Dream Lover (8 page)

I’ve been working there for a long time. I’m a career barmaid. It isn’t what I had planned on doing with my life. I graduated from college. The job was supposed to be for just the summer. In the fall, I was going to start teaching in Smithtown. But that never happened because I met Jack. The first time he saw me, he hit on me. “Boy, you sure are pretty,” he said. I thought,
You’ve got to be kidding me! What a corny line.
So I decided to keep it corny and answered, “I bet you say that to all the girls.” We started talking. He came in the next night and we talked. He made the night go by quickly. He didn’t waste any time letting me in on what he wanted from me.

I found out later that he lived in the neighborhood and that he lived alone. That was all I was able to learn about him. I still lived in Brooklyn at the time, but Jack wanted me to move into Manhattan. There was no way I could afford it. He never asked me to his place. “I don’t take girls up there,” was all he said. He refused to discuss it. The first time we slept together, he got a room for us down the street. It was a crappy hotel, but not exactly a fleabag. He didn’t stay the night, but told me to, and gave me money to get breakfast in the morning. It was great not having to go back to Brooklyn in the middle of the night. For months, we went to that hotel a couple of times a week. I know why he got sick of the hotel. He found me a studio apartment in Midtown so he could take our “love life” a little farther onto the dark-side.

“It’s time for you to move here,” he said. “There are things I want to do to you that I can’t do in a hotel room.” He laughed, coming to me and “pretend” biting my neck. Then he gave me some money. “Don’t spend all of this on your rent. If you can’t afford to live here, you should stay in Brooklyn. Do you understand me? I want you to save some of this each month.”

At first, I did set some aside, but then I would see a dress or a pair of shoes and have to buy them. I have always been terrible with money.

I found out quickly that if I demanded anything of Jack, I wouldn’t see him. He would stop coming to the bar, stop calling me. There’d be nothing for days. I never had his cell phone number, either. “I’ll see you almost every night during the week. I’ll call you daily. If that is not enough, tell me and we’ll stop this right now.” I thought I could do it. I thought seeing him that often would be enough. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t. I slowly got used to our life together. He’d come into the bar shortly before closing at two in the morning and have a drink or two and then he would walk home with me. He’d stay for an hour or so and go back to his own place. He never, ever spent the night.

Weekends sucked. I hated being in that neighborhood on the weekends because it was completely dead. My windows faced the windows of an apartment next door. It was like a closet, dark and closed in. I didn’t know who lived in my building and didn’t want to know. I survived by working every weekend. I had to; there was nothing else for me to do. I didn’t have many friends in the city. All of my family was in Brooklyn and the few friends I used to have there had moved on. Jack never called me on the weekends. I didn’t know where his apartment was or what he did that couldn’t include me. In the early years, I would walk up and down Madison Avenue for hours at all times of the day and night, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

Then out of nowhere, I guess it was about 1999, I was forced to go to the ballet with my family because my sister’s brother-in-law had a small role in the production. As we were waiting in a long line to go in, I looked up just as Jack, in a tux, was helping a rather plain woman not much older than I was out of a limousine. He offered her his arm and she took it, smiling into his eyes. They walked ahead of all of us who were waiting to get into the nosebleed section; a photographer’s flash going off in their direction. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. For a fleeting moment, I had the impulse to run up to him and demand that he acknowledge me, but then I chickened out. What would he do if I embarrassed him in public? Was he famous? I thought his name was a pseudonym. Jack Smith? It just sounded fake. I didn’t have a computer but on the rare occasions I went home to Brooklyn, my sister would allow me access to hers for quick searches. I did find out that he was really Jack Smith. There on the Internet was a picture of him with a pretty, blonde woman at someone’s high school graduation. And then another of Jack and the young woman with whom I saw him at Lincoln Center, but this photo was taken at the Met at an art opening. In another photo, Jack stood with a man. The article was about some building project on the Lower East Side that would save the neighborhood. The neighbors were up in arms, calling Jack and this man “destroyers of New York” who were trying to convert the colorful area into one in which rich people just like Jack would be comfortable living. Of course, it was too late, the Jewish deli had already left the area and a taco stand had taken its place. Jack had waited too long.

Although I learned little bits about him, he would continue to be a mystery to me until I saw his obituary. Actually, I missed it, but one of the other bartenders who saw me leave with Jack night after night for years and years saw it and saved it for me, waiting until closing time Monday night. Jack hadn’t shown up and I would have been wondering about him for weeks. He had done that in the past with no explanation, or a meager one if I pressed him. I figured out that he took vacations from time to time. The article that accompanied the obituary said he lived in Babylon. I thought of all those weekends wasted marching up and down Madison. He wasn’t even there in his apartment. But Babylon? Wasn’t it a quaint little village? Why would Jack live there? Wild Jack, sadistic Jack, secretive Jack? His antics would not have gone over well in Babylon.

But I couldn’t stop from wondering what was there. Well, I would never know unless I spent some time digging around. I had nothing more to do. I had wasted over fifteen years of my life waiting for Jack. I was thirty-seven years old. I couldn’t afford to pay my rent because I was suddenly two grand a month poorer. I couldn’t do anything but tend bar. Could I?

And then I had a thought. Jack had been a great teacher; he had shown me the tricks of a dominatrix. He kept his collection of devices and magazines in my dark little studio apartment. They were his legacy to me. I could place an ad in one of those magazines; he had used services from those classifieds often enough. I think I just figured out how I will make my rent this month.

8

B
etty and Maggie left Pam’s after the interview. Pam kept thinking of the albino girl. Over the years, she had seen her at several family functions, Little League fund-raisers, and the funeral. Pam couldn’t get her out of her mind. She went through the basket of sympathy cards sent after Jack died and found one she was sure was from the young woman; Melissa McMann. Pam wanted to search online for her phone number but the only computer in the house was Jacks, and it had not been used since the kids left after July 4
^th
. She picked up the mouse and turned the computer on. After a little research, she found out that Melissa didn’t have a landline.
Maybe the number is in Jack’s cell phone
. Pam’s heart did a little beat skipping. She opened the drawer of his desk and got out his cell phone. She had never done that before, never looked at his phone contacts, maybe because she was afraid of what she would find. Up popped a couple of hundred names; most appeared to be women. Feeling sick to her stomach, she scrolled through the alphabet to the M’s and found Melissa’s number. It was a Bronx exchange; seven-one-eight.

It’s was late, after eight-thirty at night. As heat spread through her body, Pam decided to call Melissa because she’d never get any sleep if she didn’t confront her right then. Using Jack’s cell phone, Pam keyed in the number and it was answered right away by a shocked, “Hello, Hello! Who is this?”

Melissa sounded younger than Pam remembered.

“Melissa, it’s Jack’s wife. Please don’t hang up on me, I’m not angry, I’m not calling to admonish you,” Pam said, having forgotten that Jack’s phone number would show up on Melissa’s Caller ID.

“Oh, God! I saw his number! I think I might throw up,” Melissa cried. She had been at the funeral. She had seen his body in the casket, but there was his number.
Oh, God.

“Dear, I am sorry to upset you. We need to talk, okay? I want to meet you. I want to know about you. I want to know what Jack meant to you. But we need to talk about other things, too. Can you meet with me?” Pam asked.

“Yes, but you’re scaring me!” Melissa yelled.

“Well, I’m sorry; I don’t know any other way to do it. I would rather not come into the city. Do you think you could come here to me?”

“I don’t drive,” Melissa said.

“You live in the Bronx, correct?” Pam asked.

“How’d you know that?” Melissa countered.

“I recognized the exchange. But I have your address from funeral flowers. Did you get my thank-you card?” There was silence. “You can take the train to Long Island.”

“I do remember. The card, I mean. I guess I could take the train.”

Pam told her what train to take and she agreed to come.

“I have a class in the morning,” Melissa said, and Pam’s heart sank.
He’d been sleeping with students?

“What year are you in?” Pam asked.

“I teach at the community college up here,” Melissa answered and Pam tried not to sigh audibly with relief. They hung up. Although she felt ill, sick to her stomach, her bowels rumbling Pam knew she was doing the right thing. She’d tell Melissa and then she’d let the Department of Health know; they could question her about with whom she had been sleeping. It wasn’t Pam’s business.

Pam started thinking about the cell phone and the contacts. She made herself a cup of tea. She sat at the counter in her perfect kitchen and started to scroll through the names, hundreds of them, all female. There were six Melissas. She put the phone down and looked up at the ceiling, laughing.
Where the hell was I?
And then she thought,
He had Monday through Friday, every day, year after year after year, and evidently, while she was at home primping, he was with as many other women as he could pack in. How many did he have a day, and were they all sexual relationships?
She decided she was going to call every one of those women. She’d call Maggie Daniel and tell her. She’d give her the contact information after she was done with it. But as Jack’s wife, she wanted to do the calling. It was her responsibility.

Melissa’s brownstone in the Bronx was not what her friends expected when they went to see it for the first time. Thinking they would find a rundown, hippie hangout that smelled of incense and mold, reality was a shocker. Jack had bought her a large, restored Victorian. The interior was light-filled and modern, with subtle paint colors and spare but comfortable furniture. The bathrooms were huge marble-and-porcelain originals that craftsmen had taken the time to bring back to their former beauty. Across the back of the house was the large kitchen, a dream kitchen for a future cook. Although she knew she wouldn’t use it much, it raised the resale potential of the house.

She had two housemates and their financial contribution made it possible for her to refrain from dipping into the money that Jack had given to her. For now.

The next morning, she taught her class and when she was done for the day, left for Grand Central for a two-hour train ride. The car wasn’t crowded because it was the middle of the day. When she got to the station in Babylon, she called Pam as she had been asked to do. But Pam was waiting for her, sitting in the parking lot. Pam recognized Melissa right away. Against her will, she envisioned Jack and the tattooed woman naked together. A sneer of scorn went through the muscles in Pam’s face. Shocked, she pulled the rearview mirror down and rearranged her expression to the usual one of concern. She got out of the car and went to Melissa. Melissa saw her walking toward her and didn’t know what to expect. Pam put out her hand to shake Melissa’s, smiling. She hid well her surprise at the girl’s appearance. All of those tattoos had been covered up somehow at the funeral. Back to her usual welcoming self, Pam led Melissa to the car. She unlocked the doors and they got in.

“Thank you for coming,” Pam said. “Do you want to go to the house? Or do you want to talk in the car?”

“I’d like to see the house. I feel like I know it in my head. I want to see the ocean,” Melissa replied.

Waiting for the pain, for the flush of heat, Pam realized she was over it, that Jack couldn’t hurt her anymore. Somehow, in a few short months, she had come to this place of peace—
or was it emotional death
? They pulled up in front of the house and Melissa had the same reaction everyone did: she loved the beauty of the house and its setting. She was thinking,
I can’t picture Jack here. It’s too removed from the action.
“I can’t picture Jack here.” Melissa stated, repeating her thoughts. “I can’t believe he was ever comfortable here.”

Nix not being hurt by Jack anymore
, Pam thought.

Melissa’s expression challenged Pam to argue. But Pam was intrigued and said as much. This young woman might be the counter-irritant that would make all the positive ass-kissers she had encountered since Jack’s death ring false. All she had heard from others was how much Jack had loved her and how he couldn’t wait to get to the beach. Now, maybe she would hear the truth and it would do so much to help her understand how her life with had ended up the way it did. If he had wanted to be at the beach, he would have been at the beach. Not in the city; not with other women. Other men in their community commuted into Manhattan every day and came home at night to be with their families. Jack didn’t want to be there. Melissa was right.