The Last Dreamer (12 page)

“And then there was the money,” he said, looking as though he barely remembered she was there. “We didn’t make much when we started the series, but once we had concerts, that’s when we raked it in. I didn’t even know how much I got, that’s what I had a business manager for. All I knew was that I was loaded. I bought a house. I owned three cars. I built my dad this acoustically perfect music studio. I sent my mom to the Riviera.

“Needless to say, I didn’t do much saving. So the money didn’t last long. I lost a ton on some hotel venture in Texas that my business manager talked me into. I lost a ton to agents and managers I trusted, who are now living the high life because I never read my contracts. All those Jeff Downs posters that hung in millions of teenage girls’ bedrooms? I never saw a dime. We signed away all our merchandising rights.”

“So what made it worth it?” she asked. “Tell me—what was the best time you had, the best thing you remember from those years?”

Jeff lowered his voice and folded his arms on his desk. “The best time was when it was all starting—those first weeks of rehearsing, when we were so stoked about what would happen,” he told her. “There was this place we’d go, Nate’s, before we got too big to go out on our own. It had the best burgers, and it was on the beach and smelled of beer and ocean. So the day comes when our show will be on the air for the first time, and we’re there eating lunch, and Terry notices a row of those old newspaper machines, where you put in a coin to open the door and get a paper? Well, he gets one and turns to the TV page and sees our names listed, and he’s got this big smile on his face. And suddenly he puts in another coin and this time takes the whole pile, fifteen of them. He’s standing there, smiling and holding this stack of papers.

“Well, Peter goes to the next machine and pulls out all the papers, and then Bruce and I do it, too. So now we’ve got around forty newspapers, and Terry jumps into his car and takes off, and the rest of us get into my car and follow him. And a few blocks later, we see Terry at another row of machines, taking more papers, so we do the same. At some point Terry heads back to the studio, but I keep driving the others, and we keep emptying newspaper machines and laughing our heads off.

“Yeah, we got yelled at when we showed up at the studio nearly two hours late,” he said. “But it was so great. I swear, I think it was the best afternoon I ever had.”

He got up and went over to a half-size refrigerator against the wall. He pulled out two bottles of water and placed one on the desk in front of Iliana. She twisted the top off and took a sip. He sat back down.

“What’s on your agenda this afternoon, Ms. Fisher?”

“Just have to pick up my kids at two thirty,” she answered. She looked at her watch. It was almost eleven. She hadn’t heard her phone ring, but she reached in her bag and double-checked anyway. No missed calls.

“And I take it you want me to continue.”

“I want to know what happened next,” she said. “How did it end? Will you tell me that?”

“Ahh, the painful part,” he said, still smiling but also sounding a little melancholy. “I guess I promised you the whole story, didn’t I? Okay, onward. So the first season it’s all beginning and the second season we’re on a roll, but then things change. Did you know teen idols have a shelf life of two years?”

She shook her head. It was strange to think of Jeff as having a shelf life, like bread or cereal. But by the time the Dreamers started their third season, she was in high school, writing for the school literary magazine, covering the debate team for the school newspaper, getting to know the president of the debate team, who would become her first boyfriend. After the second season, she couldn’t even remember any episodes.

“It happens slowly so you don’t even realize it,” Jeff was saying. “Our fourth album didn’t sell as well as the other three, then the TV ratings started to drop, then one week we didn’t even make it into the top ten. That’s when the fighting began. We were animals, trying to protect our hides. Terry complained that he wasn’t getting enough close-ups. And Peter was married by then, he threatened to quit if he had to keep touring. There should never have been a fourth season. Nobody was watching anymore. The reporters were calling us ‘The Bad Dreams,’ ‘The Nightmares.’ Same guys we used to slip bottles of liquor to or bring into our hotel suites when we were touring. Now they made fun of us. We were a joke.”

He opened the desk drawer and took out another old photograph, which he offered to her. She took it. It showed the four Dreamers sitting on the wood railing of a boardwalk, with the ocean behind them. They were shirtless and tan, with blue Levis and bare feet. There were four girls in the photo as well, two standing on either side of the boys. They were in bikinis, although the one on the far left was wearing a long, unbuttoned denim shirt over it. Everyone was smiling, except for this fourth girl, who stared into the camera, her lips a short, straight line. She reminded Iliana of the youngest girl in the family picture downstairs. The photo looked faded and felt thin and worn in her hand. She knew it was old, but she also guessed it had been handled a lot. Did he show it often to others? Or look at it a lot when he was here alone?

“That’s Catherine, my wife, the serious one. Did I tell you she was in the show?”

“You did,” Iliana said. “Were you dating back then? What did you like about her?” She was curious as to how Catherine ended up with Jeff. What had it taken to date this adored teen idol, let alone to become his girlfriend and later his wife?

“It was mostly that she wasn’t like the other girls,” he said. “She was smart, always doing something brainy. She was getting a degree in dance, and she would read these biographies of famous choreographers—Balachee or something. Once she spent two hours on the phone with her father, helping him with his taxes! How does a twenty-year-old know how to do taxes?

“But there was this thing about her, this tiny little piece of her that was a risk taker,” he continued. “I mean, she came all the way from New York and auditioned for our show—you’ve got to have some adventure in you to do that. And I was always chasing that little piece of her. And it was so sexy when I found it. Once I convinced her to spend an entire weekend in my apartment without getting dressed. Just to go back and forth from the bedroom to the kitchen, eating and making love for two days straight. This was so not like her, she always had to study or clean out a cabinet or something. I got such a charge, being the guy who got her to go against her nature. What an incredible weekend.”

The mention of Catherine’s decision to travel from New York to California was like a knife jab. Why hadn’t
she
ever had the courage to do something like that, something gutsy and bold and risky? Why had she played life so safe?

“But at the end of the third season, Catherine decides to leave LA,” Jeff said. “I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t such a great boyfriend. But I was so mad when she abandoned me. She thought the show didn’t have a future, and she was right. After the fourth season, we’re canceled. Nobody likes the Dreamers. Nobody will admit
ever
liking us. And it’s every man for himself. I tried a solo singing tour. Do you remember that?”

Iliana shook her head guiltily.

“Don’t worry, no one does. Nobody bought tickets. I could barely fill half an auditorium. So I cancel the last few cities and go home. Except now, home is on the East Coast. My parents have moved with my brother to New York, so I move in with them. But I can’t stop thinking about what it was like at the beginning. When the commercial came out, and those girls asked for my autograph, or the day we drove around, grabbing newspapers. I would have given anything to do it again. I felt like an old man. I was twenty-three years old.”

Iliana looked down. She knew just how he felt. Going to college, getting her first job, meeting Marc, getting married, giving birth—all the important firsts of life, why did they have to come so early, so close together, bam-bam-bam?
Why couldn’t they be spread out over a lifetime? What was a person supposed to do when all the good firsts were over and the only ones left were bad firsts that you didn’t want anyway? The first irreparable fight. The first promotion lost to someone younger. The first spouse to get sick. The first funeral to plan. And yet Jeff was wrong. He hadn’t been washed up at twenty-three. He went on to get married, have a family, start a business, create a product line. Life gave a person a lot of chances.

“I registered for a couple of classes at Columbia,” Jeff said. “But it didn’t work out. I was older than everyone, and people kept their distance, like they didn’t know what to make of me. But then my brother calls me up. He became a skier when my family moved east, and he wants to start his own outerwear business. So he gets his business degree at the University of Maine in Portland and begins working at L.L.Bean to learn the ropes. He starts out entry-level, but then he gets promoted, and he bugs me to come work for him so in a few years we can go into business together. At first I say, no way. Working for my baby brother? Living in Maine? I was a Dreamer! But after a while I gave in. I wasn’t doing much, just sleeping late and writing bad music and driving my parents nuts. So I pack up and head north. I stayed there fourteen years.”

He tilted his head. “Ever been to Maine?”

“During the summer, with the kids,” Iliana answered, picturing water parks, traffic, and countless kids-eat-free restaurants.

“No, I mean the winter Maine. I rented a small house set back off a main road and started calling myself Jay. Jay Downs. I grew my hair long and I grew a beard, and I gained some weight, too. Nobody recognized me. I joined a bowling league. My teammates were big, hairy guys, plumbers and builders. I never watched TV, I hardly dated. Just worked, bowled, and slept.

“But then there comes a day I need a new coat, so I drive to the big L.L.Bean store in Freeport to use my employee discount,” said Jeff. “And it’s fall, and families are shopping for parkas, parents trying hats and snow pants on their kids. And I start to think it might be nice to get back into circulation. And right about this time Jack, my brother, he wants to leave Bean and start developing sports apparel made with polyester fleece. He’s been saving money, and I’ve got a little saved, too. We signed a good designer and hooked up with a small, hungry factory in South Carolina. We called our business Hats and All That.

“At first, we had two products—a ski hat and a set of knee-high socks with separate pockets for each toe. Bean picked both items up for the catalog, and we also started selling them locally, to sports and ski shops. Then one day I’m in a coffee shop and I see this guy and I blurt out, ‘That’s my hat!’ Of course, he nearly socked me until I told him what I meant, but then he said he loved that hat. And it was a hoot, listening to him.”

“Why did that mean so much to you?” Iliana asked.

“Because I had created this thing, do you see? I liked making a product instead of being one. So after a few years I’m ready to expand into another category, and Jack doesn’t want to, so we shake hands, and I start Downs Textiles. I spend some time in Europe and Asia, checking out factories that can give me a good price on raw materials. Then I arrange with the factory to begin blanket production, and I start calling on buyers in New York. Pretty soon it’s clear that I need a New York showroom. So I move to Manhattan, get a showroom, and hire a receptionist. I’m in business.”

“Back to New York,” Iliana said. Lucky for her.

“Yeah, but what I haven’t mentioned is that Catherine’s kept up with me,” Jeff said. He tilted his head, the way he always seemed to when he wanted to gauge her reaction. She thought that maybe he wanted to see how she reacted to the mention of Catherine again. Maybe he wanted to see if she looked jealous. Maybe he wanted her to
be
jealous. She looked away, not sure what expression she wanted him to see.

He chuckled. “Catherine had been sending me Christmas cards each year,” he said. “She’s married and divorced by now, has a couple of daughters. So I invite her to Manhattan. Hey, I’ve got a business, a product line, employees. I’ve got things to be proud of now. Well, she walks in the door, and she’s changed so much. Her face is even thinner, and she looks so tired. And all she can talk about is how much she admires what I’ve put together from nothing. It makes me so happy to hear her go on. Not that I’m a narcissist, at least I don’t think I am. But it’s nice when someone you care about thinks you’re hot stuff, don’t you think?”

Iliana nodded. She knew, especially from the last few weeks, how very good that felt.

“And so, Ms. Fisher, six months later we were married. Eventually we moved up here and had our daughter. And then there’s our older two girls from Catherine’s first marriage. And maybe once in a while I wonder if I did the right thing, leaving Hollywood behind. Especially when someone recognizes me, or tells me they used to love my songs. Someone pretty and important like, I don’t know, a newspaper reporter?” He winked at her, something she had never seen him do, not even on TV. Iliana blushed.

“And then a few weeks ago, I get a call,” he said, reaching a crescendo. “And one morning, to my great delight, Iliana Fisher walks through my door.”

There were voices downstairs. Iliana had been aware of them for about ten minutes, but now they were coming closer. Iliana was sorry that Jeff’s employees were coming back. She had enjoyed hearing him tell his story. It was what she had always wanted when she was young—to be close to him, to know exactly what was going on behind that one-of-a-kind, tight-lipped smile. She only wished there was more to hear.

Jeff seemed reluctant for the morning to end as well. He stood and smoothed out his pant legs with his hands. “Hey, I should let you go,” he said.

She shrugged. “I guess it’s getting to be that time.”

“Okay then,” he said resignedly. “Let me get you to the highway.”

Chapter 12

Iliana took one last look before she went to the stairs. The sun threw a splash of light from one of the windows onto the floor, and it lit up like a stage. Jeff greeted his two employees when they reached the landing, and they waved to Iliana before sitting at their computers. Then Jeff gestured to Iliana that they should continue down, and she started to descend.

She knew it was time to go. She clearly had all the material any reporter could need for an article. She had spent a lot of time with Jeff, much more than she used to spend with a subject she was profiling. She had met some employees and customers, viewed his product line, heard him make a sales pitch, and even spent some relaxed time talking openly over lunch. And now she had heard him recount his past as well. She knew that he could sometimes be self-serving—his claim that he had demonstrated great acting skill was almost laughable—and yet she realized how strong his need to protect his ego must be. She recognized that the first part of his life was a mix, with thrills as exciting as a lottery win, followed by defeats and misgivings. And she understood his decision to patch what he could and embrace a future with fewer ascents but fewer crashes as well.

And yet, it wasn’t enough. There was something unsatisfying about this moment, like a diet meal, a salad without a roll. She didn’t know if the
New York Times
—or any magazine, for that matter—would think she had a story worth publishing, but in a way it didn’t matter. She had loved being Iliana Fisher,
New York Times
reporter, and she had loved interviewing Jeff Downs. She didn’t want it to end.

The thing was, when Jeff was talking, there were times when she felt she was there. She could see him running from girls at the Detroit hotel; she felt breathless, as though she had run, too. She could feel the waist of his frayed jeans as he leaned against the boardwalk railing with his pals. It was just like when she was young and would sit in front of the TV, feeling Jeff’s charm shoot out and envelop her. Just like in her dream on the day she first met him, when he reached through the TV screen to draw her in.
This
was what she loved about reporting. She had peeled away layers and explored all the nooks and crannies she found underneath, doing exactly what she had told Jeff she always loved to do, from the time her parents bought her a writing desk for her birthday, or even before.

And yet, now that it was over, she couldn’t feel or see or hear any of it anymore—why was that? Why were feelings and sensations so hard to hang on to? She had given birth to two babies, had been a full-time mom to each of them, and even now, not all that much later, she couldn’t feel what it was like to hold them. She
remembered
holding them, but her arms no longer carried the sensation. She couldn’t feel Matthew’s solid infant body in her arms; she couldn’t see Dara raise her diapered bottom in the air as she tried to stand. She couldn’t even hear the sound of her father’s voice anymore, even though he had called weekly after her parents moved to Florida, ending each conversation with “Goodnight, my sweetheart.” It didn’t matter that she could remember those things; if she couldn’t feel them, hear them, if her senses didn’t kick in, what good were her memories?

When they got close to the front of the house, they saw Catherine walking toward them.

Iliana knew it was Catherine immediately. She was thin and taut, with brown hair styled in a short, precise haircut. Her appearance was neat, her posture erect, her face serious and composed. She looked to Iliana like a person who liked to be in control, the kind of person who counted every calorie, kept track of every detail, meticulously cleaned the lint out of the dryer after every cycle. She was wearing a thick red sweater and jeans tucked into laced-up, calf-high leather boots.

“Hey, you’re home,” Jeff said, kissing her on the cheek. He seemed to be trying to appear casual, but he looked surprised and a little scared, like a teenager who had snuck his girlfriend into the house, not expecting his mother to return. “This is the reporter I told you about, Iliana Fisher,” he said. “Iliana, this is my wife, Catherine.”

“Nice to meet you,” Iliana said, extending her hand.

“Likewise,” Catherine answered, shaking Iliana’s hand. “Did you get everything you needed?” She didn’t come across as particularly warm, but her smile was pleasant.

“I did,” Iliana said. Nobody spoke for a moment. Iliana sensed tension between husband and wife, and it made her uncomfortable. She wondered if Catherine thought she was romantically interested in Jeff. Whatever the problem, Iliana wanted desperately to take the stress level down. “It’s a great space here, and the showroom in the city is beautiful, too,” she said. “You’ve got a wonderful business. You both should be very proud.”

“Jeff, did you tell her about the new product?” Catherine asked, sounding more relaxed. “It would be nice to get a little advance publicity on that. I ran into Melly and Charles on their way back. They said Stefano is on board.”

“Yes, I heard about the new product, and it’s very exciting,” Iliana said. “And I heard some great stories about your earlier life, too, how you met Jeff when you were on the show.”

“Jeff talked about the show?” Catherine said, her eyebrows raised.

Iliana immediately knew she’d said something wrong. “A little about it, yes. Some about the business and some about the show.”

“I think I’d better get Iliana on her way,” Jeff jumped in, gesturing toward the street. “I’ll be right back and we can go over Stefano’s contract.”

He walked down to where the cars were parked and waited by hers. Iliana followed, feeling concerned that she had created a problem between the couple. “Look, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “I can find my way back to the highway by myself.”

“No, the GPS takes you miles out of the way,” he said. “No need to put you through that. It won’t take long for me to get back here.”

She unlocked her door and he opened it for her. Then he went to his own car, looking anxious and distracted. Watching him pull away from the curb, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Why had Catherine been so disturbed by her presence, and then even more so when she brought up the show? Did she have a problem with that aspect of the article? Did she not want Iliana to write about the Dreamers?

Ultimately, Iliana realized, it didn’t matter. She was done asking questions, of Jeff and about him. And yet, the more she had learned about him that morning, the more she had come to empathize with him. Jeff, with his cheery exterior and his complicated past, trying to hold on to the dream that he still had an exceptional life, when what he really had was a middling business and a sour-faced family. What had he said when he talked about the day right before the TV show debuted—that the afternoon the guys spent taking newspapers out of the vending machines was the best afternoon of his life? She knew exactly what he meant. Being on the verge of something big—that was what made life thrilling. She had felt just the same way in the days and hours before she first met him. And now that it was ending, she felt horrible. Because it was all a fantasy. It was foolish to pretend you were something you no longer were or never had been, because at the end of the day you had nothing. It was true of Jeff, and it was true of her, too. She wasn’t a writer if she was spending all her time writing a pretend article. She’d be a writer when she actually
wrote.

She sighed. She liked Jeff Downs. She liked the person she was when she was with him. She would miss that feeling. She
had
to figure out how to get it back.

Jeff’s car traveled through the small town and then onto the long, two-lane stretch of road, and Iliana followed behind. Soon the coffee shop was visible, and Jeff turned into the parking lot and pulled into a space. She pulled in alongside him, figuring she probably should use the restroom inside. And she wanted to say good-bye to him. She didn’t really know if she would ever talk to him again.

She got out of her car, and he got out, too, looking at her with his palms up. “What’s up?”

“I just thought I’d stop inside for a moment before heading home,” she said.

“Oh. Well, as long as you’ve stopped, let me buy you a cup of coffee for the road. It’s cold—couldn’t hurt to have something warm to drink in the car.”

Inside, Jim pointed toward the back of the shop, and Iliana made her way down the narrow aisle to the restroom. When she emerged, Jeff was standing near the front, his coat unbuttoned and his elbows on the long counter.

“Here you go,” he said, and slid a Greek-style cardboard coffee cup in her direction.

“Thanks.” She took it from him.

“So when does this great epic run?”

“I’ll be in touch when I know.” She figured that if she sold the story, she would call him, but if she didn’t, she would just disappear.

He rubbed his chin. “You know, Catherine’s not too crazy about your story. Oh, publicity for the company, she’s all for that, but I mean the rest of it. The stuff about the past.”

“Oh,” she said. That was the problem.

“I guess it’s because she saw me getting all pumped to talk to you today,” he continued. “She feels all that stuff should be buried. Dead and gone.”

Iliana nodded. She felt bad for Jeff. It was painful, she knew, to bury something that you really enjoyed. Just saying good-bye to him now was hard.

He looked at her. “You know, you’re a really good writer,” he said. “We googled you, Rose and I, after you left the showroom that first day. There wasn’t anything from the
Times
—although like you said earlier, I guess freelancers don’t always get bylines for short articles.”

She nodded. It was hard to believe that he totally bought this line she had come up with earlier that morning. He must really want this article, she thought, to have accepted her lame explanation with no questions. The realization made her feel especially guilty. More than ever, she wanted to get an article about him published, so she would feel that his faith in her was well placed.

“But we found a ton of stuff from before, from when you were at
Business Times
,
and also some articles you wrote locally,” he said. “Hey, we even found your Facebook page. It was a little hard to find. I didn’t realize that Fisher was your maiden name. Nice picture, though. Nice-looking family.”

Iliana felt all the blood drain from her face—he had found her online?

“But there wasn’t much on your public page,” he said. “I guess you’re a private kind of person.”

She nodded. “It’s my husband. He
 . . .
he’s obsessed with privacy.” It was true. Marc thought the more personal information you had online, the more you risked identity theft. He didn’t have a Facebook page and had convinced her to use the highest possible privacy settings. But then she relaxed, realizing that even if her privacy settings had been lower, it wouldn’t have mattered. So what if Jeff saw where she went to high school or what town she lived in? The only lie she had actually told was that she wrote for the
Times
. As long as he didn’t go calling there and asking about her, she was safe.

“I even thought about friending you,” he said. “But I didn’t want you to think I was a stalker.”

If she didn’t have so much adrenaline pouring through her veins, she thought, she actually might have found that last comment funny.
He
was worried about looking like a stalker?

He looked at his watch. “I guess I should be heading back. But the reason I brought all this up is because I wanted you to know
 . . .
that since I met you, I’ve been thinking a lot about the past. Like
 . . .
like maybe it would be fun to sing again. Play some gigs, maybe get in touch with the guys again.”

It was a complete surprise, this train of thought. “Singing?” she asked. “With the Dreamers?”

“I haven’t spoken to any of them since we broke up. There were all these bad feelings, we all blamed each other when the show failed. But I’m sure I can find them. And maybe we can bring back some of the old music, write some new songs even. I’m not a kid now, I won’t be pushed around. I can do it the right way this time, the way
I
want to do it.”

“But you didn’t even want to talk about the past until I pulled it out of you,” she said. “You liked that you were a success in business. You didn’t want to be like one of those reality-show guys.”

“I’m
not
like them, just like you told me. Look, I know it’s crazy. But I see everything differently now. It’s because of talking to you. You’re the one who made me realize how much I miss it all.”

She felt herself withdraw from him, actually lean toward the back of the shop. She didn’t want this responsibility. She didn’t want to be the cause of any problems in his marriage. “I never
 . . .
I never meant to do that,” she said.

“Well, it happened. One way or another, it did,” he said. “And at this point, there’s no going back. See, I have business meetings in LA on March tenth and eleventh, trying to get our line into more West Coast stores, and I’ve been thinking of staying on for a few days. I thought I’d try to track down the guys, get the ball rolling for the next act of the Dreamers. Maybe visit some of the old places we used to go, get some inspiration for new songs.”

He looked at her. “Hey, you said you always liked the Dreamers. Why don’t you come along?” he teased.

She laughed. “Very funny. You know, you shouldn’t tease a New Yorker about trips to California in February.”

They were quiet for a moment. Jeff folded his hands on the counter, his eyes focused ahead at the bulletin board on the wall, which held posters with information on hand-washing regulations and ways to help a choking victim. Looking at his profile, with the sun coming in from the windows, Iliana could make out old acne scars on his cheek, ridges he surely once covered up with makeup. She could tell that he was concerned, and she figured he was thinking about Catherine, who probably knew nothing of these plans and would be furious if she were here right now. She was clearly the strong one of the two. Iliana truly felt sorry for him. Life had thrown him a huge curveball when he was sixteen by making him famous, and then another when he was twenty-three by taking it all away, and to this day he was still trying to figure out what to make of it all. He was still trying to reclaim his past glory, even though that glory now only existed in the inflated memories he held.