A work of art stood at the far end of the room under the folds of a cloth.
This was a large room, a ballroom or a banquet hall, with dark wooden beams in the ceiling. The room could be well lit, but it was partly shuttered, the sunlight spreading across the wooden floor in irregular shapes. Dust motes, fine, subtle, spun in the shafts of light.
There was the intoxicating smell of oil paint, and a large glass jar containing a sheaf of brushes. Bruno liked this—a jar of economy-sized peanut butter, say, or institutional pack pickle relish spending its long retirement serving art. A tarp was rolled up neatly against the wall, leaving the floor unspotted.
He was letting himself notice these little details because he was stalling. The longer he waited, the longer he would delay what would almost certainly be disappointment.
Patterson was poised like a showman, a stage magician. The painting was a broad rectangle covered with a sheet, completely disguised by the folds of muslin.
Bruno had traveled to see this—and now he could not bear to look. He gave a nod.
Patterson stood to one side, lifted a hand, and gave a tug.
The sheet gave way and spilled to the floor with a soft sound, a sound that altered the pressure in the room like the pulse of distant thunder. Bruno stepped back.
Patterson opened a pair of shutters, and then another. The sun was so bright that it took awhile to get used to the radiance, the great empty expansiveness of the canvas sending the afternoon sun right back into the room.
So I am disappointed, after all, thought Bruno.
The canvas was empty.
He put a finger to his lips.
Wait.
He took a step. He was wrong—the canvas wasn’t empty. There they were—the skeletal lines, the reach of colors, the depth pin-pricked in with dabs, faint, deft, of azure.
There was a sweep of feeling in Bruno, unmistakable: this was it.
This was what he had been waiting for.
This canyon of blank space fell away from him, rolling to a horizon, a world only Curtis could envision, that other, newer world, keener than the one born every day.
Bruno slipped on his reading glasses. He stepped to the canvas, so close the weft and fiber of the surface was vivid before him. The smell of the oil was strong, and yet he wanted to see the cut and smear of the painting knife, and identify the touch, as sure as a signature, of the brush against the fabric.
Curtis had begun a masterpiece.
But the work was so lightly touched upon the canvas, and the canvas so big, that Bruno needed a few more moments to take it all in.
The shroud rose back into place.
32
Patterson locked the studio door behind them. “You will want to fly to San Francisco tonight,” said Patterson. “To reassure Mrs. Newns.”
“Of course,” said Bruno.
“And then I suppose you’ll return to Rome—what a wonderful city.”
Bruno agreed that this was his plan.
“I’m afraid you may have to hurry just a bit. I arranged to have a few members of the media meet you at the airport in San Francisco.”
“Why not?”
Patterson laughed. “You’re good at this, aren’t you?”
Bruno laughed, too. He made a sideways motion of his head, acknowledging the compliment.
“I’d ask you to dine with us,” said Patterson, “but I think the world is eager to hear from you.”
“Actually, I was reluctant to tell you that I wanted to leave right away,” said Bruno. “I was afraid you’d be offended.”
“There is no need to be afraid of anything,” said Patterson. “Ever again.”
After a sip of iced coffee, and a brief chat about Curtis’s past, his foster families, his mistrust of anything European and fondness for everything American, Bruno rose to leave.
And to think, thought Bruno, that I had begun to consider myself a force that might be fading, someone with a interesting history and a dullish future. Bruno laughed at himself. How fresh everything looked, the spikes of the sego palms, the glorious saw-tooth edges of the aloes.
It was still afternoon, but shadows were lengthening. The desert beyond was golden. Patterson saw him to the edge of the airstrip, then walked back to remain at the very edge of the shade.
Bruno ducked inside, happy to seclude himself in the cool interior of the aircraft.
It was quick and easy, thought Bruno. This is how they do things in the New World. Easy in, easy out, and I have a future again. He waved at the figure at the edge of the oasis, the glowing man Bruno would have recognized anywhere, the way the famous have of weighing into us. You can close your eyes, Bruno thought, and there they are, the well-known celebrities living and dead, tattooed on the psyche.
This icon was waving at Bruno once again, and Bruno waved back, health and farewell, a true physician.
However, as the jet taxied, Bruno’s delight began to fade. By the time they were airborne Bruno began to reconsider the image of Patterson. That tan, that exuberant, confident smile.
What sort of man was he, really?
But soon Bruno was lost in an optimistic reverie, and it was easy to forget Red Patterson altogether. The man was not important, really. He was a mere midwife, an attendant upon the creation of this new future.
Bruno had long been aware of a certain artificial quality in himself. He had learned how to sound arch and debonair by watching movies. The image of actors like George Sanders had influenced Bruno as strongly as any human being he had actually met. To have contact with a work of art, to be aware of a future stirring itself awake—this was what Bruno needed.
The flight north took perhaps an hour and a half—Bruno wasn’t sure. It seemed like a long time. When Bruno at last looked down at the glittering freeways and streets in the darkness he felt that this living map, was somehow his.
He left the jet and a cool breeze buffeted him as he crossed the concrete. It was early evening, the sky dark, a typical San Francisco summer night. An aide guided him, whether a Red Patterson functionary or someone who worked for the airport Bruno could not tell.
There was a passage from cold and half-light to airport interior. Then there were people, many of them. So many times Bruno had arrived at an airport and seen the people waiting in the lobby. The people in these foreign airports were always expectant, anticipating the arrival of friends, family. And Bruno had felt at such moments how wonderful it would be if only one person in the throng of strangers would be there to give him a welcoming embrace.
So it was sweet to see so many glad to see him. For a moment Bruno was surprised. He had expected a few reporters, some video-cams, a microphone or two. But this was a crush of people behind a bank of lights. Bruno had underestimated the power of Red Patterson’s name.
And, he thought, the power of my own name. It was the sort of sight Bruno relished. He recognized faces. He nodded, smiled. He was prepared to speak without notes. His own handwriting had a tendency to displease him, anyway, staggering across the page—especially when he was excited.
The crowd—there was no other word for such a large gathering—subsided into silence.
“I have a statement,” he began.
Bruno had always admired the diva’s power over her most distant balcony, her control over the standing-room-only. Bruno did not have song, or voice. But he did have this—his sliver of power.
“I have a statement regarding what I have learned in my meeting with Red Patterson in Owl Springs.”
People stirred again, recorders ready, cameras in hand. If there had been any doubt regarding the importance of Bruno’s message, it was now in full retreat.
It took a moment for this new stir to subside. The hour was not late—there was still time to make the eleven o’clock news. But Bruno would be wise, he knew, to speak simply, light a verbal firecracker or two, and then pass on out of this hall of working men and women, to return to his private joy.
It was only then, as the cameras and the microphones we
re ready to take him in, that he realized that he should have called Margaret. There was no question: she should be the first to know.
It was too late. The expectant faces awaited him.
“I am pleased to be able to announce news that will delight the art world, reassure the world of psychiatry, and be a source of satisfaction to all of us.” He allowed himself a quiet laugh. “I am more than pleased. I am ecstatic.”
33
Bruno called her, sounding brisk and happy, and she didn’t have time to ask him anything. He said that he had just finished a news conference here in San Francisco, and that he was grabbing a cab and was on his way over.
She had been at work at her drafting table, doing a little more drawing before she went to bed, sipping a cup of warm nonfat milk and hoping to feel sleepy soon. She had been plowing ahead with an assortment of sketches of ducks and goats. Bruno’s call came, and she was thankful.
She set out some cheese and bread, a melon and an avocado. Bruno might be hungry. She brought a bottle of white wine out, too, because she felt from the way he sounded that there was something to celebrate.
She was wrestling with the cork—which was crumbly, and the better bottle opener was lost—when the security guard rang to say that Mr. Kraft was on his way up.
He came through the door looking like someone who had run a tremendous distance. He fell into the sofa and accepted a glass of wine.
It did not take him long to assume his usual appearance, poised and sure of himself. He requested some aspirin, and she struggled with a childproof cap until several tablets spilled into his hand. He swallowed four with the wine, pocketing the rest.
“He’s started something new,” he said.
“That’s wonderful!”
“Please forgive me, Margaret. I have just this minute realized that I’m starving.”
“How did Curtis look?” asked Margaret as she served Bruno.
“There’s a new major work underway.” He looked up to see her expectant expression.
She waited, her expression saying go on.
“Don’t you realize what this means?” he said.
He was out of the sofa now, folding his arms, gazing out beyond the balcony of the Newns’s penthouse. The water of the bay was black, invisible, and there were only a few lights on the Marin headlands beyond.
“I don’t know that it’s quite accurate to call this painting a new Skyscape,” he continued. “But that’s what it is to me. Not a replacement, and certainly not a copy from memory. But something of great value. Something to let us know that the world is a place of promise, not just loss.”
“Drawings?”
“No—a painting.”
“What was it like?”
“Sketchy, to be frank. Barely begun. But magnificent.”
“A big canvas?”
Bruno chewed, swallowed, applied a napkin to his mustache. “Huge. As big as anything he ever did. He hasn’t begun anything like this in years.”
“You took photographs of it?”
“It wasn’t necessary. Besides, I’m not the sort of person to carry a camera around wherever I go.”
“And how was Curtis?”
Bruno held forth an open hand: what difference does it make?
She kept her voice very calm and steady. “You did see Curtis, didn’t you?”
“He didn’t want to see me.”
She said nothing for a moment. “You went all the way there and didn’t even set eyes on Curtis?”
Bruno looked mildly outraged. “You know how Curtis is. He refused. What could I do?”
“We all know how helpless you are.”
“I was a guest in the house of Red Patterson and I had no right to insist that I see someone who does, after all, have a recent history of avoiding me. You might say I actually respect Curtis for having a certain consistency of character.”
“I wonder—did you actually see the painting, or was the painting somehow off-limits, too? Was it described to you, how wonderful it was—”
“The painting exists,” he said in a tone of scorn. He frowned into his wine, dabbed a finger into the glass, and removed a speck of cork.
“You want it so badly you might think you saw something that wasn’t quite real, maybe just a big blank canvas.”
He adopted a mocking tone. “What is it you think, Margaret? Tell me what it is I saw down there in the desert.”
“He could have shown you anything on canvas and you would have come away convinced because you needed something there, something that would rescue you and your career.”
He set down his glass, pressed his lips into the napkin, and tossed it down. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this.”
“You do,” she said. “Because I am going to call a press conference of my own. I’m going to call a few friends and tell them I’m worried about the health of my husband. I’m going to tell them that I don’t believe the new painting even exists.”
“Don’t be childish.”
“It worries you though, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely not. You will not go before cameras and call Bruno Kraft a liar.” Referring to himself in the third person empowered him to use his most disdainful accent. “People will think that you’re confused and shrill. They will feel sorry for you. I will see to that. You won’t stand a chance. You’ll be a figure of amusement.”
Margaret gazed ahead from where she sat on the sofa, focusing on nothing. “I thought you were a friend.”
“You’re jealous of Red Patterson. Jealousy’s one of the deadly sins, Margaret. It’s a destroyer of happiness. You resent Patterson’s success in making Curtis happy where you failed.”
Their eyes locked. At once Bruno felt himself falter. He was too good at invective, he thought, once he got going. It was a nasty habit.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please forgive me.”
“I’d let Curtis go if I believed it would make him happy,” she said. “In a way, I’ve already lost him, haven’t I?”
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like this.”
“You may be right, Bruno. Don’t worry. I forgive you. But you do owe me something, don’t you?”
“You’re a very unusual person, Margaret.”
“Tell Patterson that you’re disturbed at what I’ve told you. That I’m handpicking art critics of my own to fly to Owl Springs and examine the painting. That I’m consulting a new psychiatrist—several of them. That there is a growing number of people who don’t believe in Red Patterson.”
“You’re bluffing, dear Margaret.”
She did not answer, except to pick up a knife and cut the avocado into two neat halves.
Bruno wanted to sit down. He found himself wondering about the painting he had seen just a few hours before. What had it looked like? He wouldn’t allow himself to think like this. Doubting himself made him feel anxious. He wanted to be alone, or with Andy. Andy—that was who he needed.
The strong, common sense of Andy, who was always changing his hairstyle, always criticizing Bruno’s choice of necktie and his shoes, always looking forward to seeing the latest movie, enjoying the silliest pleasures. It was because he lived in the moment, in his relative youth, and in his freedom from ambition. Andy was daylight, and all of this confusion was darkness. Bruno was confused—he could not deny it. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the painting was not by Curtis Newns. It looked authentic. But was it really?
It was a terrible thought, the sort of doubt that makes the high-wire artist waver and fall. Bruno put the question out of his mind.
“You aren’t sure of anything, are you?” said Margaret in a tone of gentle pity.
“Do you like jello?” said Bruno. “It’s been years since I had any. My mother used to make strawberry jello with bananas sliced up in it.”
“I’m fresh out,” said Margaret.
“I don’t want any. I was just realizing that it’s been a long time.”
“You disappoint yourself.”
“Please shut up, Margaret.” He said this gently, and put his hand on her head, a gesture of benediction. Her head was warm, her hair soft, delightful to the touch.
“I’m going out there to see Curtis,” she said.
“I’ll call Patterson. I’ll tell him how dangerous you are.”
Her eyes stayed on his, and he guessed what she was about to ask. “I used to wonder what it would be like to be beautiful,” said Bruno. “You see these photographs of beautiful young people, naked. There’s such power in the human body. And I wonder sometimes what it must be like to know that a photograph of one’s erection is out there in the world.”
“You’re afraid,” she said.
“Too many good people have died in recent years.” For a moment he resented her for making him mention, even in passing, the subject of AIDS. “It’s made me honest with myself. I have to stick with what I know and what I love. I love Curtis’s art, Margaret. I love my prestige. That sounds smug, but I mean it honestly. I love Rome, and I love Andy. I’m not going back to Owl Springs.”
“Tell Patterson I’m coming.”
“You don’t want to get tangled in whatever’s going on down there, Margaret. Why can’t you just accept it?”
“Because you can’t. Because I love Curtis. You’re not a bad person, Bruno. But I trusted you, and I shouldn’t have.”
Bruno made the phone call. His voice was quiet; she could not make out all the words.
When he was off the phone he stood there in the living room adjusting his cuffs, looking around for a mirror. He went to the mirror she had hung where one of the slashed paintings had commanded the wall.
Margaret watched him, and he made a pretense of ignoring her.
“That was it?” said Margaret. “That was the call? You hung up and everything’s the same.”
“Everything has changed,” said Bruno. He seemed satisfied with his tie, patting the knot. “Dr. Patterson was unable to come to the telephone. I spoke with his assistant, Miss Arno. I repeated your threats. Is there anything else you want me to do?”
“You’ve had a busy evening. You must be tired.”
“TWA has a 1:20 A.M. flight, stopping at Saint Louis. I’ll be in Rome by the time I am once again in a good mood.”
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