Skyscape

by Michael Cadnum

  She smiled, with perhaps less enthusiasm than he thought appropriate.

  “Bishop can fly you anywhere you want. And if Bishop is away, I can do the flying. Victorville is less than a hundred miles away, and Palm Springs, and San Bernardino.”

  “And the famous owls,” she asked, “the ones the spring is named after—will I see any of them?”

  “The owls are around,” said Patterson, “but you won’t see them. The elf owl, micrathene whitneyi. The smallest owl in North America. Devotedly nocturnal.”

  It was going to be delicious, thought Patterson, having her here.

  She found it as she was getting ready to go to bed, not expecting sleep, but prepared to spend the night’s wait as comfortably as possible. She was wearing a nightshirt Curtis had given her, a replica 1927 New York Yankees jersey. It was not a very accurate replica, Margaret thought, having been modified to look comfortable and even sexy, slit up the sides. She had brought it to please Curtis, hoping to spend this night with him. Now she wore it out of loyalty, waiting, convinced that all would be well.

  She put her hand under the pillow, and there was a manila envelope, with something heavy inside, the envelope’s clasp bent and crooked.

  She opened the envelope carefully, with considerable suspicion, and yet also with that instinctive optimism she so often felt when she opened a package: is it a gift?

  But she did not like this.

  It isn’t intended for me, thought Margaret. It was a handgun, shiny, its handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl. An automatic, thought Margaret. Someone must have left it here by mistake.

  On the outside of the envelope there was hurried, feminine handwriting, a single sentence.

  I think Curtis is dead.

  41

  The steward asked what would he like to drink and Bruno said he wanted a bourbon over ice. He was a little surprised at himself. He did not usually drink bourbon. He told himself that he had no intention of returning to the U.S. anytime soon, so that this was something of a farewell tipple.

  Bruno had an ability that he prized in himself. He could simply allow himself to forget anything that was unpleasant or difficult. He could wrestle a worry onto the freight elevator of his psyche, press the well-worn down button and the loathsome preoccupation, whatever it might be, would descend from sight. If Margaret was going to be difficult and foolish, that was her problem.

  The seat beside him was occupied by a young man who looked about old enough to be excited about video games but who turned out to be an author and something of a scholar, working on an article about the excavations under Saint Peter’s Basilica. Bruno introduced himself, and the young author gave him that look of exaggerated awe, that no kidding expression that indicates delight and at the same time mocks it, one of those American responses Bruno was certain must have been learned from television.

  The young historian shook Bruno’s hand and said his own name, which Bruno could not quite catch—it sounded like “Beanpole Nonsense.”

  A national endowment of some sort, it seemed, had funded a fairly luxurious visit to the Holy City so that the article could be finished.

  “I recognized you right away,” said the young author.

  “Sometimes I think I should travel in some sort of disguise,” said Bruno, who had no intention of traveling in any sort of disguise under any circumstance.

  “You’re used to this,” said young Mr. Nonsense. “People look at you and say—hey it’s him.”

  Bruno made an airy wave of the hand. He was used to it, or he wasn’t—what difference did it make?

  The young man assured Bruno that the skeletal remains archaeologists had discovered under the basilica were almost certainly those of the historical Peter. “A robust man of about sixty, with his feet missing,” said the blond historian, as though sharing the most delightful news imaginable.

  “His feet having been cut off, I imagine, by the Romans,” said Bruno, sipping bourbon.

  “I think the Romans were much more brutal than we realize,” said the child-scholar. “If they wanted to get you down off a cross they just cut off most of you, and who knows what they did with what stayed nailed on.”

  “My favorite martyr,” said Bruno, “is Saint Agnes. I think because I live so near her church.”

  “The woman who grew so much hair.”

  “You know the story,” said Bruno with a smile, disappointed that he could not tell the tale himself.

  Smart Mr. Nonsense sensed this. “Not very well,” he said.

  Bruno told the story, one of his favorite Roman legends, of the young lady who would not give in to a Roman centurion, or perhaps it was a senator—Bruno could not remember the tale so well, after all. She was stripped naked before a crowd, in an unlikely last stage of failed seduction, and to protect her virgin body from the unruly gaze of hundreds her hair grew, in an instant, long enough to flow down over her body, all the way to the paving stones.

  The site of this miracle was her church in the Piazza Navona. Bruno had often wandered in out of the heat and sat in the semidarkness before the altar that displayed what Bruno assumed must be her skull. Matters were a little confused—her remains were generally thought to rest in Sant’ Agnese fuori le Mura, some miles away on the Via Nomentana. The altar Bruno visited displayed a delicate, small skull in a box, a relic not so much of an innocent woman, as of brutal persecution. It was also a reminder that the other, grander miracle the Christians were expecting—the dead returned to quickness and flesh—had not yet taken place.

  “She is the patron saint of virgins,” Bruno concluded, feeling that his recounting of the legend had taken an odd turn. He had begun the story in a flippant tone, intending to make the story little more than a humorous impossibility. But now he felt that while this particular miracle was pure fable, other miracles might not be.

  The miracle of a work of art, he thought. The miracle of a man in a room standing before an empty surface, and transforming it. The miracle of day after day, stitching night to night with its golden thread.

  “I’m all ‘Hey, I’m sitting here next to Bruno Kraft.’ I know I’m going to think of a million questions to ask you as soon as I get off the plane.”

  That’s how even the scholarly young talk these days, thought Bruno. The young sound so colloquial and offhand.

  “I wrote an article about you once,” said the young scholar.

  Bruno arched his brow in an unspoken, really?

  “A review, actually. It was in Connoisseur, discussing the video you made about Cézanne.”

  “Good heavens, I remember—”

  “I thought it was incredible.”

  “Cézanne was a sort of person we don’t have anymore.”

  “That’s what you said in the video.”

  “What else did I say?” asked Bruno.

  “You said that what we are is not as important as what we ‘engender upon life.’ What an incredible phrase.”

  “You’re Stevenot Brawnson.”

  “Yes, of course.” He laughed. “You’re just figuring out who I am.”

  “Stupid of me.”

  “I’m not that important.”

  It would be unkind to agree in so many words. “You’re not at all what I thought you would be.”

  “A disappointment.”

  “No, young. I’m growing deaf.”

  “It’s the air-pressure in these planes. You can’t hear a fucking thing.”

  Bruno smiled. Nice the way everyone worked fucking into their vocabulary these days, just like in the movies. Stevenot Brawnson was not so young after all, and the slang was all an affectation. His father had endowed a college and supplied it with a library.

  Still, Stevenot was likable. American men were almost always likable, adaptable, easygoing, slow to give or take offense. This man had a smile like Curtis’s, and had the same way of speaking, a smart person choosing to be simple.

  Stevenot was asking about Curtis. He was asking about the new painting. “Peopl
e are going to line up around the block,” he said.

  Don’t think about Curtis, Bruno warned himself. Don’t think about anything. Just sit here and have some more Kentucky whisky, and let life approach you from afar.

  It was fine to be in Rome again, a warm summer storm just evaporating, puddles everywhere.

  Bruno was exhausted. It was a mercy to be outside the apartment, fumbling in his pocket for the key.

  The apartment had a glass door, a translucent pane that distorted the view and made the interior of the apartment look like an absence, a drowned world lost to the clatter and chatter of the street, the jumble of parked Vespas, the hammer-taps of craftsmen in the furniture design shops up and down the street.

  Bruno could just barely see through the glass door, and into the promising shadow of the apartment. There was movement there, the passing of a figure inside, a flash. Bruno could not deny the thought: someone naked.

  He put the impression out of his mind. He twisted the key, stepped across the threshold, and greeted Andy with, “Home is the hunter.”

  Andy was on his feet, twisting a cloth in his hands, and Bruno nearly asked him what on earth was the matter.

  There was a blanket on the floor, a blue woolen afghan, and a photographer’s light was set up in the corner, beside one of the terracotta gargoyles. The light swept the blanket, which held, in the folds and contours of the fabric, the imprint of a body. There was the sound of a footstep upstairs.

  “So,” said Bruno. His carryon bag was suddenly heavy, but he did not want to put it down.

  Andy hesitated. “I’m working, Bruno.”

  “Discipline is very important, especially for an artist.”

  “We were right in the middle. But it’s good to see you. How was California?”

  “I can imagine the subject. Not quite one of your glossies of the baked goods of the Jewish Quarter this time, is it?”

  “Just getting a little work in.” Andy sounded apologetic, but barely. He was wiping a lens with the cloth in his hand and looked sharply at the blanket on the floor.

  Lines from a dozen farces occurred to Bruno. Don’t let me interrupt seemed most appropriate, followed by its opposite, Forgive me for interrupting, followed, in these all-but-forgotten comedies, by a lover leaping out of hiding wearing inappropriate clothing, oversized boxer shorts or something garishly flowered.

  Because it should be funny. It should be something to accept with a debonair laugh, and Bruno could toss down his coat and his overnight bag and go out for a cup of coffee. Besides, perhaps it was innocent. Perhaps Andy had branched out into nude but demure photos, the sort of brawn one saw on calendars.

  “Just do whatever you want to when I’m gone,” said Bruno, “because it certainly doesn’t matter to me at all.”

  “Taking pictures,” said Andy, with the pointed deliberate slowness he might have used on someone who spoke little English.

  “That’s right. Take pictures of whatever you want and whomever you want right here on the floor.”

  “I will,” said Andy.

  “Good. I encourage it. You want to take pictures of boys you pick up at the Piazza Barberini. Big boys with hard-ons. It’s fine with me, Andy, because I realize I’m fat and old and that you and I don’t have much together. I have my career—that’s all that matters to me. Why shouldn’t you have your career too? I love it. It’s so good to see you happy.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” said Andy.

  The model clumped down the stairs, evidently deciding that departing invisibly and silently was out of the question. “Hello, how are you,” said the youth, his words in a burst, hardly sounding like a greeting or a question, schoolbook English marched forth under pressure. He wore something vaguely military, wrinkled khaki, heavy boots. He was fastening a snap.

  He was a black-haired shepherd-type, a model for a Renaissance David, a young Christ dazzling the elders, and everyone else. Bruno could find a dozen like him on a Saturday night off Via Sistina among the gypsy children looking for pockets to pick.

  Bruno stormed up the stairs, and the model shrank against the wall to let him past. Bruno threw open the bedroom shutters. He grabbed a handful of Andy’s clothing from a drawer, and tossed it from the window. The trousers unfolded, spun around into a tight wad, and plummeted, followed by a T-shirt, a single sock.

  The model looked up from the street, his expression one of earnest curiosity, wondering at Bruno’s anger, or trying to guess what would fly out of the window next, and then the youth mounted one of the motorscooters, just out of sight. There was the cough of a starter, and then the brazen rattle of the Vespa as it caught, swung up the street, and was gone.

  “You’re overreacting, Bruno,” said Andy from the bedroom door.

  Two shoppers paused in the street below to comment to each other on the sight of jockey shorts hurled in their general direction.

  “You’re embarrassing yourself,” said Andy.

  Bruno stopped for a moment to relish his anger. “You have no business talking to me that way,” said Bruno very quietly.

  “You’re tired. You look awful.”

  “Thank you, Andy,” said Bruno.

  “We’ll talk when you feel better.”

  The calm of Andy’s voice made Bruno furious. He threw an entire drawer, tugged from the frame of the dresser, onto the window sill. The small pink geranium there withstood a load of polo shirts.

  Andy stood for a moment, saying nothing, challenging Bruno to offer an apology, an explanation.

  “You have no idea,” said Andy.

  There had always been something bright about Andy, but his enthusiasms had been those of the moment, humming a recent tune, repeating the latest Hollywood gossip. This empty quickness was interlaced with surprising moments of common sense, and it was this contradiction in Andy that sometimes made Bruno realize how little he knew about his friend and lover, and how little he had wanted to know. To know more was to care more, and it was always silently understood that Andy would be a part of Bruno’s life a few weeks, a few months. And yet, they had already known each other the better part of a year.

  Andy slipped downstairs like someone going out for a pack of cigarettes. Bruno followed him. Andy gathered up his camera, thrust it into the camera bag, and with an air of quiet decision ignored the sight of his clothes flung out upon the cobblestones and made his way, in no apparent hurry, down to the Via di Monte Brianzo, where he turned right, toward Via Condotti and the Spanish Steps, out of Bruno’s life.

  The phone was ringing.

  It was an editor in London, a newspaper needing an update on their Curtis Newns’ file obituary. “I know it’s quite a bit to ask. The one we have now had him marrying Margaret Darcy, and all the interesting events since then aren’t even mentioned.”

  Bruno found his voice. “There have been some interesting changes—”

  “We were thinking that what we will need is something more retrospective, something sweeping and summing-up, in the light of the loss of Skyscape, from the point of view of an authority like yourself.…”

  “Naturally.”

  “But then I was thinking that we should wait until the new painting is done.”

  It sounded like a statement, but it wasn’t.

  “I’m sure that I can write something new,” said Bruno. “Or at least begin it. We’ll have plenty of time to revise Curtis’s obituary. He has years ahead of him.”

  “We were thinking it might be best to have something early rather than later. I wasn’t catching you at a bad time, just now?”

  “No. Well, just got in. Traffic. Humid. Sticky, actually, and hot. But fine.”

  The editor paused long enough to seem polite, and then continued, “And a paragraph or two on the importance of Red Patterson—”

  “Of course.”

  “Is the painting going to actually belong to Red Patterson?” asked the editor.

  The question shocked Bruno. Bruno had assumed that a painting by Curti
s Newns would belong to the world of art.

  “As a gift,” said the editor, “from patient to doctor.”

  “I think it’s too early to speculate,” said Bruno.

  “Some people will be thinking that you gave your opinion on the painting for a consideration, to raise its value.”

  Bruno was speechless.

  “Or in exchange for setting up a sale to a prearranged buyer,” said the editor breezily. “For a fee.”

  I have never been, thought Bruno, quite cynical enough. God knows I’ve tried. But this editor was a far more accomplished cynic, and Bruno felt humbled. The truth sounded so supercilious he was almost embarrassed. “I gave my professional opinion for the sake of the painting, and for Curtis’s sake—”

  “And because you believe Red Patterson can do anything he wants to do,” said the editor, without, as far as Bruno could tell, the smallest trace of irony.

  42

  The phone rang again and it was Renata San Pablo.

  “I want the painting,” she said.

  Bruno explained to her that her galleries represented Curtis, and that naturally she would have a chance to handle the painting once it was a finished work, and not a mere sketch.

  “I mean I want it personally—to own it.”

  “A painting like that should be shared with the public, don’t you think?”

  “Is that what Red Patterson thinks?”

  Bruno admitted that he was not entirely certain what Patterson thought about anything.

  “He’s going to put the painting on television and say that Curtis gave it to him,” said Renata. “I know what Patterson’s all about.”

  “There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Bruno, “before we have what you and I would call a real work of art.”

  “You compared it to Skyscape. You practically came right out and called it a masterpiece.”

  “I was so happy,” said Bruno, “to see Curtis at least beginning something—”

  Then, to keep Bruno off-balance, she changed the subject. She wanted Bruno to start to work on a video of Curtis, “Better than that ratty thing you did on Cézanne.”