The Dream Merchant (7 page)

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Jim didn't want to leave Israel, but he wasn't making a dollar. He called me in New York and asked to loan him the money for the flight home. It was jarring to think of my high-roller friend without the funds to buy a ticket. But I think he would have stayed in Israel and lived on nothing except the girl agreed to join him in Florida.

When Jim returned to Phyllis, he spent his days sitting in a chair looking out the bay window facing the canal, waiting for Mara to call. For the first two days he didn't tell Phyllis about the girl and she tried to regale him with the latest gossip about their aging friends along with a big dose of the optimism she had learned from him, except she had never been able to pull off his pep talks. Jim couldn't pay attention to his wife for more than a minute or two. The enormity of what he had done, what he was going to do, paralyzed him. He couldn't think of how to explain the end of their long marriage.

But mostly, he didn't think about Phyllis at all, though she rarely left the room. She watched him sitting by the window and figured out the general drift before he said a word about the girl. He was afraid Mara would change her mind, wouldn't travel here to begin their new life. He shook his head like a victim. Jim was trying to keep their dialogue alive inside. Sitting in his chair, he tried to summon her smell, her taste. He didn't want to be interrupted. He couldn't bear the violation of Phyllis's voice or her long stretches of crying once she fully understood his intention.

Jim had no energy for his marketing business. Of course he needed money, but he was obsessed with Mara (it would take her nearly two months to settle her affairs and join him in Florida), and he couldn't bear the grind of travel and attending meetings, listening to endless sad-sack stories that were at the heart of signing new recruits. Suddenly these group sessions seemed to mirror an inner deadness. Their inflated promises and coarseness were inconsistent with the new feelings that stirred his being.

His former best buddies, the top guys in his organization, were bewildered by Jim's reticence to soldier on. They offered him a new product line with a guaranteed income and still Jim didn't return their calls. Top executives, distributors, casual friends, his grown daughter, his wife, the lot of them had been swept aside by improbable love.

*   *   *

When Jim and Mara are window-shopping the glamour stores in downtown Miami and happen to run into one of his salesmen or good buddies from the old days, and there have been many, he usually greets the man as “bub.” It is hard to imagine the surfeit of dreams and shared aspirations that have suddenly and tragically drained into this tiny dismissive noun. Whenever I hear him use it I feel embarrassed for the friend, though at the same time I feel pleased to retain a place in Jim's much-diminished circle. It has become a circle of three, but only because I cling to him like a pilot fish. I feel like calling back to the spurned stranger, Wait, just wait! I still believe (or want to believe) Jim's infatuation will pass and he'll return to the old days with Phyllis.

She would take him back, even now.

 

7.

Why does he want to be with her? Phyllis asked me. She's a terrorist.

One night I was with Jim and Mara, and the next I visited Phyllis in the dimly lit one bedroom where she had waited for Jim when he was in Israel.

She has him hypnotized, hypnotized. Phyllis repeated this word slowly while looking at my face to see if she'd gotten it right. Phyllis has often annoyed me with her choice of words, not exactly wrong but not right either. I was tempted to say to her, Captivated, enthralled, fascinated. But I didn't. I was barely listening.

While Jim was in Israel for months loving Mara, it never once occurred to Phyllis that he wouldn't stand by her. They had been married nearly three decades and Jim was her lion. Like many of us, Phyllis resisted the image in the mirror. She didn't notice her dappled, bulging thighs, her spreading hips and pudgy face; she still lovingly patted on her morning makeup, slipped into a short skirt, and showed a plunging neckline. It was the way he had coached her to dress. Then she walked to the supermarket in the dreamy style of Jim's young lover, in Toronto, twenty years his junior, when she still had a tiny waist, thrilling hips, and a rolling Marilyn Monroe walk through paradise.

They met one night in a club in Toronto. She had been sitting at a table with a few friends and he sent over a bottle of champagne. Jim introduced himself and they chatted a little. He was a charming guy, but she had a boyfriend. Before the end of the night he'd coaxed her phone number. Jim called three or four times before Phyllis agreed to meet him for lunch. He stopped by for her in his new Mercedes convertible. Their second date was a two-hour ride that ended at a gated estate on Lake Ontario with tennis courts, two speedboats, servants' quarters, a gorgeous water view. She couldn't believe her eyes. It was his place.

That night he asked her to move in with him. She laughed at his audacity, but he wouldn't let it go. He asked her again and again, triangulated all of her incredulity and doubts with enthusiasm and a stream of promises. Jim promised to take her on his private jet to Vegas. He would show her things she couldn't imagine. It was very hard to say no to him.

*   *   *

I was resolved to be honorable to both Jim and Phyllis, but it wasn't easy. I left Jim's place the night before feeling lusty and troubled, as though my youth was seeping away. Mara's aura was all over me, her heat and a vague invitation I couldn't pin down. Was I losing out? Surely I was losing out. I was growing old with my wife. Mara gestured with her hand, pulled me into another room to tell a secret. For an instant, her beautiful leg brushed against mine. Jim wanted me to feel what she brings. He encouraged it. He was selling her to me, selling wildly.

Now I was seated in Phyllis's apartment of grief. She and Jim had been forced to move here after Jim could no longer come up with the mortgage payments on their condominium. Phyllis had quickly found this modest place, not far from the water. Jim would be able to take walks in the afternoon, looking at passing boats. They didn't have money for the security deposit, but she had convinced the doddering manager of the old apartment complex to let them move in with their boxes, the big projection TV, and their stainless refrigerator. The bedroom had termites, and Jim needed to rip the framing off the door and kill the bugs or at least slow them down. He tore off the wooden frames with an old man's fury. We will be out of here in a few months, she said to calm him down. Jim sat by the bay window, looking out, hardly speaking. The view of the canal reminded him of the boat he had been forced to give up. Seventy-five years old and he had lost nearly everything.

Phyllis had preserved Jim's dark mood of a half year earlier, before he met the girl, or even deepened it. She wanted to tell me secrets about Jim's girlfriend, terrible things. What could Phyllis tell me that would be convincing? I was reeling from Mara's seductiveness, her undertow; we can't swim against it. In this dark place, his lover's leap made perfect sense. Mara is youth that we can only barely remember. Young girls live every night. Every night is the night. Jim's wife was speaking, but I could barely hear her.

I was angry with Phyllis. She had always been so fast to defend him, said whatever it took to get him off the hook. It wasn't Jim's fault. Never Jim's fault, no matter how many promises he broke, how many thousands were lost, how many innocents lost their savings in one of his marketing schemes or phony investments. It was the accountant's fault. Jim was misled.

Cardboard boxes littered this apartment, which she would have made picture-perfect if he were here, if he would only come home. Everything had stopped in place. He had taken the big TV two months before so he could watch sports—she had wanted him to take it for the games—and there was a gaping hole between two cabinets where it had sat against the wall, an unseemly tangle of antennae and speaker wires left where they had fallen. On the glass dining room table, where she had carefully laid out splendid table settings for dinner parties in the big condo, there were piles of discount coupons ripped from magazines, hundreds of coupons. She used them during the final months in the condominium, so he could entertain, to buy cheap cheese and crackers. She no longer bothered with them, but throwing them away felt reckless.

Their jewelry and most of the paintings were gone, sold for a fraction of their value. Nearly everything of real value was gone. Her remaining share of the lengthy marriage was in the cardboard boxes. Her share of Canada, her portion of Florida waterfront homes and start-up companies with skyrocketing futures, were all in those boxes. In several of them I could see ribbons and wrapping that she used each December for her Christmas presents. Every year she would slowly accumulate gifts to send out from her and Jim.

She had a keen feel for what his grandchildren would appreciate and on the floor were their books and art supplies wrapped in favored pastel colors with lovely ribbons. She knew much more about these two kids than he did. She knew more about his daughter as well. Phyllis and Jim had been living in separate homes now for two months, but remarkably, Jim's fifty-year-old daughter still hadn't been told about their separation. She loved Phyllis and he couldn't bear to break the news. In a couple of weeks, after the New Year, she and Jim planned to travel together to the coast and talk in person to the woman. Jim would sit on the sofa looking contrite and weary, as though the world had pushed him into this unseemly affair—Jim's daughter would be horrified by her father's runaway lust—while Phyllis would put an upbeat spin on their separation: It was all for the good. She and Jim remained the very best of friends, Phyllis would say, easing the way for him.

For so many years Phyllis had selected Christmas gifts for his most important clients, his up lines. It was one of her responsibilities. This year's presents were also on the floor. She prided herself on knowing what people really liked, and selected each gift with care and conviction—many years ago she and Jim had agreed that sending the presents to his up lines was money in the bank. She had written all of this year's cards, each of them with a personal touch from Jim and Phyllis, no mention of the breakup. She couldn't bear to tell anyone, not yet, although all of their distributors were discussing it on the Internet. Phyllis wanted to send the Christmas gifts but didn't have money for postage. It would come to several hundred dollars. She'd have to speak with Jim about money for the postage. The stacks of unsent presents made her desperate. What was he thinking? Without his contacts, he would be ruined. She would be ruined. They were still dancing together in Las Vegas. She couldn't stop dancing. Phyllis was up nights fretting about Jim's contacts. It was painful to listen.

*   *   *

She was sitting on her knees, beside me on the chesterfield, wearing red Dr. Denton pajamas, a big woman in a child's outfit, enormous melon breasts hanging free, wide fleshy hips, her puzzled face heavily made up in the Vegas style that Jim favored. He'd taught her a lot. He'd taught her how to be the younger woman, to excite the room with novelty and risk like Ava had before her. That had been Phyllis's job. She was still poised to do it.… She'd lost weight, to please Jim, still needed to lose another thirty pounds. But not so large as before. Maybe Jim could accept her now. She seemed to be showing herself to me with this question in mind. Phyllis was titillated by his new sex life. I could feel it. She was coming alive herself after years of repose, readying herself for him, stimulated by their sex. She was starving herself. She wanted to be a small woman, for him. Most days she went jogging on sweltering Miami streets, her face flushed from effort, dripping sweat, hoping he'd drive by and see her in sweats and the stylish ankle weights he had given to her as a Christmas present some years back. She yearned to please him. This remained her primary drive. She couldn't turn it off.

*   *   *

She blew her nose. When he came back from Israel he spent his days looking out, she said, pointing to the curved bay window. We still might have worked it out. This woman wouldn't allow it. She was calling every hour from Israel. She was afraid Jim would forget her, his little sex trifle, so she called him every hour. She wouldn't give him a moment with me, didn't want to risk it. She wouldn't give me a chance. He raced for the phone. Otherwise he was glued there, by the window. Despite not being in contact those first few days of separation, she called fourteen, fifteen times in a day. Jim and I would begin to talk, he would tell me how he was feeling or that I was his very best friend; I cried when he said that; he remembered a moment with his son in Canada. I gave him a hug and the phone rang. As if she had a camera in the room. This terrorist. And he would cradle the phone in a corner so I wouldn't hear, but I heard everything. He called her baby. His baby. He was calling her these love pet words in the corner. Sometimes I couldn't help myself and I raced into the bedroom and picked up the phone. I needed to hear it all, to wash myself in their stupid endearments. Oh, Jim, I'm so depressed, she would say with her little hot voice. Jerking him off. Oh, Jim, I can't sleep. I miss you so much. I'm so afraid. I'm laying on the floor, Jim. What will I do? I have a stomachache, Jim. I miss you so bad, baby. These phone calls came at all hours in the night, so I couldn't get my balance. I couldn't sleep. She never thought about me, not for a minute.

Sometimes after he got off with her he was very dark. He wouldn't say a word until she rang again or he'd say terrible things. Phyllis, I can't make love to a woman with big breasts. I always had big breasts and he loved them. I even made them bigger for him. She took a deep breath. He told me that he loves her feet. He always loved my feet for being so small, but now he loves her feet. She has feet like a man. Every night I rubbed his back, I walked across his back and he called me his darling. But after this woman, he said to me, Who could love you, Phyllis? Who could love you, Phyllis? He said that. Look at yourself. You're a fat woman.