The Dream Merchant by Fred Waitzkin

next month or six weeks. When will you ever have such a chance to buy something useful and make money at the same time? Enough cash to buy a car or to put an extension on your house, to take the vacation trip you and the wife have dreamed about for the last twenty years. Where could you ever find such an opportunity? Buy tonight, get started, and bring friends to our next meeting in two weeks.
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    The script was about opportunity, taking hold of a dream, like Ava, who was rocking to her own music, bemused by something. Marvin gawked at Ava, with her perfect angel face and devil body, spittle gathering at the corner of his mouth. He watched her from his canvas office at the back of the tent where he counted the money. Most days in the week Jim, Ava, and Marvin were rubbing elbows, planning for the next big meeting, going over the script. With a glance Ava made Marvin weak and fevered. More than once his arms had jerked out toward her. She smirked and stepped aside.
    If you don’t buy right now, you could lose the chance, said Jim, selling with fervor. The moment is here and then it’s gone. Our days are numbered. Our days are haunted by losses and missed opportunity.
    Loss, loss, Marvin had hammered this reminder to Jim during their coaching sessions. Fear of loss closes the sale.
    How many of you can tell a story about a house you might have bought and now it’s worth five times as much? Jim asked the quickened audience of mostly workingmen, farmers, construction workers, a sprinkling of wives. It was a warm summer evening and the men were sweating.
    You should have bought the neighbor’s farm and today you would be a wealthy man, Jim continued. And now you’re old. Makes you sick, right? We get old so fast. Makes me sick, the chances I had. My daddy had chances, but he died a poor man. Poor and bitter. Spent too much time dreaming about gold. It didn’t need to be that way. Believe me, it’s only a question of deciding and making a move. Don’t sit on your hands. You’re not too old. Not yet. But it’s coming, sure as I’m standing here; opportunity passes. Jim was saying what he knew to be true, what he learned growing up. Of course he understood that their Ponzi scheme was against the law, but he also believed that the business was more than a fair deal for his customers. What was the harm if he was giving back nearly as much money as he was keeping? Everyone was a winner in their money tent.
    Years before Mara, when Jim had first described this scam to me, he showed me an old photograph of himself standing on a crude stage pointing at the crowd with one hand while holding a microphone in the other. He was dressed in a tuxedo, white shirt, and bow tie. His blond hair was long and wavy, and he had a fervent expression staring into the middle distance. What a great-looking guy he was at thirty. There really was a passing resemblance to Burt Lancaster’s Elmer Gantry.
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    Marvin Gesler’s conception was simple but astonishing. He first came to it three years earlier when he had gone to the supermarket to buy white bread and Spam to make sandwiches for his crew of Bible salesmen. He’d spend ten or fifteen dollars on groceries and the girl passed him coupons to paste in a little book. So many coupons could be redeemed for more groceries. That was the idea, basically, to buy what you want, what you need, and collect a bonus. The best ideas were simple.
    But here was Marvin’s wrinkle. What if the bonus was huge and demonstrable, not a few groceries but something to change your life, or get it rolling? Put up fifty dollars at a meeting to get a quality product, maybe an electric iron, and a few minutes later collect ten dollars, five apiece, from two others who put up their fifty bucks. Ten dollars doesn’t sound like a life change, but a half hour later you’d collect five apiece from four others who put up