It's been a busy week for me, but I wanted you to know that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Vic and how to tell his story. I'm not sure if that surprises you or not, but I can begin by saying this: Victor Salarino was at one point the most talked-about person in Confluence.
That means there's a certain weight to this story, and it's hung on me all week while I was in Chicago to visit my sister. I walked the streets, the El trains shaking across God's earth above me, and Vic's story was with me.
I was sitting at the bar in the lobby of the Palmer House downtown when I knew that to begin telling you about Vic, I needed to be closer to the start of our story. So when I got back to Confluence yesterday and drove back to my place up on the hill, I unloaded my suitcases, let the dog out, and without even checking the mail, climbed into the old Wagoneer (which, you'll remember, Vic himself helped repair), and drove downtown.
I slid the car into a parking space just across from Mary's, near my office, and went in for a cup of coffee. I sat at the counter near the windows so I could gaze across the street, just a block down, to the old Tower Building. I closed my eyes.
Soon, I was there, back so many years ago to that summer when I first showed up and rented the apartment from Mrs. Cooley. The humidity that summer was suffocating, and my pad didn't have an air conditioner. Every afternoon, when the temperature broiled anyone stupid enough to sit in a place like mine, I'd get into the Jeep and drive downtown. And often I'd go to Vic's.
It's an understatement to say that Vic ran Confluence's only antique shop. I spent hours inside the Tower Building, where Vic kept his curiosities. It was a three story brick building with a minaret of sorts climbing above the vestibule and forming a point topped with a spear-like steeple and weather vane. The shop occupied all three stories.
I could spend years talking about the tidbits I discovered nosing through Vic's shop. Downstairs was one of the most massive buffets I've ever seen, laced with golden fixtures, topped in marble, and supported by rich wood legs the size of tree trunks. It belonged to King Umberto I of Italy.
There was a collection of thousands of vinyl records. An autographed picture of Elvis Pressley when he was in the service during WWII. A lock of John Lennon's hair. Exquisite china sets. Silver knickknacks. A row of seats from the old Dodger Stadium in Brooklyn, which sat in front of a veritable Hall of Fame collection of baseball cards. Three jukeboxes.
And there were ordinary items, too: stereo-vision goggles. Hubcaps from an old Buick. Old pictures--boxes and boxes full of them that Vic had bought at estate sales. Old rugs. Old tools, lathes, hammers, and the like. Wood-shafted golf clubs. The store seemed endless in its supply.
A lot of these finds were displayed in antique drug store display cabinets, which created little lanes to walk through about the shop. At the front, near the mammoth buffet, was a wooden counter left over from when the Tower Building was in fact Confluence Drug and Rx, where Vic kept a vintage NCR machine. Most of his business, though, was recorded in the ledger book he kept to its side.
I assure you I didn't take in this amount of detail all at once. The first time I'd walked into Vic's shop, the day after he'd fixed my car, my eyes didn't know where to start. I was sweating from moving about all afternoon, the summer sun blistering anything that sat still too long, and I wasn't even sure if Vic would recognize me in a pair of shorts and damp t-shirt.
It took a moment to adjust to the darkness inside. "Hello?" I asked. There was such a jumble of stuff strewn about the place that it could have easily camouflaged a dozen men, let alone just one.
I heard wood creaking, and soon Vic appeared from the winding staircase near the door carrying a half dozen or so small boxes. I turned to face him. "Hello, Vic!"
"Hello, son," he said, keeping his eyes set on balancing the load. "How's the hose holding up?"
"So far, so good," I said. "I've been driving it around some this afternoon, and as hot as it's been, there have been plenty of opportunities for it to overheat again."
Vic moved over to the counter, dropping the goods and arranging them one by one. I stood quietly to watch, figuring he might say something back, but when it was clear he wouldn't I began to feel awkward.
"Hey, I wanted to come by to say thanks again for your help yesterday."
Another pause, his thick hands opening each of the little packages carefully. "No problem."
"I've actually rented an apartment here in Confluence," I said. "I really like it here."
"Very good," he said, his voice rising and falling over the words in a sort of grandfatherly way. "What are you going to do?"
"Well," I began, my mind searching for something that would at least verify my standing as an adult--and one with a college degree to boot. Still, I narrowly avoided kicking my toe into the floor like a stumped third grader. Victor's silence didn't help. What would I say? I had just finished four years of expensive private school and taken a degree and now I had nowhere to go, no assignment, nothing at all to direct me.
"I'll start looking for a job this week," I said. "In the meantime, I was just coming out to pick up some things to clean up my apartment and get it organized."
"Mmhmm."
"I've taken the studio apartment behind Mrs. Cooley's house, above her garage."
"Have you?"
"Do you know Mrs. Cooley?"
A grin flashed across his face. "I do," he said, resting his hands on the counter and for the first time bringing his eyes to mine. "She's..." his voice trailed off, his silver eyebrows arched upward in search of the right words. "...quite bountiful in her verbosity."
I didn't know what to say. Vic finished with whatever he was doing to the row of boxes and walked around the counter to me, reaching out his hand. "Well, son, welcome to Confluence."
"Thank you," I grinned. "When can I get a tour of this place?"
"The town?"
"The shop! There's so much in here!" I turned towards a tall, glass case in the middle of the store, where a bright red evening gown hung suspended in the air, as if it were worn by a trapped ghost. I pointed to it. "That dress there," I said, "what can you tell me about it?"
Vic sighed. "That dress once belonged to Marilyn."
I would add that name to the list of celebrity collectibles I'd come across later, but I was wrong. Victor wasn't referring to Marilyn Monroe. It took me quite some time to find out the story about that dress, and I've already gone on too long here. Don't worry. We'll get there, you and me, together.
In the meantime, now, as I stare across the street and watch the city workers hanging metallic shamrocks from the street lamps, I'll leave you with this: Vic, and his wife Marilyn, gouged a hole in this community. I didn't know it at the time, when I first met him. But if you talk to most anyone in Confluence who is old enough to remember the whole story, you'll find that people here were polarized by the entire ordeal. And most people, I later found out, were on Marilyn's side.
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