The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Dave took them from her before she could. To him they looked perfect. One showed that lacework of girders; the two that had been close together showed part of a pink cloud at the horizon; the fourth showed the forehead and pertly cocked beret of a tiny boulevardier who could have been promenading on the Place Vendôme. It was pretty amazing, he thought. Ollie might be eighty-five, but he still had game. Dave returned the pieces to Olga, who tapped them in, one after the other. Each fit perfectly.

‘Voilà,’ Dave said, and shook Ollie’s hand. ‘Tout finit. Wonderful.’

Olga was bent so close to the puzzle that her nose was touching it. ‘This new girder piece doesn’t quite match up with the ones around it.’

Dave said, ‘That’s a little thankless, even for you, Olga.’

Olga made a hmpf sound. Over her head, Ollie waggled his eyebrows.

Dave waggled back. ‘Sit with us at lunch.’

‘I may skip lunch,’ Ollie said. ‘Our walk and my latest artistic triumph have tired me out.’ He bent to look at the puzzle and sighed. ‘No, they don’t match. But close.’

‘Close only counts in horseshoes,’ Olga said. ‘Boyfriend.’

Ollie made his slow way toward the door opening on the Evergreen Wing, cane tapping its unmistakable one-two-three rhythm. He didn’t appear at lunch, and when he didn’t show up for dinner, that day’s duty nurse checked on him and found him lying on the coverlet of his bed, with his talented hands laced together on his chest. He seemed to have died as he lived, peacefully and with no fuss.

That evening, Dave tried the door of his late friend’s suite and found it open. He sat on the stripped bed with the silver pocket watch laid on his palm, the cover open so he could watch the second hand go around in the little circle above the 6. He looked at Ollie’s possessions – the books on the shelf, the sketchpads on the desk, the various drawings taped to the walls – and wondered who would take them. The ne’er-do-well brother, he supposed. He fished for the name, and it came to him: Tom. And the niece was Martha.

Over the bed was a charcoal drawing of a handsome young man with his hair combed high and spangles on his cheeks. On his Cupid’s-bow lips was a smile. It was small but inviting.

IV

The summer came full, then began to ebb. Schoolbuses rolled down Maryland Avenue. Olga Glukhov’s condition declined; she mistook Dave for her late husband more frequently. Her cribbage skills remained, but she began to lose her English. Although Dave’s older son and daughter lived close by in the suburbs, it was Peter who came to visit most frequently, driving in from the farm in Hemingford County sixty miles away and often taking his father out to dinner.

Halloween rolled around. The staff decorated the common room with orange and black streamers. The residents of Lakeview Assisted Living Center celebrated All Hallows with cider, pumpkin pie, and popcorn balls for the few whose teeth were still up to the challenge. Many spent the evening in costume, which made Dave Calhoun think of something his old friend had said during their last conversation – about how, in the late eighties, going to the gay clubs had been too much like attending the masquerade in Poe’s story about the Red Death. He supposed Lakeview was also a kind of club, and sometimes it was gay, but there was a drawback: you couldn’t leave, unless you had relatives willing to take you in. Peter and his wife would have done that for Dave if he had asked, would have given him the room where their son Jerome had once lived, but Peter and Alicia were getting on themselves now, and he would not inflict himself on them.

One warm day in early November, he went out onto the flagstone patio and sat on one of the benches there. The paths beyond were inviting in the sunshine, but he no longer dared the steps. He might fall going down, which would be bad. He might not be able to get back up again without help, which would be humiliating.

He spied a young woman standing by the fountain. She wore the kind of shin-length, frilly-collared dress you only saw nowadays in old black-and-white movies on TCM. Her hair was bright red. She smiled at him. And waved.

Why, look at you, Dave thought. Didn’t I see you not long after World War II ended, getting out of your boyfriend’s pickup truck at the Humble Oil station in Omaha?

As if hearing this thought, the pretty redhead tipped him a wink and then twitched up the hem of her dress slightly, showing her knees.

Hello, Miss Yummy, Dave thought, and then: Once you did a lot better than that. The memory made him laugh.