Six

My living room was awash in sunshine, the sign that I had fallen asleep and forgotten to set my clock radio. My voice said, “This is Kevin Grierson…”

My answering machine delivered its message. After the beep, a familiar voice asked, “Grierson, where the hell are you?”

“Ah, Mr. Sandler,” I babbled, trying to figure out what day it was. “How are things in California?” Edwin Sandler is the fat kid who owns all the toys. Malcolm Forbes probably had more. But Forbes is dead, while Sandler walks among us still.

You may have seen him on the news when he bought an old Southern Pacific roundhouse to accommodate his vintage electric trains. George and I have acted as his New York agents for almost twenty years.

“Did you look at the Dolbier Collection? You were supposed to call. Is lot ninety-eight authentic?”

It came back to me. We were talking toy soldiers, fifty-four millimeters tall, hollow cast, old. Intensely desirable, at least to Sandler and a limited number of other people. “I had someone look at the lot,” I lied. “He says yes. But I’m on my way up to Masby’s for the pre-auction viewing.”

“Well if it’s authentic, I want it. Don’t let that little fart Jonesy get it. He’s beaten us out a couple of times recently. You have the list with the other lots I’m interested in. But ninety-eight is the important one. I want it, however you have to do it. The usual bonus applies.” Sandler is cold-blooded when it comes to toys and employees. With no change of tone, he said, “I hear George isn’t doing so well.”

Some days I was able to spend twenty minutes or half an hour before getting wrenched by a reminder of George. “That’s right,” I managed to say.

“It’s a shame. You and he are young men.” All things are relative. Sandler is in his seventies. He hasn’t come near either of us since George’s illness became general knowledge. I thanked him for his concern and said good-by, very tired of Sandler and this whole business.

It was well after ten o’clock. My mind was a blank as I sat up and looked at the catalog again. On the cover, under the title, The August Dolbier Collection, Antique Toy Soldiers 1885-1920, I had written, “Ozzie Klackman. Masby’s. ll A.M.”

I put a kettle on the stove, showered, shaved, had tea and granola, and changed into blazer, slacks, and rep tie. I believe that outfit inspires trust. It also reminds me of Tay.

The phone rang again. It surprised me that the one I wanted it to be was Matt. Instead it was Ozzie Klackman.

“Hey, Grierson, you said be at Masby’s at eleven sharp, Monday morning. I’m here with my meter running. Where are you?”

“At home, Ozzie, otherwise you wouldn’t be speaking to me.”

“Sharp, sharp. Everyone’s always saying, ‘Old Kevin G. is going soft.’ But I tell them, ‘No, no. He’s still got all his marbles and he’s selling them at twenty bucks a pop in that swank little Greenwich Village boutique of his.’ ”

“Hang on. I’m on my way.”

It had taken Klackman to remind me about my own store. I dialed Half Remembered Things. After many rings Lakeisha answered, sounding out of breath. “You just got a UPS delivery,” she said. “From Maryland someplace. Gettysburg?”

“Gaithersburg?” Vaguely I remembered purchasing a load of 1950s tin windup cars. “I’m not going to be in until late this afternoon.” Remembering myself at seventeen, I had qualms about leaving her in charge. “Will you be okay?”

“There is no doubt in my mind.” She was offended that I would question it.

It was already steamy when I hit the street and hailed a cab. On my way to Park Avenue, I reviewed the catalog, checked off lots for Sandler, marked a few items for myself . There was a small collection of turn-of-the-century miniature circus figures. A photo of the horses and clowns made me think of a carnival and that reminded me of Klackman and his merry-go-round.

Uptown at Masby’s, I looked the crowd over. Despite the auction being on short notice and in the off-season, most major collectors or their agents had gathered. I was willing to bet that none had my exact business background. The auction house staff assigned me paddle 163.

Stepping into the showroom, I nodded to the big white-mustached guy who’s a retired colonel, to the Trasks, a husband and wife team of gnomes, and to Maxwell Jones, a shiny-faced child of sixty-five. Klackman, my hired accomplice, lounged against a display case. We pretended not to see each other.

Recorded marches played. Tiny conveyor belts drew hand-painted guardsmen in red coats, hussars on plunging horses, through display dioramas of castles and battlefields. American Indians in wild, impossible costumes galloped forever around a wagon train. The figures were eighty, ninety, a hundred years old. The kids for whom they had been bought were aged or dead. But here perpetually was the bright, savage world of childhood.

Everyone knew I represented Sandler. Eyes followed me as I approached lot ninety-eight. Rare, maybe unique, it stood in a display case by itself: French army medical figures, horse-drawn ambulances, supply wagons, hospital tents, stretchers, patients, nurses, doctors. It was attributed to William Britain Ltd., the famous English toy company, made in its Paris office circa 1910. The estimate was twenty-two thousand to twenty-six thousand dollars. This was the one that Sandler wanted. I wanted it too. And cheap. My bonus with Sandler was that if I brought the item in for under midestimate, in this case twenty-four thousand, he and I would split whatever I saved him. It would not be easy, but I had a plan.

Madge Brierly, the decayed gentlewoman whom Masby’s has employed ever since I can remember, asked if I wanted the case opened. I nodded and asked, “Are you working the phones?”

“But of course.”

Examining a two-inch-tall hand-painted doctor, I tried to remember all George had taught me. The uniform, once brilliant red and blue, the bright cheeks and black mustache, had in age acquired a nice patina. It showed no signs of retouching or repair. The crucible for toys is their passage through the hands of their young owners. Unworthy, at first, of adult attention, few survive intact. “Much prebidding?” I kept my voice low. Such information is confidential.

Her shrug indicated that preauction bids were less than the estimate. “Collectors are curious but wary. It seems August Dolbier’s reputation wasn’t the best. Everyone wants to see firsthand.”

Right on cue, a voice called, “Grierson!” Heads turned. Madge stepped away as if to avoid contamination. Shabby, grinning, in need of a shave and doubtless a drink, Ozzie Klackman approached. In a loud, hoarse whisper I hoped everyone caught, he told me, “Anybody can have old antiques. But how many can have brand-new ones?”

Value in an antique depends on rarity and integrity. Repairs, repainting diminish the worth. Fraud and forgery are not uncommon. Those are Klackman’s specialties. Everyone suspected that and knew that Klackman had worked for Dolbier.

“So what do you think?” Ozzie asked proudly as if the medical corps were his work.

The figure looked authentic to me. I replaced it in the case and went on to view other lots. Ones I wanted for the store I listed on an order bid sheet. Next to each item on my sheet I placed the top amount I was willing to pay. I handed Madge my sheets. If nobody topped my bid on a lot, I would get that lot. I had left lot ninety-eight off my list.

The crowd began to buzz. The auction was ready to start. Usually I stayed at the back of the hall. Today, I was up front in plain sight with Ozzie right beside me. It would appear that I was buying with his advice.

Hillary Westall, chief auctioneer, bright and stiff as a toy soldier himself, stepped to the podium. Madge Brierly stood at his left, receiver to ear, ready for phone bids. All attention focused on Westall as he said in clipped tones, “Lot number one, Britain’s set number six. Boer Cavalry. Original box. Circa 1902. Bidding will start at one thousand dollars. It is with the room.”

Klackman said nothing. I raised my paddle to establish my presence. “One thousand. Do we see twelve fifty?” Madge signaled that someone on the phone had topped my bid. The phones were my opportunity and the greatest uncertainty in my plan. Madge listened with her gaze fixed on the front window.

Westall looked my way on each lot. I raised my paddle regularly. Klackman said, “Hey, you got that one!” a few times.

“Lot number seventy-one. Lucotte Napoleonic General Staff. Thirty pieces. Circa 1890. Bids start at twelve hundred dollars,” said Westall.

A moment later Klackman whispered, “That asshole Jonesy got it for twice the estimate and the only part of it that’s authentic is the tail on Napoleon’s horse!” I made like I was very annoyed at having lost.

A few minutes later, timing it carefully, I rose and walked up the aisle followed by a grinning Klackman as Westall said, “Lot number ninety-eight, Britain’s depose. Medical…” Jonesy glanced at us sharply and immediately turned his attention back to the podium.

More than face or paddle number, location is identity. An auctioneer looks to the place where she or he last saw the bidder. Giving up the place I’d established signaled to the room that I had no interest in bidding on lot ninety-eight.

“We start at sixteen thousand five hundred.” Immediately, a phone bid came in and Madge relayed it to Westall. Only those in the room had witnessed Ozzie Klackman’s fouling the authenticity of this lot. A phone bidder might still be willing to shoot for the moon.

Phone bids came in for $17,000 and $17,500. But those on the scene congratulated themselves on their firsthand knowledge.

As I reached the front window, Westall said, “We stand at eighteen thousand for a unique artifact. Going once…” I stood behind all the other bidders directly in Madge Brierly’s line of sight. She gazed off thinking, perhaps, of better times. I smiled and lifted my paddle. She listened to a phone bid and looked right through me as she relayed it to Westall.

“Eighteen thousand five hundred. The bid is with the room. Do we have nineteen thousand? Going once, twice…”

I waved my paddle frantically. Madge squinted, perhaps her eyesight was bad. Then she nodded imperceptibly and signaled Westall. “Nineteen thousand dollars. Thank you,” he said, and everyone present assumed it was a phone bid.

Then people actually on the phone raised it to $19,500 and $20,000. Again I waved my paddle. Again Madge looked my way but couldn’t find me. “Going once, twice…” I handed the paddle to Klackman who waved it back and forth like he was guiding a dirigible in for a landing. She nodded and spoke to Westall. “Twenty thousand and five hundred. Going once. Twice. Sold to paddle one sixty-three who has chosen to migrate.”

Jonesy turned around amazed. “Hey, my meter is running!” said the voice in my ear. Ozzie and I retired to the foyer where, very discreetly, I passed him three hundred dollars in tens and twenties. “Very slick, Mr. G.,” he said. “Especially the part where you became the Invisible Man.”

We both knew there was another piece of business. Since I didn’t mention it, he did. “You had your eye on that merry-go-round last night,” Ozzie said like he was trying to sell me the toy. “I can offer you a good price.”

I shrugged and as if it were idle conversation I said, “You mentioned that something reminded you of the original.”

Klackman looked around and it occurred to me that he was nervous. “Not something. I haven’t seen it recently. But the other week I ran into a guy who was one of the ones selling it last time.” I made a throat-cutting gesture that duplicated Smiley Smile’s scar. “Yeah. Him. That one. Al’s his name.”

Someone stepped out for a smoke and we heard Hillary Westall say, “…Hannibal at Carthage, including six elephants in fair condition.”

We moved away from the smoker. Ozzie said, “All he told me was the merchandise is available again. Asked if I knew you. It’s what you might call a weird scene.” This was Klackman’s way of giving me fair warning that the procedure might not be entirely legal or safe. “You interested?”

“Interested in what you can find out. I’ll talk to you, Ozzie.”

Klackman left promising to get back in touch. His voice in my ear that afternoon, confidential, boozy, criminal, had reminded me of my Shadow. I was stung by how much I missed it.

Next I arranged payment and shipping on Sandler’s lots and mine. Then Madge Brierly and I slipped off to a little place around the corner. There I had iced tea and chicken salad while she polished off a surprising number of vodka and tonics and dished the auction world establishment.

I mentioned having been afraid that she wasn’t going to recognize my bid and Madge said, “It was odd. I could see that oaf Klackman all too clearly. But you, somehow, kept getting lost against the sunlight in the windows.”

Before we parted, I surprised myself by saying, “A good-sized collection is about to come onto the market. Toys of all kinds.” The collection I had in mind was the inventory of Half Remembered Things. Until that moment, I hadn’t known we were going out of business.

When I was fourteen, I gave away my toys because I thought I was grown up. Actually, all that had happened was that a guy a few times my age gave me money to let him blow me. I remembered that as I paid the cabby on the corner of Bleecker across from the store.

Inside, framed by Howdy Doody drinking glasses, a mint Fun on the Farm game, and a brace of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon lunch boxes, Lakeisha was on the phone. She buzzed me in without hanging up. Lakeisha is the daughter of one of George’s nurses. Just out of high school, she is, like it or not, on her way to St. Regis College in Rhode Island this fall. George wanted very much for her to go to school outside the city.

She might have done something with her hair since Saturday. But I wasn’t sure, so I said, “You look wonderful,” which is always safe and true. The curves of her chin, the lines of her cheek, are flawless in the way black faces can be. I looked at the register and saw that we had done seventy-four dollars and ninety-five cents’ worth of business that day. That wouldn’t pay the rent.

“That German man from Saturday came back and bought the dollhouse chair. Some people left messages,” she said after hanging up. “Are you going to visit George tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to say…to see him before I go away.” Lakeisha and I got along fine but it was George she loved. She looked past me out the window.

Turning, I saw her confidante, Claudia of the three-inch green nails with smiley faces painted on them, and Claudia’s boyfriend, James, a chubby, good-natured kid. Standing behind them on the corner was Lakeisha’s latest, Lionel, a wiry little snake. Lakeisha is unlucky in love. “You want to go?” I asked. And as the words left my mouth, Lakeisha asked, “We can see George tomorrow?” and was out the door.

My shopkeeper neighbors don’t like seeing African-American kids around. I watched Lionel, almost lost in his baggy clothes, put his arms about Lakeisha. The gesture was clumsy with self-consciousness. Suddenly she and he seemed so young and vulnerable.

In the two years I’ve known her, a couple of Lakeisha’s friends have been killed. Claudia’s arm was slashed on the subway. Even Lionel I recognized as a fellow changeling trying in all the wrong ways to be mistaken for a human child.

The first couple of phone messages were routine business. The landlord wanted to talk about a huge rent hike. A lady asked if we sold sex toys. Some guy wondered if we had Mr. Potato Head with his pipe.

After that, I was left to think about Smiley Smile and my Shadow, to wonder what the next move would be and who would make it. I looked around at the French puppet theater by Maison Lillibon, the red American Flyer wagon filled with ABC blocks, and made a note to begin an inventory. Outside, tanned, half-clothed bodies cruised past. With my eyes slitted, I pretended I was lounging in the shade, scanning the boardwalk at some sun-soaked resort.

Then I was aware of an unfamiliar room pale as a daytime moon. On the floor was a mattress with my Shadow lying on it. His skin was tight over bones, his eyes hollow. Like a death mask. My nerves twitched. What I felt wasn’t pain but its ghost.

Just then Addie called and said I should come by that evening. And soon it was closing time and I shut up Half Remembered Things. The store’s time was past. I walked across town thinking how much of my life in the humans’ world had been connected to the place. It seemed that time too was passing.

My destination was Cabrini Hospice. Like so many in the plague years, I had a part-time job as an angel of death. George’s sister Corrie was leaving as I arrived. “He had a small seizure just before I got here. I cut his nails.” We hugged, dry-eyed this close to the end. Corrie is his older sister. She and her husband are going to retire to the Yucatán. Their plans are on hold. I had made no plans.

In the course of twelve years, I had seen George through clinics and wards, support groups and marches, through hopes for a last-minute cure and final disappointment. His will to live was a wonder. Now, finally, emaciated, small as a monkey, he lay on his left side with his eyes closed. Single, wirelike hairs still grew out of his head. Treatment for fungal growth made it look as though his face had been scoured by fire.

I took his hands and rubbed them. I’d been told that patients in a coma, with only tubes connecting them to the world, retain the sensation of touch. He had been shaved. A tiny fleck of blood had dried on his chin. I was reminded, despite wanting desperately not to remember, of the time a few years before when George had coughed a mouthful of his deadly blood directly into my face. He deserved so much more from me than the look of horror and revulsion I showed.

Beside the next bed, an Italian woman in her sixties murmured over her dying son. Maybe she was saying the rosary, maybe she was talking to him, saying things she couldn’t while he was conscious. It’s what happened with me. That evening, I sat with George, speaking softly.

“I never told you about my Shadow and the life he and I had. You would have listened. But I wanted to forget. Maybe that secret was part of what came between us. Another thing I let my doppelgänger wreck.

“I keep wondering what would have happened if I had even just bothered to pretend I was faithful. Would we have stayed together? Would that mean you’d have stayed healthy? Would we both be dying or dead now? Should I have warned you about me that first time?

“All I’m sure of is that my life got saved by my bad heart and your good one. It was my heart that got me out of circulation when AIDS was still a mystery. After my bypass when all I wanted was to die, you dragged me back to life, smuggled in tiny bites of forbidden desserts, took me to see Sunday in the Park with George. A very serious evening. Lots of times we were the only two laughing.

“You did all that knowing that you had started to die. When you got sick, I tried to do the same for you. But my magic wasn’t as strong as yours.”

It was late. The Italian woman had left. Rising to go, I suddenly was certain that I wasn’t going to have another chance to say farewell. I leaned over and kissed George. “Back when we first met, I felt that all this, you and me, the store, the city, was a stop along the way. And I guess it was. Just longer than I thought. And better. Because you are the very best. I hope what I’ve felt for you is what humankind calls love.”

Addie had invited me over. But when I arrived, only Lauren was there. “She’s held up at a meeting. Come on in.” Laurie was in the blue room with her lights set up. The sand table construction she had just shot involved a labyrinth and cars and trucks, dozens of them. Laurie mostly does fashion work. She also photographs each sand table creation of Addie’s patients. And she did the photos for The Eternal Child, George’s last book about toys.

We disassembled the web of roads. “This kid’s subconscious looks kind of like New Jersey,” Laurie said. As I put a tow truck back on a shelf, I noticed Addie’s streetcar and placed it on the sand. Laurie was about to take down her lights. She stopped as I ran the car back and forth on the sand.

“You know about my Streetcar Dreams?” I asked.

“Addie told me something.” Lauren grinned. “I grew up in Greenwich Village. So I heard a lot stranger stuff.” I took toys off the shelves, boats and buildings at first. I set the buildings up close together like New York blocks on one side of the tracks in the sand. On the other, I set up the boats as if they were docked.

“Back when I was in my late twenties my life was seriously rotten. I was living on the margins. I had this kind of partner. He had me under his thumb.”

Lauren nodded. She knew that I thought I had a Shadow.

“When things were at their worst, these dreams started. They were always the same. I’d go into one of the armpit Times Square subway stations, take a passage I’d never seen before, and go down a flight of stairs. Instead of trains, I’d find a streetcar. I’d get on board and it would roll out of the tunnel and into my past.”

As I spoke, I took figures off the shelves, marching sailors and soldiers, civilians of all kinds, and set them up on either side of the tracks. “One time I burst out of the subway onto these World War Two-era city streets. Guys in uniform, women in hats, Buy Bonds posters. Brilliant sunshine. Spring light.

“We rolled down the West Side past Hell’s Kitchen, all kinds of warships and transports and sailors and girls. My father got killed in the South Pacific. He sailed from New York. My mother came down to see him off. I remember thinking that this is where they did the deed that resulted in me.” I put a U.S. sailor in blues and a woman in a pink dress together waiting to cross from the buildings over to the ships. As I did, Addie came in and stood quietly in the doorway.

“What happened after the dream?” Lauren asked.

“The next thing I remember clearly is giving my Shadow the slip just after my birthday. That had happened before. Always I’d ended up crawling back to him. But this time, my life changed. It was like an explosion of light.”

Both Addie and I watched Lauren for her reaction. She checked her cameras and equipment, gestured me away from the table. “So, it’s a lucky dream,” she said. “My Italian grandmother used to play the numbers. She had these dream books.”

“My Irish grandmother did too! I’d forgotten about dream books,” I said. “They still have them. Each dream has a three-digit number. You had the dream—”

“You played the number. Streetcar Dreams. My advice is play it, Kevin.”

We laughed. Addie hugged her. “On matters like this, she’s uncanny. While you two were in here, I had the time to whip up sesame noodles and broccoli with mushroom and rice. I even stuck them in Chinese restaurant take-out containers so you’d be comfortable with it.”

When I got home that evening, lights were on in the windows of the big apartment houses across the park. I stood for a moment in the vestibule scanning my mail: bills, auction catalogs, GMHC fund-raising appeals.

Up in my silent apartment, the phone rang. When it turned out to be Mr. Sandler, I was disappointed. Old Edwin, though, seemed happy at my news. “Your bonus check will be in the mail.” The thought left me numb.

On my message tape, my godchild said, “Uncle Kevin, what I need very much is a horse. An alive one with a gold…” In the background, her mother could be heard asking, “Miranda, what are you doing?” And the connection abruptly broke.

The next message was a voice from the past that made me sit up. Gina Raille and I go all the way back to Mass. Arts and Science. “Kevin? Remember the evil twin I asked you about? The guy who looked like a really raddled version of you? He’s back and I think I need to talk to you about him.” The number Gina left was an answering service, one of the last still operating. I left a message.

Finally there was Klackman. “Grierson? That matter we discussed? Those people want to talk to you. Tonight.” That was what I thought they’d want. I didn’t return the call.

Waiting for the phone to ring, I channel surfed. I turned the TV sound off and sampled CDs. Jimi played at Monterey as Larry King talked to a woman senator. The slow movement of a middle symphony by Antonín Dvořák, who lived down the street from my building a hundred years ago, accompanied the Atlanta Braves at St. Louis. Ella Fitzgerald sang Cole Porter to the liquid bodies on MTV.

As I did that, I thought about betting and dreams. I remembered the time when my only refuge was in my dreams. It was back then, very late on a night when it would not do for either of us to be seen on the streets, that my Shadow and I were in a bar called the Dublin Green.

‘Stay here,’ he told me, thinking I was too drunk and stoned to move. ‘I need to speak to this guy.’ He and a dealer slipped downstairs. And like I was acting on a plan so secret I wasn’t conscious of having formed it, I was out the door as soon as he was gone.

All this led me to an encounter a few days later. I was seated before a shining figure in a place of silver light. I could hardly focus my eyes. “How did you come to me?” he asked.

It took me a moment to get my mouth to work. All I could say was, “By streetcar.”

Clear winter sunshine framed Leo Dunn. He gave a wide smile, poured me some hot coffee, and said, “It must have been one hell of a ride, my friend.” When that image, those words caught me, I hit the remote, killed the TV and CD player, sat in the dark, and let memory take me.