Darkroom (11 page)

‘I think I'll stick to Rembrandt,' said Jim. ‘At least Rembrandt didn't show you his sprinkled donuts and his wart cream.'

When Stu had gone to the rest room, for the ninth time, Vinnie lit up a cigarette and said, ‘How are you settling in? Everything OK?'

Jim hesitated for a moment, but he decided not tell Vinnie what had happened to TT. After all, he wasn't supposed to have a cat in his apartment at all. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘That shower's something, isn't it? It's like going over Niagara Falls without the barrel.'

‘You … ah … you
slept
OK?'

‘Fine. It's kind of creaky at night, that's going to take me some time to get used to. But I love that bed. There's room enough for me and a dozen passionate women.'

‘Well, if you can only find eleven passionate women and you need somebody to make up the numbers, you know my cellphone number … Thirteen in a bed, that's supposed to be very unlucky, isn't it?'

‘I don't know about unlucky.
Exhausting,
yes.'

When Stu emerged from the rest room, Jim drove him home to Westwood. Stu told him over and over that he was so happy to see him back at West Grove College because there were no genuine people left in Los Angeles, only fakes and liars and snake-oil salesmen.

‘Let me tell you something, Jim, some people are so dishonest these days they'd even buy things they don't really want, like pâté de foie gras, and dictionaries, so that when you look at their shopping you think they have taste, and education, when they don't have dick.'

‘Sleep well, Stu,' said Jim, and waited patiently outside his house while Stu jabbed his key at his front door again and again, as if he were trying to pin the tail on the donkey.

Jim stumbled over Vinnie's uncle's shoes yet again before he found the light switch in the lobby. The living room was dark and silent, except for the ticking of the bronze Italian clock on the mantelpiece.

‘Tibbles?' he called. ‘TT?'

He went to the side table and switched on one of the lamps, and then another, and then another. ‘Tibbles, are you OK? Where are you hiding yourself, baby?'

It was then that he saw Tibbles sitting in the very center of the hearthrug, utterly still. She was staring up at the wall above the fireplace. And hanging on the wall above the fireplace was the painting of Robert H. Vane, with his black cloth draped over his head.

Numbly, Jim lifted the blue canvas satchel off his shoulder and laid it down on the couch. His feeling of dread was so overwhelming that he could have believed his hair was crawling with lice. He approached the fireplace and looked up at the painting in disbelief. It must have weighed well over 120 pounds. Who could have lifted it up and re-hung it? Who would have
wanted
to? And why?

He looked down at Tibbles. She must have been washing herself today, because she looked a little sleeker, even if she did have five or six raw patches.

‘What's going on here, TT? Did somebody come in here while I was away? Huh? Who did this?'

Tibbles briskly shook her head, but that was all.

Jim took two or three steps back. He didn't know what to think. He was so nonplussed that he laughed, but then he immediately stopped. This simply wasn't funny, even as a practical joke.

‘So, Mr Robert H. Vane!' Jim challenged him out loud. ‘Do you want to explain how you got yourself back up there, you bastard?' He waited, but underneath the black cloth that covered his face, Robert H. Vane remained as silent and mysterious as ever.

Jim walked through to the kitchen and took a beer out the fridge. He came back into the living room and stood in front of the painting again, just like Tibbles, and stared at it. He knew that the supernatural was a day-to-day reality. He had spoken with ghosts and he had seen a kitchen table rotating of its own accord. But there were limits to what spirits could do, and re-hanging an oil painting, in his opinion, was way beyond those limits.

Maybe Vinnie's uncle had a cleaning-lady, who had thought that she was supposed to dust the painting and put it back up again? Maybe the super had replaced it, thinking that Jim had been unable to do it himself?

He looked around and saw that the gray blanket with which he had covered the painting was neatly folded on one of the chairs. Spirits don't fold blankets, do they? This must have been done by a human. One of Vinnie's relatives, possibly? Maybe Vinnie hadn't told the whole family that he had rented out his uncle's apartment, and one of them had called by to inspect it.

Eleanor Shine? She had seen the painting, after all, and come to the conclusion that there was something strange about it, something powerful. But why would she hang it back up, even if she were strong enough to lift it, which she probably wasn't? Maybe she had decided that it was against the co-op's rules and regulations for paintings to be taken down if they had been hanging for longer than a certain number of years. If you started letting people take their paintings down, what next? Champagne parties in the elevators, and pet lions?

Jim approached the painting as close as he could. Like Vinnie had done when he was a child, he leaned his head against the canvas and looked upward, at an angle, as if he could see the man's face under the cloth. Of course, it was impossible; but the unsettling thing was that he felt that there
was
a face, covered by the cloth, and that in some extraordinary circumstance it might be possible to see it. If and when the painting itself chose to reveal it.

He stepped back. What he hadn't noticed before was Robert H. Vane's left hand. On the wedding-ring finger, instead of a wedding band, he wore a heavy silver ring with a crest on it. The crest was painted in some detail, but Jim couldn't decide what it was. A shield and two crossed daggers? A skull and crossbones? It was impossible to tell.

‘Still … we're not scared, are we, TT?' said Jim. ‘“The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.”'

Tibbles squeezed her eyes shut, and yawned.

‘Shakespeare,
Macbeth,
act two, scene two,' Jim informed her. ‘And put your paw in front of your mouth when you yawn.'

Jim cooked himself a stir-fried supper of strips of beef and red and yellow pepper confetti, pungently flavored with chilis and cumin and garlic. He hadn't eaten anything all day except for half a chicken sandwich, but once he had turned his wok out on to his plate, he suddenly didn't feel hungry. In fact, he felt slightly sick, especially since the kitchen was still filled with smoke.

He sat at the kitchen table, prodding at his supper with his fork. You shouldn't let this get to you, Jim. Are you listening to me? There has to be a rational explanation for how the painting got back up on the wall, and when you find out what it is, you'll feel like a total idiot.

Tibbles came limping into the room, sniffing. She hated garlic, so he knew that she wouldn't want to share any of his supper. He played with it a little more, and then he said, ‘It's no good, TT. Unexplained events play havoc with the appetite.' He pushed back his chair and stood up, putting his plate into the microwave oven so that the flies couldn't walk all over it.

He was just closing the oven door when there was a brilliant flash of bluish-white light. He jumped back, thinking that the oven had shorted out, but then he realized that the flash had come from behind him. Not just behind him, but from the living room, next door. Tibbles had jumped, too, and was hiding herself under the sink, where her bowl was, and staring at him wide-eyed.

Jim waited and listened. It couldn't have been lightning, because it hadn't been followed by a peal of thunder. But it had been bright enough for lightning – brighter. Even though he had been standing with his back to the door he still had a green image of the kitchen clock swimming in front of his eyes.

He picked up his largest kitchen knife and cautiously went back into the living room. Nothing had visibly changed, although he thought he could smell overheated metal, like an empty saucepan left on a hot electric hob. He prowled around the room, prodding at the furniture with the point of his knife, but there was nobody here, and no clue as to what might have caused such a dazzling flash.

He deliberately kept his eyes away from the painting of Robert H. Vane. He wasn't even going to speculate on how it managed to get back on the wall. He had too many other things to do, like putting his life back together. His career was OK, even if he had taken a step backward. He had a reasonable place to live, with a sexy lady living across the corridor. Tibbles looked like somebody had attacked a Davy Crockett hat with a flame-thrower, but her fur would probably grow out in a week or two.

Had the painting suddenly jumped up on to its picture hook all by itself? Or had it slowly and eerily risen off the floor, as if it were being lifted up by unseen hands?

He was still circling the room when the doorbell made a weak buzzing sound like a blowfly in an empty matchbox. He stood very still for a moment, with his knife lifted. He wasn't expecting anybody, was he? Maybe it was the super, coming to tell him that he had re-hung the painting for him, and expecting a tip. He went to the front door and peered through the spyhole. Before he could see who it was, the blowfly buzzed again.

He opened the door. It was Eleanor Shine. Her hair was tightly braided so that she looked like a princess from a medieval storybook, and she was wearing a black satin dress, very short, and black suede pixie boots. She was wearing that vertigo perfume again.

‘I promised I'd call,' she announced.

‘Oh, sure. Come on in.' What else could he say? She had told him that she was always late, hadn't she? But twenty-four hours late … that was
late
, no question about it.

‘Mind the—' he said, after she had tripped on Vinnie's uncle's shoe mountain.

‘My God. Who do you share with? Imelda Marcos?'

‘No, no – these belong to the owner. The late, deceased owner.'

‘Mr Boschetto, yes. Very nice man, from what I saw of him. Always beautifully dressed. Always polite. Lifted his hat, opened the elevator door for me, said “
buena sera, signora
,” and all that. But he always kept himself to himself. Hardly ever came to co-op meetings, and when he did he never spoke.'

She strode long-legged into the center of the living room. ‘This is amazing. I was never in here before. My heavens – that must be the original wallpaper, is it? And these photographs! Amazing! What is this one?'

Jim went over and took a look. ‘A woman in an Amish costume, on stilts.'

‘Yes, but the stilts are on fire!'

‘Yes, so they are. What does it say?
Religious observance, Pennsylvania, 1937
.'

‘But what do you think happened to her? It's dreadful! Everybody's just standing around, staring at the camera! Do you think anybody saved her?'

Jim shook his head. ‘Most of the pictures in here are like that. Kind of … you know … disturbing. Look at this one.'

Eleanor peered at a tiny photograph of a small girl with bunches and a grubby face. She couldn't have been more than four years old, but she was holding a huge nickel-plated .44 to her left temple. The caption read:
Monica, Russian Roulette, Arkansas, 1924
.

‘It's awful,' said Eleanor. ‘Do you know who took them? It wasn't Mr Boschetto, was it? I always thought he was such a gentleman! I mean, these are quite
perverted,
aren't they? I don't mean sexually perverted, but …' She stopped. She had caught sight of the painting above the fireplace. ‘You put it back up! I thought you were going to hide it away!'

‘I … ah … I thought I might as well re-hang it. You know, so that you could see it better. Would you like a glass of wine?'

She turned to him. Her eyes were extraordinary, as if they were specially made out of green and white glass. It was a long time since he had met a woman whose sexuality was so tangible. She seemed to be charged with static electricity, as if she would make angora sweaters rise like thistledown, and make iron filings swirl into patterns, and actually crackle if you touched her.

‘A glass of wine? Yes, why not?'

He went into the kitchen and she followed him. ‘You've been cooking. I didn't interrupt your supper, did I?'

‘No, I – lost my appetite, kind of.'

‘You're worried about something.'

He took the bottle of Chardonnay out of the fridge and peeled off the foil around the neck. ‘I'm … I've had a difficult couple of years, that's all. Let's just say that I have a tendency to attract trouble.'

Tibbles was still under the sink. She looked up at Eleanor and mewed.

‘That's your cat? She can't stay here, you know. The board is very Hitlerian about animals.'

‘Well, I'm sure that we can work something out.'

Eleanor hunkered down and made cheeping noises. ‘Here, puss! Puss-puss-puss! What happened to you, puss? You look like you've been sitting too close to the fire!'

‘That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,' said Jim. ‘It happened last night, directly after we'd moved in. I heard her yowling, so I went into the living room, and there she was – perched right on top of a torchère,
smoking
.'

‘Oh, no!' said Eleanor. ‘Is she badly hurt? Poor pussycat! Look at her fur! Do you know, my rabbit-skin coat looked like that, after the moths got to it! Well, that's when I used to wear fur. Just think of all the rabbits who are hopping about today, happy and free, because I won't wear their skin any more!'

‘Yes,' said Jim, trying to think about something else altogether.

Eleanor stroked Tibbles under the chin, which she could never resist. ‘Poor pussycat! How did it happen?'

‘I don't have the first idea. There were no candles in the room, no bare wires. The fire wasn't lit.'