Bad Dreams

by Kim Newman

  Brando grabbed Anne's mother by the waist from behind, and waltzed with her as the solo peaked and died. Then, she was dismissed from centre stage and the star was left to his scene. From the elation of his entrance he segued into puzzlement, as Maish was unable to believe that Sam was not at his usual spot behind the bar. Wallach tried to tell him about Sam, but Brando would not listen. He had to tell his news to someone. He hopped from stool to stool (Anne could see the legendary sweat pouring off him) and finally settled next to Landau.

  'I guess old Sam meant a lot to all of us,' said Wallach deliberately, aware that no one was watching him. 'More than we ever counted on.'

  'Yeah,' said Landau, back still to the darkness, 'I hope he pulls through.'

  'Oh sure he'll pull through, Johnny. Whaddya say, Maish? Sam, he's indestructible. Like Superman. Back there at Anzio…'

  'Can it,' snapped Brando, slipping into his big speech like Glenn Miller going into a trombone solo, 'Sam was just a guy like the rest of us. He hadda take a shit…' (it had been a 'crap' in the movie, and that had been a Hollywood first) '… he hadda wash his face. He drank cups of coffee like Brazil was goin' outta business. He was…'

  … and so it went on. One critic had compared the speech to Mark Antony's eulogy, but even Dad thought that was too strong. The extra waitress, unnoticed, broke into tears as she did every night. She lost her part completely, but everyone was focused on Brando. He was talking about Sam, but he was also talking about God. Her father was talking about gods and leaders and heroes and politicians, sermonising on their greatness but saying that he did not need them anymore. Brooks Atkinson, the New York Times drama critic, wrote that it was about Franklin D. Roosevelt. Arthur Miller said it was about Eugene O'Neill, whose bar was just down the street from Sam's. The Farnham Commission had called it the 'throw away your crutches' speech, and suggested that it was about Lenin or Trotsky (they were not sure which). Anne found it easy to forget the missing wall, the cold tea, the painted faces. This was reality. More real than anything that had happened to her since Nina fell asleep on her shoulder in the taxi on the way to St John's Wood.

  A jangle cut through Brando's tirade, and he left off. There was a pause. Audiences were too awed even to applaud. The ringing was not at all like a real telephone. It was just a sound effect. Wallach, also in tears but concealing them like a professional, scooped up the receiver from behind the bar.

  'Sam's Bar-B-Q and Grill,' he said. Then, he nodded and 'uh-huhed' for 30 seconds. Brando stepped back into a shadow, forcibly diverting audience attention to the other actor.

  Wallach put the phone down. He looked at everybody. It could have been the longest pause in American theatrical history. People who saw the play on its first run remembered it as lasting for a full minute. No one ever managed to wrest enough attention off the stage to time it. No one breathed.

  'It's Sam,' said Wallach. 'He just bought the farm.'

  Anne's mother started sobbing uncontrollably, and had to be comforted by Jed (Howard Da Silva), the stammering vacuum cleaner salesman. It was a fine display of histrionic hysteria, but Brando topped it, stepped on it, destroyed it, by knocking back the shot Wallach had poured for Landau and pulling apart a stale doughnut.

  Anne realised that she had misheard Wallach's line. He had not said that Sam had just bought the farm, he had said that Cam had just bought the farm.

  Cam? He would have been only two years old. In the '50s, Cam had been her father's name.

  'He made this place, I guess,' said Wallach. 'It won't seem the same going on without him. I guess I'll sell up. I could move to Florida.'

  'No,' shouted Brando, hitting the bar so hard that all the props on it shook. 'No. When a guy gets a Nobel Prize, it means something. There ain't no committee that can take that away from him.'

  Landau got up. Everybody had forgotten him. He had been working himself back into his part. His eyes gleamed with Satanic fury, his slicked hair was mussed into horn shapes. Cuckold's horns, Devil's horns. It was a neat trick. He had his gun out.

  Mother screamed again - the Betty role really was a drag, Anne realised - and Da Silva hugged her.

  'Yeah,' sneered Landau, 'and nobody's takin' Angie away from me. 'Specially not you, Mr Draft-Exempt-Gas-Jockey Hemingway!'

  Wallach leaned over the bar, trying to dampen Landau's anger, but it was no good. He was spitting his lines out, his still-sharp Brooklyn accent cutting into Brando's tortured presence. He waved the gun wildly.

  'You and Angie thought you were God-damned smart, huh? Poor old Johnny Boy was havin' his toenails pulled by the slants, an' you had it real easy. You gotta way with words, Maish, but you don't know what dyin' is like. You seen it in the movies, you read it in books. Well, here it is happenin' to you. Dyin'. Cam died. He was a fink and a squealer, and he died. Now, you…'

  It was time for Kim Hunter's spectacularly unfortunate entrance. Landau's safety catch was off. The door Anne had come through opened. She leaned out of her booth to see Angie come in. There was no one.

  'Angie!'

  She turned back to the action. Landau was talking to her.

  'Get outta here, Angie,' shouted Brando, 'he's drunk.'

  She was standing up, alone in her part of the stage. She did not have any lines. Everyone else had got out of the way. She looked at Landau's gun - it was not a prop - and then at his face. He had turned into Skinner.

  'Angie,' he said in Landau's voice. 'This is what dyin' is like.'

  Then he fired.

  EIGHT

  IT HAD BEEN a long night for Maish. A lifetime ago, he had shambled into Sam's for a cup of mocha java and a cruller. He had been newly-born then, but with a set of memories as deceitful as Eve's belly button. He had talked, many times, about a previous life, but he had no pictures in his head to go with the words in his mouth. His stories about Angie and the gas station owner and his ambitions as a writer could have been second-hand, alibis learned by rote to cover up someone else's crimes. He thought he might have lived before, he kept being haunted by that queer sensation Sam called deja vu, but he was aware that his previous lives were identical, or almost identical, to his current experiences. It was a whole lot weirder than flying saucers or the search for Bridey Murphy.

  He was supposed to be a gas station attendant, but he could not imagine what a gas pump or even an automobile looked like. He was a writer, but his vocabulary was limited to the comparatively few words he had been given to speak. In his mind, he felt uncomfortable even using the phrases he could pick up from the others in the bar. He knew that he was supposed to have badly broken his leg when he was a kid, to have made love to Angie and Betty and many other nameless girls, to have written an as-yet unpublished autobiographical novel about his time with a streetgang. He knew these things, but only as simple facts. The mass of tiny details he could recall about the bar and the people he met there accounted for the only rounded, complete, satisfying experiences he had ever had.

  It was just like Jed's speech. Sam's was the only real place in the world, the only place where anything counted.

  Everything else was a shadowland where life was dreamed not lived. 'Th-th-this is where you puh-pay for your sins,' Jed always said, 'not in church, in Sam's Bar-B-Q and Grill.'

  A minute or so ago he had said that even Sam had to take a shit. So how come he had eaten doughnuts and drank coffee all evening without having to use the Men's Room? Deep down, Maish knew there was something wrong with his life.

  He had been caught in this place forever, only coming to life in the well-lit arena of the Bar-B-Q and Grill. Everything else was dark and skeletal, like an unremembered dream. Everything that had happened this evening, that would happen in the next few minutes, was familiar, planned, tedious. He knew that this world had been abandoned by its Creator, but he was still following the vagrant god's orders.

  Somehow, it was different this time. The old man was dead, really dead. He had not just been carried out of the door into the darkness never to be s
een again. Somewhere outside the bar, outside the world, the man had really died.

  When he had been talking about Sam, he had not been thinking about what he was saying, the words came automatically. But he had been thinking, sensing how different it was this time. There was no more deja vu. He was free. He did not know what freedom meant yet, but it was marvellous and frightening. Maybe being free was the same as being dead.

  It was clear now. He had seen Johnny shoot Angie many times, an impossible number of times. He had taken the still-hot gun away from the man, had cradled the dying woman, had spoken the speech given him, had paused for the darkness to fall on them all. There had been variations - slight differences of placing, of phrasing, of feeling - but each time the actions had been basically identical.

  This time it was different. There was no tyrant god to make him stand by and watch Angie, the woman he loved but had never really met, be killed. Things could be changed.

  'Angie,' said Johnny, taking a shaky aim, 'this is what dyin' is like.'

  As Johnny pulled the trigger, Maish heaved himself forwards. His bum leg gave out, but he fell into the line of fire. He felt the push of the bullet going into his chest before he heard the amazingly loud crack of the gunshot. His shin hurt more than his broken ribs, his punctured heart.

  There was no one to overpower Johnny, to take the gun away from him, but the young man seized up as soon as he had fired, falling into a statue state rather than go against the script. On his knees, real blood soaking his shirt, Maish looked up at Angie. It was not Angie, it was some other woman, but that did not matter. He did not know what to say. He opened his mouth, but only blood came out.

  Never again.

  Never again would he limp, dance, dream aloud, drink, eat, hit Jed, lean on the bar, listen to Sam's advice, play with his switchblade, try to get a game of cards together, burst out his good news, be shattered by the bad news, watch Angie get shot, talk to the darkness, start all over again.

  This was what dying was like.

  NINE

  FOR ANGELA BUONFIGLIA, the next five years started badly. But things got better.

  The homicide lieutenant, Joe Hollis, took an immediate dislike to Johnny. He had been in Korea too, and knew that Johnny was one of the GIs who had admitted under torture that the United Nations forces had been involved in war crimes. He dug up the spurious confession that Johnny had put his name to. Hollis pursued the case with a ferocity that surprised his jaded colleages and unearthed a witness - a patron of Sam's who had gone unnoticed that evening - who testified against Johnny. He had overheard the young veteran swear to get even with Maish Johnson, and claimed to have seen Johnny take a deliberate aim before gunning the man down.

  Angela managed to get her divorce through before Johnny's execution, but felt obliged to visit her ex-husband on Death Row. He just sat grinning from behind the bars, playing solitaire but never winning. She went to too many funerals. Her father's brought out the whole neighbourhood for an extravagant Italian-Irish-Jewish wake that went on for days, while Johnny and Maish were laid to rest in scarily similar, sparsely attended grey-day ceremonies, one inside a prison, one outside. Aside from her, the only person at all three ceremonies was Joe Hollis, who shook her hand at Johnny's burial and vanished from her life.

  Angela made enough out of the sale of Sam's Bar-B-Q and Grill to set herself up in a small business in the garment centre. At first, she simply busied herself with the accounting and retail side and bought in stock from Europe, but gradually she discovered a talent for designing patterned scarves and blouses. Her signature became a brand name, and she was able to put her prices up. 'Design by Angela' began to mean as much as 'Gowns by Ariadne'. Audrey Hepburn wore 'Angela' clothes, and Princess Grace, Peggy Lee and Jacqueline Bouvier Sinatra. When Elvis Presley and John Wayne turned up on The Tonight Show with identical 'Angela' ties, male adornment suddenly ceased to be considered unmanly.

  She opened an 'Angela's' in Washington DC, then San Francisco, then Chicago, then everywhere. Her designs were featured in Vogue, exhibited at art galleries, imitated by others. She had a small love affair, with C.D. Broome - a college graduate who thought he wanted to be a novelist -but it ended messily. Tired of New York and its ghosts, and buoyed by a ridiculously large fee from a Hollywood studio that had used her designs under the titles of a glossy romantic comedy, she took a year off to travel around the United States. At the end of that, she settled in New Orleans.

  She did a quarter as many designs, and sold them for four times as much. During Mardi Gras, she had a cliche meeting cute with a French-speaking aristocrat, the owner of a prestigious but popular restaurant. On the night that they made love for the first time, she told him about Johnny and Maish, and he told her about the homosexual experiences he had had as a younger man. She understood about him, he understood about her, and, three weeks later, they agreed to marry…

  NINE

  FOR ANGELA BUONFIGLIA, the next five years started badly. And things got worse.

  The homicide lieutenant, Barry Erskine, took an immediate liking to Johnny. He had been in Korea too, and while he was overseas his own wife had divorced him to marry her piano teacher. He had often thought of shooting them and trying to get away with it. Erskine pursued the case with a ferocity that surprised his jaded colleagues, and unearthed a witness - a patron of Sam's who had gone unnoticed that evening - who testified for Johnny. He had overheard Maish threaten the young veteran, and claimed to have seen the dead man pull out a switchblade before Johnny drew his gun.

  Johnny stayed in jail for three weeks. No charges against him were ever brought. He was even given his gun back, with a note to remind him that he would have to renew his permit in the next few months. Angela went alone to Maish's pauper's funeral, and with Johnny to Sam's. She was surprised how few of her father's friends and patrons bothered to turn out for that dismal day. Fortunately, she was able to wear a thick veil. When Johnny had found out she had been to Maish's funeral, he had worked her face over. Erskine turned up at the wake and exchanged nasty jokes with Johnny. He looked her over, grinning like a fiend, before leaving, and warned her to stay out of trouble.

  It turned out that Sam's habitual generosity had got him into debt, and the Bar-B-Q and Grill had to be sold off to settle up with his many creditors. The first night that Angela spent with Johnny in their walk-up apartment after he got out of jail ended up with him breaking three of her ribs. She was grateful that he was unable to rape her, but knew he would think of something to do to make her sorry. Eventually, he found out how sickened she was by his nailless toes, and started forcing her to massage his feet. He liked to reminisce about his time as a POW, and made up ever more elaborate stories of torture and degradation.

  The couple could not get by on Johnny's disability pension, and Angela had to get a job as a waitress. Of course, the owner of the diner that had replaced Sam's took her on, and she put up with ridiculous hours, sweatshop wages, groping patrons, and an infernally filthy kitchen with all the resignation of the justifiably damned. She had a nasty little affair with Nino Kenyon, one of the cooks, that broke up when someone told him about what Johnny had done to Maish. After a while, the patrons did not even bother to grope her.

  Johnny's feet got worse, and she suspected him of opening old wounds with broken beer bottles while she was at work. He cultivated new scabs and scars, and had to hobble around the apartment on crutches. He rarely went out, but followed the televised HUAC hearings avidly. Korea had not been enough for him. He often talked about how much he would like to go out to Hollywood and shoot some Commies. When the news came through that Orson Welles had hanged himself rather than name names for Hugh Farnham, Johnny celebrated with a three bottle binge. He wrote to newspapers and politicians, naming prominent and obscure citizens as card-carrying Reds. He received a thank you letter from the desk of Hugh Farnham, but eventually Detective Erskine came round and told him to lay off.

  Erskine told Angela that Johnny was becoming an
embarrassment, and ought to get some sort of psychoanalysis. Angela barely made enough to feed the both of them and pay the rent, and federal subsidies for veterans' medical care had just been slashed by the McCarran administration, so she had to ignore the advice. Often, she wondered what her father would have said. One morning, after work, she came home and found that Johnny had taken his gun out of its drawer and shot off three of his toes.

  TEN

  ANGELA DREAMED. Even tucked in comfortably next to Didier in the big old safe bed in the big old safe house she could only think of as a mansion, Angela dreamed. In the morning, she could never remember where her night thoughts had taken her. Didier could extemporise forever his dreams, their amusing quirkiness, their disorientating surrealism, but she suffered from instant amnesia. But she knew that she did dream, of Something, of Somewhere, of Someone…

  'Perhaps, Angel,' Didier said one morning, 'it is you who are dreamed of…'

  That kind of pseudo-insight was not at all like Didier. It was the sort of thing she would expect from one of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone introductions. Immediately, her husband slipped back into character, and started pressing exactly the right buttons. She was won over, and, their elaborate breakfast forgotten, they decided that Didier did have an hour or two to spare before he was needed in his office…

  Later, alone in the newly-unmade bed, Angela thought again about her dreams. Several of her friends were in analysis, and she knew from them that dreams could be important as a key to your character. Of course, she did not need analysis. Everybody she knew would cite her as an absolute model of fulfilment and balance. Perhaps, she thought, she was not very good at being happy. Perhaps that was why she needed to dream, to fulfil a deep-seated and perfectly natural desire to have some misery in her life.