Dream Girl Read online

  DREAM

  GIRL

  LAURA

  LIPPMAN

  For those with whom I have shared various

  paradises, including but not limited to:

  Andre Dubus III

  Denise Duhamel

  Beth Ann Fennelly

  Tom Franklin

  Ann Hood

  Major Jackson

  Christine Caya-Koryta

  Michael Koryta

  Dennis Lehane

  Laura McCaffrey

  Campbell McGrath

  Peter Meinke

  Jeannie Meinke

  Stewart O’Nan

  Trudy O’Nan

  Tom Perrotta

  Marina Pruna

  Michael Ruhlman

  John Searles

  Les Standiford

  Kimberly Kurzweil Standiford

  Sterling Watson

  Kathy Watson

  David Yoo

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Gerry Dreams

  Part I: DREAMS

  January 30

  1968

  February 12

  1983

  February 14

  2012

  February 15

  1986

  February 20

  1966

  February 21

  1975

  February 22

  2015

  February 26

  2012

  March 6

  1970

  March 8

  1978

  March 12

  Part II: GIRLS

  March 13

  2016

  March 15

  2017

  March 18

  1986

  March 21

  2012

  March 22

  2014

  March 25

  2001

  April 1

  1986

  April 2

  1999

  April 5

  1990

  April

  1972

  April

  April

  April

  April 15

  2018

  April

  1970

  April

  April

  2008

  April

  April 29

  1999

  September 27, 2019

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Laura Lippman

  Copyright

  GERRY DREAMS.

  In a rented hospital bed, high above the city, higher than he ever thought possible in stodgy, low-slung Baltimore, Gerry is asleep more often than he’s awake. He floats, he rouses, he drifts, he dreams. He tosses, but he cannot turn. He is Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, casting his net over the glittering lights of downtown, deceptively beautiful at night, a city where someone might choose to live, no longer a city where one gets stuck, not at night, not in his dreams.

  There is no clear demarcation between Gerry’s dreams and his fantasies, his not-quite-asleep and his not-really-awake. His brain chugs, stuck in a single gear, focused on one thought or one image. Tonight he feels he is revolving, ever so slowly, like the old restaurant on top of the Holiday Inn. Then he finds himself hanging from the minute hand of the clock in the neighboring Bromo Seltzer tower, a Charm City Harold Lloyd, slipping, slipping, slipping.

  Someone is waiting on the sidewalk below, arms outstretched. It’s a woman, but he can’t see her face. He lets go and—he wakes up.

  Or does he? Was he really asleep, is he ever really awake these days? He spends all his time in this bed, his leg suspended, a nurse attending to his needs, although not very cheerfully. He supposes he should not expect anything more than competence from someone who makes a living wiping adult bottoms and emptying bedpans.

  Is it the medication? It must be the medication. His sleep has never been like this before. Maybe he shouldn’t take the medication. Does he need the medication? Is he at risk of getting hooked on the medication? Museums are stripping the names of opioid heirs from their buildings, yet here is Gerry, late to every trend as usual. Just like his hometown.

  From downstairs, he can hear the faint hum of the night nurse’s television show. It weaves itself into his thoughts, a soothing murmur. Tonight’s program seems to be a talk show. It sounds like Johnny Carson. It cannot be Johnny Carson. Except—there is some weird channel, something called MeTV, a jumble of older programs from Gerry’s youth. Is the nurse watching MeTV? Is her TV—HerTV—different from HisTV? If it were really MeTV, wouldn’t it be tailored to one’s specific preferences? Johnny Carson, Mannix, Columbo, Banacek. That would be Gerry’s MeTV, which was really his mother’s TV. MomTV.

  And then “The Star-Spangled Banner” would play when the local stations ended their “broadcasting day.” Nothing ever ends anymore. Gerry misses endings.

  He will ask the nurse tomorrow about his pain meds, what exactly he’s taking, what he’s risking. After the surgery—there had been no time to brief him before, given the nature of his injury—he had been given a pamphlet titled “Your Role in Pain Control.” The unwitting couplet is stuck in his head.

  Your role

  In pain control

  Your role

  In pain control

  Your role

  In pain control

  It’s more Rod McKuen than William Carlos Williams, but it has a sort of bare-bones charm. The words, said over and over, become ridiculous, as all words eventually do. What is Gerry’s role in pain control? Isn’t the human condition a cradle-to-grave attempt to gauge one’s role in pain control? To whom has Gerry caused pain and to what extent did he control it? He makes a mental list.

  His first wife, Lucy. If only she hadn’t been so jealous.

  His third wife, Sarah.

  Not his second wife, Gretchen.

  Not Margot, no matter how she pouts.

  His mother? He hopes not.

  His father? Who cares?

  Tara, Luke?

  I’ve got a little list. Nixon had a list. Are people really nostalgic for Nixon now? That seems a bridge too far. His mother hated Nixon. He remembers her screams in the night. What happened, Mama? Someone shot Kennedy. No, Mama, they shot JFK. They shot Bobby! It’s happening again, it’s happening again, her voice rising in hysteria.

  Everything is happening again.

  There was a letter, Gerry tells himself. There was definitely a letter. That was the indirect cause of the accident, a letter, a letter from a person who does not exist, who never existed, no matter what others believe, claim, insinuate. Only no one can find the letter now. No one knows anything about the letter.

  He’s pretty sure there was a letter.

  “Mr. Andersen, you need another pill.”

  The nurse, Aileen, looms over him, glass of water, pill in hand. By day, when he is more lucid—well, relatively more lucid—he has checked the label: she is following the dosage meticulously. Still, he’s skeptical of the medicine. But what is his role in pain control? Should he ask for less? Does he want less? How would he rate his pain on a scale of one to ten, as the pamphlet encouraged him to do? He feels as if he’s in a lot of pain, but he’s had a serious injury, so it’s hard to rate what he’s feeling now.

  A seven. Gerry gives himself a seven.

  But is that the pain in his leg or his heart? Is pain the problem or does it mask the problems he doesn’t want to face, the dilemmas that haunt his dreams, the fear and regret, the people he let down? The dead—his mother; Luke—are kind at least. The living, however—he feels as if the living are enjoying his current discomfort a little too much, assuming that anyone knows what happened to him, and almost no one knows. Still, the living have been waiting a lon
g time for Gerald Andersen to have a comeuppance, although this is more of a comedownance.

  “Your medication, Mr. Andersen. It’s very important that you take your medication.”

  He has no choice. He swallows.

  PART I

  DREAMS

  January 30

  GERRY ANDERSEN’S NEW APARTMENT is a topsy-turvy affair—living area on the second floor, bedrooms below. The brochure—it is the kind of apartment that had its own brochure when it went on the market in 2018—boasted of 360-degree views, but that was pure hype. PH 2502 is the middle unit between two other duplex penthouses, one owned by a sheikh, the other by an Olympic swimmer. The three two-story apartments share a common area, a most uncommon common area to be sure, a hallway with a distressed concrete floor, available only to those who have the key that allows one to press ph on the elevator. But not even the sheikh and the swimmer have 360-degree views. Nothing means anything anymore, Gerry has decided. No one uses words correctly and if you call them on it, they claim that words are fungible, that it’s oppressive and prissy not to let words mean whatever the speaker wishes them to mean.

  Take the name of this building, the Vue at Locust Point. What is a vue? And isn’t the view what one sees from the building, not the building itself? The Vue is the view for people on the other side of the harbor, where, Gerry is told, there is a $12 million apartment on top of the residences connected to the Four Seasons Hotel. A $12 million apartment in Baltimore.

  Nothing makes sense anymore.

  This apartment cost $1.75 million, which is about what Gerry cleared when he sold his place in New York City, a two-bedroom he bought in the fall of 2001. How real estate agents had shaken their sleek blond heads over his old-fashioned kitchen, his bidet-less bathrooms, as if his decision not to update them was indicative of a great moral failing. Yet his apartment sold for almost $3 million last fall and, as he understood the current tax laws, he needed to put the capital gains, less $250,000, in a new residence. Money goes a long way in Baltimore, and it was a struggle to find a place that could eat up all that capital without being nightmarishly large. So here he is at the Vue, where money seems to be equated with cold, hard things—marble in the kitchen, distressed concrete floors, enormous industrial light fixtures.

  “Impressive,” his literary agent, Thiru Vignarajah, says, standing in the foyer, or what would be a foyer in an apartment with walls. “But did they mention it was in Baltimore, Gerry?”

  “Very funny, Thiru. You know why I bought down here.”

  Eight months ago, Gerry had been assured by doctors that his mother had less than two months to live. Her only desire was to die in her home, Gerry’s “boyhood” home. Gerry, ever the dutiful son, figured he could grant that wish. Two months passed. Then three. At month four, the doctors admitted they were fallible and that his mother might live longer than expected—not at home, not forever, but she could remain there for the foreseeable future (which, of course, is an oxymoron; the future cannot be seen). Gerry decided that buying an apartment in Baltimore would solve all his problems. His New York apartment sold quickly, despite the kitchen and bathrooms, and he snapped up this place, fully furnished, from the CFO of some smoke-and-mirrors tech company who was going through a bad divorce.

  His mother died on December 31, three days after he closed on the Baltimore apartment. A soft, gentle woman, she had spent much of her life yielding to others, but when she really wanted something, she was stubborn. She wanted to die at home, with Gerry under her roof. So she did.

  Now four weeks later, Thiru, always the full-service agent, is here for what he insists on calling the memorial service, which consisted of picking up Gerry’s mother’s ashes and taking them to Petit Louis for lunch. Not that his mother ever ate at Petit Louis, but back in the 1960s and ’70s she chose the old restaurant in this location, Morgan Millard, for every milestone occasion. Gerry’s graduation from middle school, Gerry’s scholarship to Gilman, Gerry’s acceptance to Princeton. Her birthdays. Once, only once, Gerry had persuaded her to breach her loyalty to Morgan Millard, insisting that they dine in New York on the day his second novel was published. He had taken her to Michael’s; she had seen a famous anchorwoman, then pressed Gerry to approach the blond bobblehead and ask her to feature him on her show. Gerry had declined.

  At Petit Louis, a perfectly respectable French bistro, he could not help wondering if Thiru was judging it. Gerry actually prefers this restaurant to its New York counterparts, Odeon and Pastis. It’s not so much of a scene. He prefers quite a few things in Baltimore, or maybe it’s simply that it seems important now to keep a running list in his head of things that are better in Baltimore than New York. Movies: it’s almost unheard of to encounter a sold-out movie here. Weather: the winters are a tad milder, shorter. Grocery stores? The Whole Foods on Smith Avenue is just as awful as the one on the Upper West Side, so that’s a push.

  Thiru proclaimed himself charmed by Petit Louis, by all of North Baltimore. He seems less charmed as they approach Gerry’s new home in Locust Point, a working-class neighborhood that is allegedly gentrifying, with the Vue as exhibit A. Thiru is uncharacteristically silent as they pull into the garage, leave the Zipcar in its designated space, take the elevator to the main floor, where Gerry picks up the mail from Phylloh at the front desk. Thiru does brighten at the sight of Phylloh, a curvy girl whose ethnicity is a mystery to Gerry, although he knows that he must never inquire how she has come by those eyes, that skin, that hair. Would Thiru be allowed to ask? Is it wrong to wonder if Thiru would be allowed to ask? The modern world is forever flummoxing Gerry.

  He turns the key and pushes the button marked ph, although Gerry will never call his apartment a penthouse, never. “You can go straight to the apartment from the garage, of course,” he says. “If you have the key card.”

  “Of course,” Thiru says.

  Thiru’s bright eyes continue to appraise everything. It’s almost like being in the room for the unbearably long periods when Thiru has one of Gerry’s new manuscripts.

  “Can you imagine what an apartment like this would cost in New York?” Gerry asks. Tacky to talk about money, but Thiru knows to the penny how much money Gerry has earned. He had to certify Gerry’s net worth when he bought the New York co-op in 2001.

  “Yes,” Thiru says. “But—then it would be in New York, Gerry.”

  “I’ll be back,” he says. “I need to stay here a year to two years so I don’t lose too much money when I resell. And then I’ll downsize, maybe try another neighborhood. I was getting tired of the Upper West Side anyway.”

  “Is real estate appreciating here, then? I thought the city had been rather, um, challenged in recent years. There were those riots? And the murder rate is rather high? I feel as if I read a piece in the Times about it not that long ago.”

  “Millennials are drawn to Baltimore,” Gerry says, parroting something he heard, although he can’t remember from whom. “It’s the most affordable city in the northeast right now. Real estate has been a little soft since, um, Freddie Gray.”

  He does not add that it’s a fraught choice in Baltimore, whether to refer to the events of 2015 as the riots or the uprising. Gerry can’t bring himself to use either term.

  “Hmmmm.” Thiru begins pacing the top floor, not bothering to ask if he can look around. He is a tiny man with an enormous head, only eight years older than Gerry. But the two men have been together for forty years, since Thiru read one of Gerry’s stories in the Georgia Review, and the age gap remains significant to Gerry. Thiru has longish hair that he wears in a brushed-back, leonine mane. The once blue-black hair is silvery now, the peak has receded, but there is still quite a bit of it, thick and shiny. His suits are bespoke. They probably have to be, given his height. He still terrifies Gerry on some level, although their relationship has outlasted seven wives (three for Gerry, four for Thiru).

  “Are you working on something, Gerry?”

  “You know I don’t talk about my work in prog
ress.”

  “Fiction.”

  For a second, Gerry assumes this is an accusation, not a question, but that’s probably because it is a fiction that he is working. He hasn’t written for months. Reasonable, he thinks, under the circumstances, although he was able to write through every other difficult period of his life.

  “Of course. What else? You know I have little patience for literary criticism right now. Most American writers bore me.”

  “I thought with your mother gone, you might consider that memoir we talked about.”

  “You talked about. The memoir is a debased form.”

  “But it’s such a good story, the thing with your father.”

  “No, Thiru. It’s sad and banal. And I used what interested me about the situation for my first novel. I have no desire to revisit the material.”

  “It’s just that—your publisher would like you to sign a new contract, but they are entitled to know what you’re working on.”

  “And when I have finished a new book—the new book—we shall. I don’t like advances, Thiru. That’s what undercut my second and third novels, that’s what made Dream Girl, and everything that followed, different. I won’t take money up front for an unwritten book. I can’t—”

  He stops, fearful that he is about to say the thing he doesn’t want to say out loud: I can’t write anymore. It’s not true. It can’t be true. But given the circumstances of his mother’s death, how can he not worry about receiving a similar diagnosis one day? This thing runs in families.

  “Well, the view is really something,” Thiru says, his admiration sincere. “In fact, I’m not sure I could work with such a panorama spread out before me. I like the fact that you can see the working part of the harbor, not just the fancy stuff.”

  “This used to be a grain silo,” Gerry says. “The site of the building, I mean.”

  “Good thing you’re not gluten intolerant.”

  Ha ha, funny, Thiru. Gerry gives him 15 percent of a smile.

  His agent peers down the staircase to the darker rooms below—Gerry’s office, Gerry’s study, Gerry’s bedroom. The intention was to make guests almost impossible, with the medium-size bedroom used as his office and the third, smallest one dedicated to the overflow of books that didn’t fit in the study or the upstairs shelves. If Margot should propose visiting—doubtful, someone like Margot would never be drawn to Baltimore—he will be able to tell her there is no proper spare bedroom, only the so-called study with its pullout sofa bed. He hopes it is understood that Margot is no longer welcome in his bed.