The Dream Merchant (35 page)

As this idea sunk in, he experienced an emotion that was wrenching with both grief and intense pleasure, a longing that went beyond any nostalgia he'd ever known. Marvin was worried that this feeling would go away and he wanted to horde it as he once tried to embrace all of his many dollars and business ideas. For a moment, at least, he was feeling alive.

That night, Marvin dined in a renowned island restaurant, Lord Rum Bottom's. Over the years he had eaten here with Jim six or seven times. It was a gorgeous place with tables arranged on a raised veranda surrounded by tropical gardens. There were orchids on every linen tablecloth and elegant ceiling fans sumptuously pushing the evening air scented with jasmine. Marvin began watching the front door half-expecting Jim to walk through. He indulged this fantasy for a time but then realized that he was unprepared for such a meeting. What would he say to his partner who had left without a trace and probably still despised him? Marvin didn't want to blow this last chance.

Then it came to him: he would make Jim a proposition that he couldn't refuse. Marvin would offer Jim a fortune in cash if he would go back into business, some new enterprise they would devise together.

Later, in his room, Marvin counted out five hundred thousand dollars and put the cash in a black satchel. For the next three months, each night, Marvin came to the restaurant waiting for Jim so that he could make his offer, outrageous though it was. Some nights Marvin brought the satchel and laid it beside his feet, as though it would have the power to draw Jim through the door. This immodest proposal seemed like the answer to Marvin's life. Every night he sat at a table with a view of the heavy front door bejeweled with shells and sea glass, drinking alone with his sunken jowls, tapping his foot. He felt confident that if he waited long enough, Jim would eventually walk through with his big smile and verve, his winner's way. Then Marvin would give Jim the satchel and Marvin's life would begin anew.

*   *   *

Marvin relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio. Really, he might have moved anywhere, but he had a distant cousin living in Cincinnati and, following an uneventful but pleasant visit, Marvin decided to stay longer. He eventually married a stately, independent woman, invested his money conservatively in commercial real estate. Marvin enjoyed holidays in New York, going to museums and the theater. He read copiously.

He opened a small construction business mainly as a hobby. He designed prefab fiberglass modules that could be configured variously to form a line of low-cost houses. It was a clever and promising idea, but he never felt motivated to aggressively market the houses. He didn't need the money.

Marvin was no longer afflicted by churning business notions and runaway lust. As a seventy-year-old, he was no longer excited by financial scams, and his crudeness had mostly burned away. But Marvin wasn't a moralist and he didn't feel bad about past indiscretions, business, sexual, and otherwise. Indeed, he believed that the smartest people often explore unusual and dark paths.

From time to time he thought about the black satchel with the half million for Jim and it made Marvin's heart skip. It was an ecstatic and outrageous notion and he'd preserved it in his heart while he'd lived a fairly humdrum life. The idea of a last chance can be even more delicious than the illicit affair itself. The black satchel gave Marvin a little edge, until the very day Jim called him on the phone.

Even though he had daydreamed about this call for many years, Marvin Gesler was dumbfounded. On the end of the line, Jim's voice was filled with temptation and chances for victory of legendary proportions. Marvin didn't know Jim's circumstances. He didn't know that Jim was broke and half-dead with high blood pressure and gout. Marvin was holding his own fantasy in his hands. He had been waiting twenty-one years for this chance.

*   *   *

It was hard for Jim to dial his former partner. But Jim was at the very end of his game. He had no more stories to tell Mara and she was packing her things. She didn't want the past. She wanted a big house for her children with a backyard. She wanted to create her own past.

And there was one punishing moment when she stared at him on the ratty couch and she shook her head as if he were a stranger, someone's doddering grandfather. What had she been doing in this wretched house?

He could see it clearly. In a day or two she would be another of his stories. He would try to recall her needy little sounds, her fine neck and white arms that helped him fend off demise. Soon he'd be dying alone in some hospital or nursing home. That's why he made the phone call.

*   *   *

In the first half minute, Jim could feel Marvin's vulnerability. Jim heard a thumping, needy heart and it made him very keen. He slipped right back into the hunt. He was tingling. He might have been tracking game by the dry riverbed with Ribamar. Jim backed off, became a little distant. He had deals, he told Marvin, yeah, he was considering this and that. Maybe he was going into the diamond business. He had just been wondering how Marvin was doing. He deflected the talk away from any business deal they might do together. How was Marvin feeling? Did he still watch the ball games? Did he still make his pro football bets? Yeah, Jim was still betting the games himself, doing pretty well.

Jim didn't have a dollar, but he felt himself racing back into form. He knew how to win. It was built into him, like desire.

They worked it out on the phone in less than an hour. Marvin would put Jim in charge of sales. Jim would build a sales force as he'd done many times in the past. Marvin offered three hundred thousand to start along with a new Lexus and the down payment on a home in the best section of Cincinnati. Marvin gave Jim the black satchel and Jim grabbed it. It had taken Jim twenty-one years to walk through the door at Lord Rum Bottom's.

 

FINAL RECKONING

For nearly three years I moved between two worlds. Writing and researching the book, I became like one of my characters, taking what I needed without remorse, like Jim or my dad before him. Closing the deal justified almost anything. One night I took Phyllis to a fancy restaurant in Miami. She had been living on the street for a half year and she had livid sores on her face and hands, although she had tried to cover them with thick makeup. I asked her questions about the past while she drank Merlot and wept. She still loved Jim, she managed to say while blowing her nose. Even now she believed he would save her, and recalling his promises elicited a brief smile. While she spoke I took notes and envisioned where I would add these details to my pages. I even considered including a chapter on her woeful street life. Incredible. But I felt like their story was owed to me and I felt righteous taking it. When I was outside the book, this seemed absurd and wrong to me, unclean. And yet I moved back inside the pages easily.

*   *   *

I came to Cincinnati to visit Jim in the late summer of 2005, a few weeks past my sixtieth birthday. There were a few more things I needed to know and then I could finish.

My friend lived in a lovely house on a shady hill with a view of Cincinnati in the distance. The place was filled with the rueful, haunting sights and sounds of growing up in the suburbs, kids nervously getting their books ready for school, a rambunctious Lab puppy racing around the basement, the smell of cut grass in the evening, chicken baking in the oven, cookies on the kitchen table eaten by the fistful while Mom and Dad move around upstairs for all of eternity.

I felt an aching nostalgia. For a moment, I could be the child here. It was very confusing. All of time was mixed up in this house. Only Jim could do it.

Adorable young moms came by after school for a cup of coffee and gossipy conversation with Mara. When he was back from work, he flirted with these children who had their own children and they flirted back.

There was no heartbreak anywhere that I could tell. He and Mara cared for each other. Mara was composed and happy and her trashy side was no longer apparent. This was really all she'd ever wanted. A beautiful house for her kids, a lovely car. She might have killed him—one way or another killed him—or loved him for the rest of his life. It turned on a phone call to Marvin.

All of the many schemes and scams and poor Phyllis and even Brazil were swallowed up by this lush suburban plenty that promised more and more, always Jim's favorite tune. More money, more victory trips to Israel to visit Mara's family, more time for red wine with big spreads of food. One by one she was bringing her family to the States from Israel. Already two of her brothers were settled in Cincinnati. Her brothers and their children would grow up alongside Mara and Jim and their children.

Jim was nearly eighty.

Including his bonus check, he'd made four hundred thousand dollars the first year selling the fiberglass houses. This year he would make a million. In three years he would be a full partner.

Jim and Mara had saved the special news to tell me. They giggled at each other. Her face glowed. She was going to have a baby. She couldn't stop giggling. I told you, she said, shaking her head at me. Jim looked goofy with love.

I just hadn't understood, and Mara forgave me graciously in her new home.

Jim and I were standing on the front lawn. Every house on the block was a minor masterpiece, one successful family after the next. The mayor of Cincinnati lived two houses down. In the morning, he and Jim chatted over their wrapped newspapers at the end of the driveway. There were no impediments that I could see; somehow he had made it through without a wound. Everyone in the neighborhood loved him. The adorable young mothers waved as they drove their children to school.

Mara was going to take me to the airport in her little white BMW. He was training the dog when I left him. Jim had time enough for everything. Time to cut the lawn with his fire engine red Toro mower and to fix the bikes for the kids. Time to go with her to Kabala class. Time to make a million dollars. Time to train the puppy who so badly wanted to run into the street, to break free, and Jim yelled at him, No, Lucky. NO, Lucky! And then Lucky bolted off and ran into a jolt of electricity from one of those invisible fences for training dogs. The puppy was all rippled up with current. Worse yet, its world was rocked. The street looked so exciting and yet it couldn't go there. Jim grinned. It's hilarious what we do. In that instant he seemed to glimpse the big picture. We mustn't underestimate him. That is the moment I like to remember. He'd won again, made it all the way back and beyond. He'd cast off the devastation of growing old.

Jim was kneeling, consoling the dog, when Mara pulled up. He looked over to me and said, Take care of yourself, Bub.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Inspiration for
The Dream Merchant
came from many people, dreams, secret urges, and places that I love. But significantly it came from my father, who was a great lighting-fixture salesman, and a half dozen other exceptional and unforgettable salesmen I have known over the years.

My wife, Bonnie, has edited all my published writing. But beyond making graceful changes to my paragraphs, she is the navigator in my writing life (as she is on our fishing boat), often providing the direction when I get lost, not to mention her loving and at times fierce encouragement over the years. People know Josh Waitzkin as a many-time national chess champion and martial arts world champion. And yet, I've learned so much from my son about deep lessons drawn from defeats, and about humility and perseverance. Also, Josh is the very best reader I have ever known. I could not have written this book without Bonnie and Josh.

I am enormously indebted to Don Fehr, my friend, agent, and editor. Don loved the novel from the start, and during hard times in the business, he has been a relentless, eloquent, and passionate advocate. Thanks so much, man.

I want to especially acknowledge Maya Brenner and Hannah Beth King for their contributions, some of them ineffable. Each of these deeply insightful women could make a fortune offering their services as “professional muse.”

Katya Waitzkin, my brilliant, beautiful daughter, helped so much with her savvy readings of my early drafts.

Much appreciation to Thomas Dunne and Katie Gilligan at St. Martin's Press.

My friends in Brazil introduced me to the beauty, mystery, and dangers of the rain forest.

For friendship, readings, advice, and inspiration, I want to thank Amelia Atlas, Mike Bryan, Cal Barksdale, Lou Cassotta, Desiree Cifre, Paulette Chernoff, Tom Chernoff, Paul Chevigny, John Clemans, Don Friedman, Nancy Gabriner, Susie Goodman, Jesse Kates, Antonia Meltzoff, Jake Morrissey, Jeff Newman, Megan Obymachow, Bruce Pandolfini, Paul Pines, Elta Smith, and Binky Urban.

 

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