Death Of A Dream Maker

Copyright © 2011 by Katy Munger

Smashwords Edition Published by Thalia
Press

This novel is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author
or publisher. 

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of this author.

The phone rang in the middle of his crème
brûlée, an inevitability that T.S. had anticipated ever since he'd
approached the crucial step in the recipe. There was no way he
could answer its shrill summons: Brenda and Eddie stood guard on
the counter with the concentration of vultures, tails switching as
they greedily eyed the cream and waited for his attention to
wander. Besides, T.S. had already scorched his first two attempts.
And at this rate, he'd never perfect the dessert in time for next
week's dinner with Lilah.

It was Auntie Lil on the phone. The cats
jumped as her deep voice, amplified by the answering machine,
boomed through the apartment. They scurried to hide behind the
sofa, having learned —like many humans—that Auntie Lil had a habit
of charging around corners just when you least expected her the
most. Her incredibly loud voice was often the only warning of her
impending presence.

“Theodore! He's coming over and the apartment
is a mess,” she was pleading. “You've got to get over here and
help!”

Auntie Lil was asking for his help? How odd. Plus,
she was begging without a trace of her sometimes imperious manner.
And who was “he” anyway? T.S. gently whisked the cream into the
yolks while Auntie Lil continued to plead. He had seldom heard her
so excited. Who could it be? She had so many gentleman callers...
even at eighty-four, there seemed no end of suitors flocking to
Auntie Lil's door. Her independence was apparently
irresistible.

She could not possibly mean Herbert Wong. Herbert had
often seen Auntie Lil's apartment in its chaotic glory. There was
no point in cleaning for him. In fact, hadn't Herbert said just
last week that her apartment reminded him of Times Square after New
Year's Eve?

“Please, Theodore. I know you're at home. Pick up the
phone. I haven't seen him in over twenty years. You don't know how
much he'll tease me if he sees it like this.”

Now she was positively groveling. It was a first. His
curiosity got the best of him. He switched off the burner, checked
to make sure that Brenda and Eddie were still behind the couch, and
picked up the telephone.

“Aunt Lil,” he said pleasantly. “I just walked in the
door.”

“I know perfectly well you've been standing there
listening to me beg. But I don't care. You've got to come over and
help me clean up.”

“What has inspired you to care what someone else
thinks?” he asked, enjoying her rare discomfort.

“It's Max.” Her sigh was eloquent. “I never thought
I'd see him again.”

“Max?” T.S. thought hard, but no face came to mind.
“Who's Max?”

“I'll tell you when you get here. But hurry. He's
leaving his factory in an hour and a half. We haven't got much
time.”

“His factory?”

“Max Rosenbloom, Theodore. Max Rosenbloom of Max Rose
Fashions.”

“Oh, that Max Rosenbloom,” T.S. repeated with
exaggerated awe. His sarcasm was wasted. Auntie Lil had hung
up.

Max Rosenbloom? T.S. stood staring out the picture
window of his Upper East Side apartment, hardly seeing the thin
ribbon of York Avenue far below. He'd heard many bizarre stories
about Auntie Lil's varied past, all of which he thoroughly
believed. But never had he heard a word about a Max. His curiosity
was killing him. And it also came close to killing his cats — he
woke from his reverie to discover that the crème brûlée had
sprouted craters, no doubt where sandpaper tongues had lapped at
the custard. But Brenda and Eddie were too quick for his
preoccupied reflexes. They'd stolen their tastes and disappeared
before he could exact his vengeance.

•

When Auntie Lil flung the door open, he saw at once
that she was suffering a paralysis even more severe than that
typically produced in her by the thought of cleaning. She was
wearing a gray sweat suit and had wrapped a neon-green bandanna
around her head Indian-style, causing her white curls to stick up
like the frosting swirls on a Betty Crocker-perfect cake. One
spiraling lock had escaped and dangled over her left eye, where it
met a dusty arc smudged across the ridge of her wide cheekbones.
This alone made her look demented. Her eyes confirmed the
impression. They were dilated with adrenaline.

“Good grief,” he stammered, “you look absolutely
panicked.” He stepped inside the apartment, crashing into a
waist-high stack of cheap detective magazines hastily piled by the
front door. She had some serious housecleaning in mind. T.S. eyed
Auntie Lil with concern. “You've had far too much coffee,” he
announced.

“I can't help it!” She wandered aimlessly toward her
dining room table and shoved aside a stack of towels and a bag of
butterscotch candy. “I'm so nervous that I don't know what to do. I
hate being this weak. He'll be here in an hour. Perhaps I should
brush my hair. Oh, dear.” She collapsed in a chair, not seeming to
mind that she had just plopped down on a pair of bedroom slippers
shaped like little pink bunnies.

T.S. was astonished: Auntie Lil was babbling. And
while she might lecture, digress, or monopolize a conversation,
Auntie Lil had never babbled. Yet here she was, staring at a fruit
bowl filled with tubes of oil paint and hastily cleaned brushes,
mumbling incoherently. Whoever Max Rosenbloom was, he had a power
over Auntie Lil that was unprecedented in family history.

T.S. realized at once that he would get no useful
information from her. Furthermore, he saw he had no time to waste.
If this mysterious Max was showing up in an hour, T.S. would need
every minute and every fiber of his meticulous being to clean
Auntie Lil's apartment in time. He fetched her a glass of milk
after she turned down his offer of a drink and left her to sip
absently while he waded into the fray.

The apartment was in its usual state — one of
confusion. While not dirty, it was supremely cluttered and stuffed
to the very seams with mementos and cherished debris accumulated
through eight decades of Auntie Lil's colorful life. The walls were
hung with crooked rows of photographs, depicting people of all
shapes and skin shades posed against backdrops that ranged from
exotic Tahitian beaches to Pennsyl–vania coal mines. Each photo
prominently featured a younger version of Auntie Lil, beaming
alongside smiling friends. T.S. knew many of their stories, and his
own life seemed impossibly dull compared with the vibrant mass of
humanity immortalized on her walls.

The subjects of these photographs gazed unknowingly
down on the cheerful madness that characterized Auntie Lil's home.
The carpet had not been seen in months, but T.S. vaguely remembered
that a valuable Oriental rug lurked beneath the piles of books and
boxes of clothes gathered for charity. The antique furniture was
solid oak, as befitted Auntie Lil's German heritage. The oak,
however, was obliterated by unfurled bolts of cloth in a riot of
florals, stripes, plaids, and vibrant solids. Dressmaker dummies
stood guard in odd comers, startling reminders that, even at her
advanced age, Auntie Lil was sometimes called upon for her
assistant designer skills. She could, T.S. admitted, turn a scrap
of cloth into a stunning gown in two hours. It was just that she
had more scraps of cloth than she had free hours.

The kitchen was an oasis of order after the rest of
the apartment. The reason why was obvious: a mountain of take-out
containers protruded from the large garbage can. Auntie Lil could
cook, but she preferred meeting delivery-men of inevitably foreign
extraction and surprising them with a few words spoken in their
native tongue.

The bedroom hosted more bolts of cloth plus a number
of half-finished art projects. An easel that held a large portrait
of what looked like a mutant Othello was propped against an unused
fireplace. (Auntie Lil had more enthusiasm than talent when it came
to painting.) The closet, however, was immaculate, and her many
pantsuits were arranged by color above neat rows of matching shoes.
Since T.S. could not think of any reasonable scheme to entertain
Max Rosenbloom in the closet, he got to work straightening out the
rest of the apartment.

It would have been an impossible task for a lesser
man. But if anyone could do it, T. S. Hubbert could. He was as neat
as Auntie Lil was messy; as ordered as she was chaotic; as
compulsive as she was freewheeling. More importantly, he had long
ago perfected emergency cleaning techniques for dealing with her
apartment: the bolts of cloth went under the bed and the dressmaker
dummies were stuffed in a hall closet. He pulled an Oriental screen
in front of one corner of the living room and stacked her art
projects behind it. The books were consolidated in neat rows lining
the hallway; he would advise her to claim that she was conducting a
book drive of some sort.

Throughout his frenzied efforts, Auntie Lil remained
transfixed, oblivious to his presence. He was too busy to question
her behavior. He trundled the detective magazines down to the
basement, relieved that no incriminating address labels existed to
belie his relation to the reader of such lurid entertainment —
though he was unable to resist wasting a good five minutes crouched
beneath huge heating pipes while he scanned the headlines just in
case he'd missed something good. He then returned to the apartment
and hastily arranged the acres of knickknacks that covered all
available shelves. Within an hour, he had managed to uncover enough
room for Max to actually sit down, plus cleared a surface or two to
accommodate the possibility of refreshments.

T.S. miraculously finished with a few minutes to
spare and fixed himself a well-deserved Dewar's and soda. He sat
down at the table. “Planning to regain consciousness before your
guest arrives?” he asked Auntie Lil pleasantly.

“I've got to get ready,” Auntie Lil suddenly
remembered, emerging from her semiconscious state. She scurried
into the bathroom. T.S. shook his head and sipped at his drink. He
could not wait to meet Max Rosenbloom.

He did wait, however—for long moments of agonized
silence with a mute Auntie Lil. She had combed her hair and changed
into a green silk pantsuit. In a rare concession to makeup, she had
even powdered her wide, finely wrinkled face.

A half hour passed. “Did you have the right day?”
T.S. asked, unable to bear the silence any longer.

Her large blue eyes blinked at him and then moved to
an ornate cuckoo clock decorating the dining room wall. “He was
always on time,” she said, looking concerned.

“How come I never heard of this guy before?” T.S.
ventured when a few more moments of silence had passed.

Auntie Lil shook her head dreamily. “So many people
wanted a piece of Max that I always just kept him to myself.” She
lapsed back into more solitude, rousing herself long enough to
accept a drink when it became obvious that her cherished Max was
going to be at least an hour late.

The cuckoo clock chimed. T.S. jumped at the metallic
chirp.

“He'll be here,” Auntie Lil announced into the
silence that followed, her confidence revived by a stiff Bloody
Mary. “It does not make sense for him to call after twenty years
and then not show up. Max is a sensible man.”

T.S. was hoping for more details but was disappointed
when Auntie Lil resumed her daydreaming. Finally, prudently
deciding he could not risk a second Dewar's and soda, T.S. stood
and headed for the door. “Perhaps it would be better if you met him
alone,” he suggested. “You can phone me and I'll come back over
later on in the evening if you like.” The sleeve of his coat was
smudged with what looked like yellow pastel crayon. He brushed it
clean with fastidious distaste.

“All right, Theodore,” Auntie Lil answered absently.
He stopped at the door and watched as she rose from her chair,
drifted to a nearby bookcase, and unlocked a sealed cabinet. She
pulled out a weathered leather album, hauled the enormous tome back
to the table, and began to flip slowly through its pages.