The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Bill doesn’t bother correcting him on the name. Twenty minutes ago he was dying in his bed; now he is fascinated by this old story, which he has never heard before. That he remembers, anyway.

‘Not long after Max and I got down the fire escape, the women crammed onto it. The damn thing couldn’t take the weight. It collapsed and spilled two dozen of em a hundred feet to the cobblestones. They all died. Forty more jumped from the ninth-and tenth-floor windows. Some were on fire. They all died too. The fire brigade got there with life nets, but the women tore right through them and exploded on the pavement like bags filled with blood. A terrible sight, Mr Anderson, terrible. Others jumped down the elevator shafts, but most … just … burned.’

‘Like nine-eleven with fewer casualties.’

‘So you always say.’

‘And you’re here.’

‘Yes indeedy. I sometimes wonder how many men are sitting in offices just like this. Women too. I’m sure there are women, I’ve always been forward-looking and see no reason why women can’t fill low-level executive positions, and admirably. All of us answering the same questions and sending on the same pilgrims. You’d think that the load would lighten a little each time one of you decides to use the right-hand door instead of that one’ – he points to the left – ‘but no. No. A fresh canister comes down the tube – zoop – and I get a new bozo to replace the old one. Sometimes two.’ He leans forward and speaks with great emphasis. ‘This is a shitty job, Mr Anderson!’

‘It’s Andrews.’ Bill says. ‘And look, I’m sorry you feel that way, but Jesus, take a little responsibility for your actions, man! A hundred and forty-six women! And you did lock the doors.’

Harris hammers his desk. ‘They were stealing us blind!’ He picks up the folder and shakes it at Bill. ‘You should talk! Ha! Pot calling the kettle black! Goldman Sachs! Securities fraud! Profits in the billions, taxes in the millions! The low millions! Does the phrase housing bubble ring a bell? How many clients’ trust did you abuse? How many people lost their life savings thanks to your greed and shortsightedness?’

Bill knows what Harris is talking about, but all that chicanery (well … most of it) went on far above his pay grade. He was as surprised as anyone when the excrement hit the cooling device. He’s tempted to say there’s a big difference between being beggared and burned alive, but why rub salt in the wound? Besides, it would probably sound self-righteous.

‘Let’s drop it,’ he says. ‘If you have information I need, why not give it to me. Fill me in on the deal, and I’ll get out of your hair.’

‘I wasn’t the one smoking,’ Harris says in a low and brooding tone. ‘I wasn’t the one dropped the match.’

‘Mr Harris?’ Bill can feel the walls closing in. If I had to be here forever I’d shoot myself, he thinks. Only if what Mr Harris says is true, he wouldn’t want to, any more than he’d want to go to the toilet.

‘Okay, all right.’ Harris makes a lip-flapping sound, not quite a raspberry. ‘The deal is this. Leave through the left door and you get to live your life over again. A to Z. Start to finish. Take the right one and you wink out. Poof. Candle-in-the-wind type of thing.’

At first Bill says nothing to this. He’s incapable of speech and not sure he can trust his ears. It’s too good to be true. His mind first turns to his brother Mike, and the accident that happened when Mike was eight. Next, to the stupid shoplifting thing when Bill was seventeen. Just a lark, but it could have put a hole in his college plans if his father hadn’t stepped in and talked to the right person. The thing with Annmarie in the fraternity house … that still haunts him at odd moments, even after all these years. And of course, the big one—

Harris is smiling, and the smile isn’t a bit pleasant. ‘I know what you’re thinking, because I’ve heard it all from you before. About how you and your brother were playing flashlight tag when you were kids, and you slammed the bedroom door to keep him out, and accidentally cut off the tip of his pinky finger. The impulse shoplifting thing, the watch, and how your dad pulled strings to get you out of it—’

‘That’s right, no record. Except with him. He never let me forget it.’

‘And then there’s the girl in the frat house.’ Harris lifts the file. ‘Her name’s in here somewhere, I imagine, I do my best to keep the files current – when I can find them – but why don’t you refresh me.’

‘Annmarie Winkler.’ Bill can feel his cheeks heating up. ‘It wasn’t date rape, so don’t get that idea. She put her legs around me when I got on top of her, and if that doesn’t say consent, I don’t know what does.’

‘Did she also put her legs around the two fellows who came next?’

No, Bill is tempted to say, but at least we didn’t light her on fire.

And still.