The Delusionist (23 page)

SEVEN

THE KNOCK ON
the door sounded like the rattle of ancient plumbing. Cyril looked at the pair of pipes in the corner that ran from the ceiling down through the floor. An inch in diameter, they'd been repainted so many times they resembled melting candles, and regularly shuddered as if choking. The knock came again. No, not the pipes. One of the other tenants hitting him up for dough? Cyril had got a hundred and sixty thousand dollars six months ago when Steve had sold the house. Cyril's new neighbours had smelled money, and when they came knocking he'd been free with the twenty dollar bills and consequently become a great favourite. Gilbert had visited once. Cyril had said little as his old friend babbled excuses about being desperately broke due to alimony, the stock market, and the fact that no one took cabs anymore.

“How much did Steve give you?”

Gilbert looked away, unable to meet Cyril's eyes. “Ten grand.”

Cyril had asked about Savannah, and Gilbert said grandpa had become invisible. That was sad but in Cyril's experience invisibility was not without its liberating aspect. Gilbert sat with his head in his hands and cried, though whether due to Savannah's indifference or because he'd scammed Cyril, or both, was not clear. Placing his hand on Gilbert's shoulder he'd gently signalled that it was time to go. Cyril had said he'd give him a call. So far he hadn't. He'd been busy, spending all his time drawing and in the Fine Arts Department of the new library that was shaped like the Roman Coliseum.

The knock came again. He lay down his pencil and closed the sketchbook and looked at the door. Crossing the room—a journey of five steps—he opened up and found Connie standing there in the corridor. She wore blue jeans and a red pullover, her hair pinned in a loose heap atop her head, over her shoulder a black, cotton bag decorated with bits of coloured glass.

He didn't miss a beat. “About time.”

“Traffic was bad.”

“The important thing is you're here.”

She studied him with cautious delight.

“Good to see you,” he said.

Her voice softened. “You too.” She peered in at the room then at the number on the door. “Cyril, is this  . . .”

“Yup.”

“Is he—” She pointed toward the office at the end of the corridor.

“His son.”

“Did you plan this?”

“I was just looking for a cheap place for a week or two, then a week or two became a month or two, and then, well  . . .”

They embraced. He held her close, squeezing until she sighed and then he squeezed her more. She smelled good, so good. It occurred to him that he could be humiliated at being found here. It also occurred to him that he wasn't.

“I've been thinking about you,” she said, cheek against his chest and arms around his waist.

He felt the vibration of her voice in his breastbone. He didn't say how often he'd thought of her. “That's good to hear.” He hoped he didn't come across as desolate. He didn't feel desolate, in fact he felt pretty good. He had a show coming up at The Arena.

When they stood back they held on to each other's hands. Her fingers were warm and fine. She was no longer wearing all those silver rings.

“Gilbert told me what happened.”

Cyril nodded and wondered what he hadn't told her. “I'm sure his version is interesting.”

“Got into a cab and there he was,” she said. “Fatter, but just the same.”

“Come on in.”

Connie advanced tentatively into the room, gazing around as though entering a cave gleaming with rare mineral formations. Cyril fetched the wooden chair from the table and set it down for her. She put one hand on the chair but was diverted by the drawings. Every inch of wall as high as Cyril could reach was covered with his work. Connie studied them like an explorer, peering closely then stepping back, turning, discovering another here, another there, moving left, moving right, as though venturing deeper into a maze. There were studies of street people forlorn against walls or laughing in groups. Two drinkers at a terry cloth-covered pub table, each gazing in their own direction, each with a hand on a beer glass detailed right down to the lacework of foam beneath the plimsoll line. A group doing tai chi in a park. A crate of cabbages. A crumpled Coke can, dilapidated Victorian houses, a series of shovels and sunflowers, the shovels standing blade up, dark counterpoint to the radiant blooms.

“This is—”

“Crazy?”

“I was going to say intense. You really live here. I mean, I was only playing a part  . . . ”

Cyril considered that. “You're not the only one who sees the place and gets worried.”

He described how one afternoon Novak had arrived with Pamela Jean Preston and while both had nodded approvingly at the work, Pamela seemed worried. She'd gripped Cyril's face with both hands and staring sternly into his eyes warned him, “Don't swim too far from the ship. Don't go drowning on us.”

“If you do, do it quick,” Novak had said.

Pamela had glared him into silence.

Now Connie discovered a framed drawing of a grey cat sleeping on a gravestone. Curled, neat, relaxed, yet alert. The drawing sat on the side-table, flanked by sticks of smouldering incense protruding from miniature iron cauldrons filled with sand. Beside it was a bowl of oranges. “You're a cat worshiper?”

“He lives in the cemetery. I feed him.”

Connie remembered the cemetery. “The cemeteries in la are lousy,” she said. “The weather's too good. Too much sun. Cemeteries lose something in sunshine. They need rain and shade. Gloom.” She sat on the wooden chair, gaze returning to Cyril every few seconds as if to be sure it was really him.

She studied a drawing of a laughing boy on a swing. He was about three years old. Up high, at the top of the swing's arc, he'd been thrown free of the seat and launched into the air toward the outstretched arms of a man waiting in the bottom left corner. The drawing was bold, the boy's body had weight, the lines of his legs single strokes from hip to heel, the laces of his runners flying loose. His fists were free of the chain that held the seat and his eyes were closed—as were the eyes of the laughing man waiting with his arms outstretched to catch him. Each seemed to possess faith in the other. Connie studied the drawing for a long time, turning it this way and that as though a different angle might reveal more.

She gestured around the room as though at the miracle of the constellations. “You see things,” she said.

“Yeah. They tried saying I'm delusional.”

“Who?”

Cyril didn't want to get into it. He no longer obsessed over the will. Gesturing vaguely over his shoulder, he said, “Them.”

“Fuck Them. Delusions are good. I meant you see things in things. Thingyness. Like that orange. It's not just any orange. It's that orange. It's got a history, a personality. You could interview that orange and it would tell you about its life, whether it was a happy or sad orange. It could describe its position in the tree: which branch, how high, the view, the sun's heat on its peel, the seeds growing inside it, its cute little navel swelling until it became an outie. Then there's the birds. The robins and crows—those damn crows and their damn cawing!” She pressed her palms to her ears as if the racket was driving her mad. She crossed her arms over her chest and became small, her voice grave. “And of course all its friends. The ones that had so much hope, the ones that fell before their time, the ones that lay there on the ground waiting for the worms  . . . ”

Cyril applauded.

They walked past a school and a field and sat at a table outside a bakery and convenience store. It was a quiet street but only half a block away traffic clamoured like a river of metal while late afternoon sun spoked through the maples. It had rained all morning then cleared and now the street gave off the froggy smell of mulch and pavement. It was May, and there were robins and squirrels in the wide-leafed trees. Connie settled deep in her plastic chair and stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankles and described her role in the film that had brought her to town.

“It's about this big,” she said, holding her thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart. “Three scenes, thirteen lines. I play a vengeful wife. So I bring a lot of experience to the role.”

Cyril didn't want to hear about her marriages.

She grew solemn. “I've actually been planning on moving back here. Been thinking about it a long time. Need to get some balance. I've spent so long chasing the mirage I don't know what's real and what isn't. Cameras are dangerous that way. They do things. They whisper. And they're very hard to resist.”

Someone was playing a saxophone down the street and Cyril began describing his dream of them in the jazz club, and she said she often dreamed of them in that tree in the cemetery. They agreed that it was a good tree, a great tree, and that they should go and visit it.

The afternoon light illuminated the wet maples. Connie said she missed the rain. “Never thought I'd say that. But all that dry air gives you a sore throat and too much sun blinds you. It's shrill. Makes your eyes deaf. Grey's good sometimes. A very underrated colour,” she added. Then, hearing herself, she grew shy. “So say I to you.”

Cyril agreed that grey got a bad rap. “It has the widest spectrum, goes all the way from white to black. I used to think the soul was grey.”

“And now?”

“I don't know. I think maybe it changes colour.”

They paused where vendors had set out books, tapes, lps and jewelry on the sidewalk. Connie admired a pair of gold hoop earrings, vacillating as to whether to buy, in the end putting them back in the lid of the shoebox where they were displayed. When she moved on to peruse some scarves, Cyril quickly purchased the earrings and slipped them into his pocket.

“The bed used to be like a hammock.”

“I put a sheet of plywood under the mattress.”

“You always had a practical side.” He was not sure he agreed, but was curious that she seemed to think so. She settled in closer and pulled the blanket up. “How long you plan on staying here?”

“What, you don't like it?

“I love it. It's all I've ever dreamed of. Especially the pigeons on the windowsill and the way the pipes wobble. It's just that you're kind of running out of room. Or do you plan on renting the one next door too and knocking out the wall?”