The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Bill expects no welcoming committee. What he expects is for the final firework to fade to the blackness of oblivion, but that doesn’t happen. When the brilliance dims, he’s not in heaven or hell. He’s in a hallway. He supposes it could be purgatory, a hallway painted industrial green and floored in scuffed and dirty tile could very well be purgatory, but only if it went on forever. This one ends twenty feet down at a door with a sign on it reading ISAAC HARRIS MANAGER.

Bill stands where he is for a few moments, inventorying himself. He’s wearing the pajamas he died in (at least he assumes he died), and he’s barefoot, but there’s no sign of the cancer that first tasted his body, then gobbled it down to nothing but skin and skeleton. He looks to be back at about one ninety, which was his fighting weight (slightly soft-bellied, granted) before the cancer struck. He feels his buttocks and the small of his back. The bedsores are gone. Nice. He takes a deep breath and exhales without coughing. Even nicer.

He walks a little way down the hall. On his left is a fire extinguisher with a peculiar graffito above it: Better late than never! On his right is a bulletin board. On this a number of photographs have been pinned, the old-fashioned kind with deckle edges. Above them is a hand-printed banner reading COMPANY PICNIC 1956! WHAT FUN WE HAD!

Bill examines the photographs, which show executives, secretaries, office personnel, and a gaggle of romping kids smeared with ice cream. There are guys tending a barbecue (one wearing the obligatory joke toque), guys and gals tossing horseshoes, guys and gals playing volleyball, guys and gals swimming in a lake. The guys are wearing bathing suits that look almost obscenely short and tight to his twenty-first century eye, but very few of them are carrying big guts. They have fifties’ physiques, Bill thinks. The gals are wearing those old-fashioned Esther Williams tank suits, the kind that make women look as if they have not buttocks but only a smooth and cleftless swoop above the backs of their thighs. Hot dogs are being consumed. Beer is being drunk. Everybody appears to be having a whale of a good time.

In one of the pictures he sees Richie Blankmore’s father handing Annmarie Winkler a toasted marshmallow. This is ridiculous, because Richie’s dad was a truck driver and never went to a company picnic in his life. Annmarie was a girl he dated in college. In another photo he sees Bobby Tisdale, a college classmate back in the early seventies. Bobby, who referred to himself as Tiz the Whiz, died of a heart attack while still in his thirties. He was probably on earth in 1956, but would have been in kindergarten or the first grade, not drinking beer on the shore of Lake Whatever. In this picture the Whiz looks about twenty, which would have been his age when Bill knew him. In a third picture, Eddie Scarponi’s mom is baffing a volleyball. Eddie was Bill’s best friend when the family moved from Nebraska to Paramus, New Jersey, and Gina Scarponi – once glimpsed sunning herself on the patio in filmy white panties and nothing else – was one of Bill’s favorite fantasies when he was still on his masturbation learner’s permit.

The guy in the joke toque is Ronald Reagan.

Bill looks closely, his nose almost pressing against the black-and-white photo, and there can be no doubt. The fortieth president of the United States is flipping burgers at a company picnic.

What company, though?

And where, exactly, is Bill now?

His euphoria at being whole again and pain free is fading. What replaces it is a growing sense of dislocation and unease. Seeing these familiar people in the photographs doesn’t make sense, and the fact that he doesn’t know the majority of them offers marginal comfort at best. He looks behind him, and sees stairs leading up to another door. Printed on this one in large red block letters is LOCKED. That leaves only Mr Isaac Harris’s office. Bill walks down there, hesitates, and then knocks.

‘It’s open.’

Bill walks in. Beside a cluttered desk stands a fellow in baggy, high-waisted suit pants held up by suspenders. His brown hair is plastered to his skull and parted in the middle. He wears rimless glasses. The walls are covered with invoices and corny leg-art cheesecake pix that make Bill think of the trucking company Richie Blankmore’s dad worked for. He went there a few times with Richie, and the dispatch office looked like this.

According to the calendar on one wall, it is March of 1911, which makes no more sense than 1956. To Bill’s right as he enters, there’s a door. To his left is another. There are no windows, but a glass tube comes out of the ceiling and dangles over a Dandux laundry basket. The basket is filled with a heap of yellow sheets that look like more invoices. Or maybe they’re memos. Files are piled two feet high on the chair in front of the desk.