Skyscape (3 page)

She warned herself, like a woman in the presence of barely tame deer: don't stir.

“We knew we couldn't keep him,” Curtis said.

“We can. As long as we want.”

He kept plying the pencil. What a deeply pleasing whisper it made, she thought. “It isn't natural,” said Curtis.

“Nature isn't always good,” she said. It wasn't really an argument. They had said the same words before, and had grown to love the quiet difference of views.

The starling fluttered its wings, a flash of black in the corner. The bird broke into one of its cries, and Margaret didn't have to turn her head to know that Mr. Beakman's bright black eye was seeing her here in this pond of light.

“You thought he would die,” said Curtis, in a mock chiding tone.

No, she wanted to say. I knew that if any hand could save this creature it would be yours. She let herself continue the gentle, bantering. “How would I know a bird like that would eat anything we fed it?”

They had found the starling on the penthouse balcony, its feathers spiky, new. At first, its beak still had that exaggerated clown-mouth look of a nestling. The bird was on the point of starving, and the two of them hand nursed it on bread soaked in milk.

Weeks later, it was hyperactive, much more athletic than the parakeets of Margaret's girlhood. Mr. Beakman fought the cage cheerfully, made its warbling shrieks, and cried out with a fragment of song that Margaret knew meant: let me out.

“Did you hear that?” said Curtis. His pencil stopped.

It couldn't be the telephone. She had turned off the ringer, and turned down the volume on the answering machine in the library.

But it did sound like the telephone—the impulsive electronic trill. Like the telephone, but somehow wrong.

“I told you!” said Curtis, gleefully. “The bird imitates things.”

Margaret listened again, with disbelief and delight. “How can it do that?”

Curtis laughed. “I think I heard Mr. Beakman imitating the garbage disposal the other day.”

Mr. Beakman repeated the sound of the telephone. Curtis could not stop laughing.

It was spooky, though, this fellow creature not only sharing their lives but
hearing
.

And then Curtis was at her side. He was kissing her, spreading out the quilt so it was a soft countryside, farmland seen from the air.

She had wondered about this as a girl. Did artists and their models sometimes, alone in the studio, find themselves unable to continue working?

He made love with the same intent sureness with which he drew. He was in no hurry, knowing her and knowing himself well, knowing that there would be no interruption, no distraction.

She felt herself open, a book spread to the page on which a flower has been pressed. But this flower was firm-stemmed, moist.

Long afterward she kept him there, her legs, her arms around him. She rocked very gently, one way, then another. She was a boat, she thought. She was a boat, and Curtis was in the vessel, and he was safe.

They drowsed. The quilt was handmade, stitched decades ago, and stitched carefully so that the blanket had a pursed, gently furrowed surface that pleased the body, the stroking hand, as well as the eye.

A few days passed. Curtis was working again. Margaret knew that the world at large would be disappointed to know that he was not painting. Drawings were fine, the magazines would say, but when will he paint another masterpiece? But slowly, quietly, Curtis traced out the shape of Margaret's body, and she believed that this subtle art was cause for secret celebration.

There was no more mention of the razor, and the fear that its presence implied. She peeked into the bottom drawer sometimes and there, among her dark blue and coffee brown wool socks, was the luminous slither of the handle.

One afternoon after Curtis had posed Margaret once again on the blanket, and after they had made love, Margaret felt herself dissolve into a dream. In this dream there was no sense of danger. There were two people in the dream, on a blanket together in a sunny room.

Curtis startled her awake when he sat up. “We forgot all about Mrs. Wye!” he said.

Margaret hurried into her clothes. She wondered with some amusement if Mrs. Wye would be able to tell what abandon had just occurred. Surely, thought Margaret, there will be a look in my eye. Anybody with any sense at all will know.

Mr. Beakman cackled, springing from perch to cage-side to perch. “Don't tell anybody what you've been looking at,” said Margaret.

Margaret had made raisin bread that morning, and she had promised the woman one floor down that there would be plenty for her. The elderly neighbor had suffered a very minor stroke a few months before, and Curtis often dropped by to see how she was feeling.

Margaret hurried into the elevator, and then down the corridor making up excuses. She could think of only the happy truth, which Mrs. Wye would be loving and wise enough to accept, if it came to that.

But the poor woman answered the door with a wide-eyed expression. “Oh, you shouldn't have bothered,” said Mrs. Wye.

Margaret's first impression was that the woman had suffered another stroke, one of those flutterings that diminish and gradually dissolve the very old. “I promised you,” said Margaret. “I used molasses this time.”

“Oh, please don't worry about me,” said Mrs. Wye, ringing her skirt in her hands.

Mrs. Wye was beautiful. She had appeared, under the name Diana Wynn, in a number of movies, usually playing the starring actress's girlfriend, the hat check girl, the woman at the office who does not land the leading man. There was a photograph on the Steinway of Mrs. Wye smiling at a handsomely intrigued Rex Harrison, and Mrs. Wye had been lucky and wise in her choice of lovers.

Mrs. Wye was white-haired and elegant. The stroke had made her more like a rare figurine than a woman, something easily broken.

Margaret's expression must have communicated mild confusion. “Then you don't know!” said Mrs. Wye, putting forth a trembling hand.

Margaret took the hand. “Mrs. Wye—you're cold!”

“It's so terrible,” said Mrs. Wye. “I can't begin to tell you. I can't even say the words.”

“It's going to be all right—”

“Poor Margaret, it can't possibly be all right. My dear, you will have to be strong.”

Margaret did not understand, but a bad feeling settled over her. This was not something that concerned Mrs. Wye exclusively. Mrs. Wye was trying to warn Margaret to be prepared for a shock.

Margaret led Mrs. Wye over to the divan. The two women sat beneath a drawing by Curtis, a dancer sketched in pencil, an older drawing Curtis had given Mrs. Wye “to make her well.” Mrs. Wye promised to give it back some day. She could barely afford to insure it.

“The news was on television,” said Mrs. Wye.

Reflexively, Margaret glanced at the blank television in the corner.

“I was sure you knew,” Mrs. Wye continued.

Margaret realized that Mrs. Wye was gathering her nerve. “Do tell me what has happened,” said Margaret.

“It's so terrible,” said her elderly neighbor, near tears.

Afterward, Margaret took the elevator one flight up and let herself into the penthouse, moving in a daze.

In the library the answering machine was alight, its tiny pulsing red light indicating the urgent messages.

She sat, wondering how she could begin to tell Curtis.

She switched on the television in the bookcase, hoping that some new, late-breaking bulletin would correct the devastating news.

Surely there's been a mistake of some kind. It can't be true.

She considered calling Bruno Kraft. He would know.

She watched the assorted news stories, waiting for the only one that mattered. It's a mistake, she thought. It's one of those things that get confused and garbled and you wake up to the truth and everything is okay after all.

But the news marched a series of disasters, diplomats, weather maps across the screen and then there it was. It was a scene of swirling crowds in a London street, the police holding out their arms, walking people back away from a fire brigade, a gray canvas hose dragged slack across the pavement.

It was night there, but the blaze of lights made every detail bright—too bright, the black paint on the fence rails gleaming. There was smoke lifting from a window, but it was only a small drift of white, surely not enough smoke to issue from such a disaster.

But the report was definite. She could not pretend that she misunderstood, or that the news services might have it wrong. There were interviews with various people, including a telephoned commentary by Bruno Kraft. The famous art critic's voice crackled, accompanied by a still photograph of the well-known feline smile, and the words, “Bruno Kraft, Rome,” as though the somber tone of the voice represented not only one expert's view but the view of Rome, and, by implication, all of western culture.

“I can't imagine a worse loss for the world of art,” he said.

Terrorists were possible but considered unlikely at this point, the reporter said. An electrical problem “in an adjacent building is one of several possibilities.”

Margaret stood and snapped off the flow of words and images. The room was desolate, the furniture, the books, meaningless. She hated the sight of the dumb, unfeeling objects around her. She did not know how she could tell him.

Margaret did not understand where the fire had taken place. The painting was supposed to be in the Tate, and yet the television had depicted a square in London that Margaret could not recall. Margaret knew well where the painting traveled, keeping a mental note of its sojourn in Tokyo, its visit at the Pompidou, this famous painting on its seemingly endless tour of the world. The television had shown a place that was certainly
not
the Tate, tall brick Georgian buildings.

Mrs. Wye had told her to be strong for Curtis. “He will need you.”

She had always considered herself resourceful. But this was something she could not do.

She stepped into the studio.
It isn't true. It can't be true
. It wasn't the Tate, so it couldn't be the right painting, it was all a mistake.

Curtis was bending over the pad of drawing paper.

His eyes were bright, but when he saw her he straightened, setting the tablet and pencil to one side. “Is it Mrs. Wye?” he asked. “Is she all right?”

She steeled herself. “I have some very bad news, Curtis,” she said.

His eyes went hard. His lips were tight. He lifted his chin for an instant to say: what is it? He did not move otherwise, or speak.

She had never seen his anger, not the real anger, the rage that was so famous.

“Oh, Curtis,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

4

Patterson stood where he could see just a little bit of desert through the window. It was out there through the palms and the aloes, a big pale empty place.

“There's another death threat,” said Loretta Lee.

The desert shivered. It did this sometimes—mirage making it all shudder like so much ocean. Patterson didn't bother responding.

“Called in to KCBS,” she said.

“We have to leave as soon as Bishop gets back,” said Patterson, taking a certain pleasure in not responding to the news.

“It was Angie at the mayor's office.” She held the cordless phone in her hand and wiggled it as though to remind him that she—and the world—existed. “She wanted to know if you wanted any special precautions.”

Patterson was trying to paint a watercolor. It wasn't bad. He wasn't an artist, to his deepest regret. He had, though, a certain touch, he had to admit. “And you told her no.”

“They're making a big deal about it.”

Patterson made a show of faking a yawn.

“You're going to have to change the way you live, Red,” said Loretta Lee.

He gave her a kind smile. It was fairly common: the post-therapeutic patient began to want to help the doctor.

She added, “We should stay here.”

She actually sounded frightened, as though this was the first time. Poor Loretta Lee Arno wasn't quite ready to see him killed. That was certainly sweet of her. “No special precautions. People need to see me and touch me.”

“I'll call them and say you're sick.”

“I'm never sick.” Patterson didn't want to die. The thought of these death threats made him nervous. That's why he had moved the show from LA to San Francisco, back where it had originated all those years ago. San Francisco was smaller, calmer, with a more modest pool of homicidal maniacs to draw from. Even so, there were still enough deranged, hopeless, broken individuals in the City by the Bay.

At this moment Red Patterson was in the middle of the desert, in the safest place imaginable. The perimeter of the estate was comprised of electric fences and computer-monitored sensors, installed at a staggering price by a technology giant for “promotional consideration.” This meant that their logo floated down the TV screen at the end of every show. There were occasional rumors of people who set forth to take a peek at Owl Springs and were never heard from again.

“You get sick,” she said. “I've seen it.”

“That's hay fever,” he said. “I get it maybe two days a year. I don't have it now.”

“You want people to think you're perfect.”

I am, thought Patterson. Perfect enough. I should do the show from here, he thought. Live from Owl Springs. Live from Red Patterson's Desert Hideaway. It almost made sense, but then he wouldn't be able to see and touch the crowd. People needed him.

“I think you like it,” said Loretta Lee.

“Like being afraid?”

“You know what I mean.” Then when it was obvious Patterson was going to stand there picking out a new brush and not saying anything, she continued, “Where did Bishop take you yesterday?”

It was easy to make something up. “He found a piece of an airplane. Big old wing.” He gave this some thought. “Off a B-29,” he said.