. Three times more business.

  4

  George Pappas stood across the street from Kessler’s nickelodeon at seven thirty in the evening and watched the crowds going in to see the show. He took out his watch and checked the time. He heaved a sigh and shook his head. These moving pictures were changing the time habits of the town. Before the nickelodeon had opened, you could find only a few persons on the street after seven o’clock. And here it was nearly eight o’clock and people were going into the nickelodeon.

  It wasn’t only the townspeople that were there. Farmers and other people from out of town were coming to see the moving pictures, too. This fellow Edge that Kessler had with him was a live wire all right. He had covered the entire territory with signs telling about the new nickelodeon.

  George Pappas sighed again. It was very strange, but he had a feeling the change was here to stay. He had been in to see the show before and he felt an important thing had come into his life. Just how it was going to affect him he did not know. He only knew that it would.

  He owned a small ice-cream parlor about five blocks away. At seven o’clock he and his brother would close up the store and go home to eat. There wasn’t any business in the evening, except on Saturday nights. But here it was Tuesday and there were more people coming in to see Kessler’s show than George had seen on the streets of Rochester even on a Saturday night. He sighed again and wondered how it would be possible to attract some of these people to his ice-cream parlor.

  He started to walk toward home pondering this problem, when suddenly he stopped short. A thought had come to him. It had flashed into his mind in Greek. It came so quickly and naturally that he didn’t fully understand it until his mind had translated it into English. Then it was so right, so perfectly the answer to his question, that he turned back and walked across the street to the nickelodeon.

  At the door he stopped. Esther was there taking change from the people as they entered. “Hallo, Missus Kessler,” he said.

  Esther was busy, so she answered briefly: “Hello, George.”

  “Is Mr. Kessler around?” he asked in his funny stilted manner.

  “He’s inside,” Esther told him.

  “I would like for to see him, plizz.”

  She looked at him curiously; his earnest intentness had caught her attention. “He’ll be out in a few minutes, the show is about ready to go on. Is there anything I can do?”

  George shook his head. “I will wait. I got some business to make with him.”

  Esther watched him walk over to the door and lean against the wall. Vaguely she wondered what business George had with Peter, but she was busy making change and in a few seconds had forgotten he was there.

  George was busy too. As he stood by the door he counted about forty people going in. He looked in the door of the nickelodeon. The place was filled with people. Row after row, people sat close together chatting expectantly with one another, waiting for the show to start. Some of them had brought fruit with them and were eating it. George figured there were more than two hundred people in the place when Peter came out and shut the door. And there were still people in the street, and more were coming.

  He watched Peter shut the door and hold up
his hand. “There will be another show in an hour,” he heard Peter say to those waiting. “We’re all filled up, but if you’ll wait you all will get in.”

  He heard a good-natured murmur of disappointment come from the crowd, but very few left; most of them settled down for a wait. And those that left were more than made up for by new arrivals. Gradually a line began to form that went down the street.

  Peter stuck his head inside the door, “All right, Johnny,” he shouted. “Start the show.”

  The audience started to applaud as the lights in the store went off; then suddenly there was silence as the first picture began to flash on the screen.

  Peter had lit a cigar as George walked up to him.

  “Hallo, Mr. Kessler.”

  “Hello, George, how are you?” Peter replied expansively, puffing at his cigar.

  “Prooty good, Mr. Kessler,” George said politely. He looked around him. “Lots of poopuls you got come here.”

  Peter smiled. “We certainly have, George. Everybody wants to see the moving pictures. Did you see them yet?”

  George nodded his head.

  “It’s the coming thing,” Peter said.

  “Mr. Kessler, I think so, too,” George assured him. “You got good mind for what poopuls want.”

  Peter beamed at the compliment. “Thanks, George.” He reached into his vest pocket. “Here, George, have a cigar.”

  George took it gravely. Although he didn’t like cigars and couldn’t stand smoking at all, he held it expertly to his nose and smelled it. “Good cigar,” he said.

  “I have ’em sent special from New York,” Peter told him. “They’re six cents apiece.”

  “If it’s all right with you, Mr. Kessler,” George said, putting the cigar carefully in his pocket, “I will smoke him after dinner to enjoy him better.”

  Peter nodded, his attention already wandering, his eyes on the crowd.

  George sensed his inattentiveness, but he didn’t know just how to broach what he wanted to say. At last he blurted it out. “Mr. Kessler, I would like for to open a ice-cream parlor here.”