Murder in Pastel

by Josh Lanyon

  I wasn’t a painter. I didn’t inherit my father’s gift. But I kept the cottage in the colony. After I graduated I moved to Oakland and lived for about a year in a closet—the closet being of the mind as well as of real estate—but I ended up moving back to Steeple Hill. Despite the isolation and the shortage of eligible males, it suited me.

  Lunchtime came and went. About one thirty I stopped long enough to throw a banana, some frozen blackberries in the blender with some cranberry juice and the last of the Häagen-Dazs frozen yogurt. I measured in a scoop of lecithin and bee pollen and swigged it down while I re-read the last pages I had typed.

  Another hour of trying to find words—another hour of struggling to keep my thoughts from straying to the cottage across the meadow.

  The doorbell rang, ripping me out of my creative cocoon.

  “Who the hell now?” I exclaimed peevishly, pushing away from the monitor and pulling my glasses off.

  Who now wished to be regaled with the details of my two-minute encounter with Adam’s hunk lover? The Berkowitzes? The Nashes? Had it spread to the village? Maybe the mayor himself?

  As I padded into the living room I could see a familiar outline through the screen door. My heart sped up.

  He was smiling at me through the mesh.

  “Hello, Kyle.”

  The door wasn’t hooked. I pushed it open.

  “Hello, Adam.”

  Chapter Two

  I stood aside. Adam stepped past me, close enough that I picked up the scent of almond soap.

  He stared about the room. “My God, it hasn’t changed a bit.”

  Adam had though. The long curls were cropped short and wavy, the beard, mustache and golden earring were all gone. He was still startlingly handsome: tall, lean, but older. Maybe harder around the edges.

  “I expect to see Cosmo come striding through that door any minute.” His eyes, blue as the faded denims he wore, homed in on my face.

  “How are you, Kyle?”

  “Good.”

  “You look good.” He still studied me; it was not a rhetorical question. “Actually, you look great.” His eyes tilted up at the corners when he smiled. I’d forgotten that.

  He lifted his hands and then dropped them. I think he wanted to hug me, but didn’t quite know how to bridge the years. I was a big boy now. A big, self-conscious boy, and I couldn’t have made a move toward him if my life had depended on it. Not after Brett’s “scout” crack.

  Instead Adam turned to the fireplace where Virgin in Pastel used to hang. In its place was mounted a gilt-framed mirror I’d picked up at an auction for twelve dollars. It reflected the two of us appraising each other.

  “The Virgin never turned up?”

  “No,” I answered.

  He was making conversation; if it had shown up, he would have known. Virgin in Pastel is theoretically considered Cosmo Bari’s masterpiece. I say theoretically, because the painting went missing the same time as my father. The cartoon, or rough draft, hangs in the Getty, and a series of preliminary sketches are in the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover. Although the prelims and the rough draft were done in pastels, which Cosmo was experimenting with at the time, the completed work was painted in oils. It was called Virgin in Pastel for the delicate coloration he achieved.

  Adam gave a funny laugh and said, “I’m trying not to say something idiotic like, Gee, you’re all grown up!”

  “Is it such a shock?”

  He didn’t answer directly. “I read your books. Both of them. Funny as hell.” His cheek creased in a faint smile. “The ‘Gay Donald Westlake,’ huh?”

  “They have to put something on the book jacket.”

  He continued to smile at me in the old affectionate way. It bugged me.

  “I met Brett,” I said.

  “He told me. In fact, that’s why I’m here. We want you to come to dinner tonight.”

  I threw myself into emotional reverse, stripping gears in my panic. “No. Uh—that is, I’ll let you get settled in first. Let Brett get used to—”

  “We’re not newlyweds,” Adam interrupted. “It was Brett’s idea.”

  “Great.” That’s what I was afraid of.

  Adam headed for the door. Hand on the screen, he paused. “You never heard from him? Not a word?”

  I knew whom he meant.

  “No. Never. Not a postcard.” After a moment I said, “I think I would have, if he’d lived.”

  “What?” His blue-blue eyes narrowed.

  “I think he’s dead. I’m almost sure of it. Otherwise, I think he’d have come back—if only for a day. He liked to see the finished product.”

  I never could read Adam’s face.

  He smiled after a moment. “See you about seven?”

  “I’ll be there.” If my prayers for divine intervention in the form of earthquake or tidal wave went unanswered.

  * * * * *

  My grandfather has the only existing picture of my mother. Mine is a copy of her high school graduation photo; she’s younger in it than I am now. All the other photos, all the paintings he did of her, were destroyed by my father after her death.

  Judging by her high school photo, Kyria Lipez was pretty, but not exactly the type to inspire lifelong devotion. She was my father’s high school sweetheart. There’s no graduation pic of Cosmo, because by then he’d booked for parts unknown. After a number of years and unexpected artistic success, Cosmo Bari, former resident-black sheep came home to Steeple Hill, and against the fierce opposition of her father, married Kyria. This house was their wedding gift, my grandfather being of the opinion that my father could never provide my mother with stability or security.

  Who knows? They were married for two years when I came along. Three years later my mother took an ambulance ride and never came home. I don’t remember her except as a gentle voice, the cool scent of Wind Song, and the bleakness in my father’s eyes.

  The house is hers though. The garden was hers. She planted the purple-blue wisteria that winds along the porch overhang. The tangle of peonies and roses that grows as high as the front steps. The William Morris patterned rugs, the “Osbourne” china—everything in the house was hers and her mother’s before her and her mother’s before her. I know my mother through the furnishings of the house I grew up in—and a spiral notebook of sweet but sophomoric poems she wrote in high school, which my father spared for reasons known only to him.

  This is to say I know her a lot better than I ever knew my father, with whom I shared this house for sixteen years. I don’t know that anyone ever knew Cosmo. I read Joel’s books, and frankly, I don’t think Joel knew him either.

  But maybe it’s easier for me to think so than face the fact that I never knew my father because he wasn’t interested in knowing me. After my mother died he used to disappear for weeks, even months, at a time. No one knows where he went, though Joel speculated plenty in print. I know he traveled abroad because he once brought me back a poster of an air show in France—the only time I remember him bringing me a souvenir, or giving indication that I was ever anything but out of sight, out of mind.

  Anyway, I take after my mother in looks: tall and slim and ordinary. And I suppose in temperament too, being quiet and something of a homebody. My father looked like Stewart Granger, and carried on like Stew in his more dramatic roles. It’s that artistic temperament thing, I guess.

  * * * * *

  I brought peonies from my garden and a bottle of Merlot to dinner.

  The lights from Adam’s place twinkled through the trees as I walked across the meadow. The still-warm earth released a pungent scent of sage and wild flowers into the dusk. As I drew nearer I could hear Stan Getz on the breeze, the sultry voice of Astrud Gilberto murmuring “Corcovado,” recalling long summer evenings spent listening to Adam and my father talk Art on our front porch.

  It’s bullshit, Adam. Modern painting is significant in one way only: it’s new. You’ve got these young punks focused on nothing but trying to top each
other; switching styles and manners, feverishly seeking new thrills, new chills, new giggles for a jaded bourgeois audience.

  I don’t agree, Cos. I think—

  Kyle, are you still awake? Bring us a couple more beers.

  Adam met me at the door and slipped a cordial arm around my shoulders.

  “I’m glad you came, Kyle,” he said, as though he knew how much I hadn’t wanted to.

  “Thanks for inviting me.”

  He looked good enough to eat, in charcoal drawstring pants and an indigo blue collarless shirt; soft flowing clothes that somehow emphasized rather than detracted from his masculinity.

  “Brett’s cooking,” Adam added, and by his wry smile I understood that Brett’s cooking indicated An Occasion.

  Right on cue Brett stepped out of the kitchen. He looked too gorgeous to cook or do anything more practical than lie on a beach in Cannes or swat a tennis ball around a Malibu court. His hair was slicked back and shining in the light from the candles; he wore no shirt, and his burnished skin gleamed like pirate’s gold. He wore white denims with a multicolored serpent and dagger design on one leg. Even his bare feet were beautiful.

  “Kyle.” He smiled. “At last we meet. Officially.”

  He smelled of cigarettes and musky aftershave, sexily gliding up and taking the flowers from me. “From your own garden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lovely.”

  The peonies looked especially lovely against his taut abdomen; their white silky petals flushed pink and coral against his brown skin. I thought it was no wonder Adam loved him. He was the embodiment of masculine beauty. It was hard to take my eyes off him. When I did, Adam was smiling quizzically in my direction.

  “We need a bowl for these, Adam,” Brett said, handing the flowers over. Adam took the wine and the flowers and vanished into the kitchen from whence savory scents issued.

  “I hope you like curry,” he called over his shoulder.

  Brett drew me over to a chintz-covered sofa that I remembered from my sickly adolescence. I had a flashback of what it used to feel like drowsing in this room, with the drone of bees floating through the open window and the soft brushing of Adam painting at his easel.

  “Is it like you remember?” Brett inquired, sitting next to me. He exuded a kind of animal energy and warmth. I eased over a few inches. He offered me a cigarette which I declined. “Is Adam like you remember?”

  “It’s been ten years. Nothing’s the same.”

  “You can’t go home again,” mused Brett. “Though Adam keeps trying.”

  Actually Adam’s cottage did seem unchanged—almost identical to the way it had been in Drake Trent’s day: bronze-nymph lamps, glass doorknobs, and numerous prints of fox hunting and dead game birds.

  Brett’s steady green stare made me uncomfortable. “Do you paint?” I asked at random.

  He bit off a laugh, blew a stream of blue smoke through his nostrils and called, “Adam, we need wine in here.”

  “Yo.” Adam’s voice floated back.

  The turntable dropped the next record. Instant mood change: Sonny Stitt’s fast, flirty alto-sax pursued by quietly smiling keyboards.

  “So you’re a writer?”

  “Yeah.” At least I’d got past the “uh—yeah” stage.

  “Do you have any copies of your books I could read?”

  “Sure. If you like.”

  “I want to know what makes you tick.”

  Why do people assume you are what you write? That every character is you or someone you know? That if you’ve written it, you’ve either done it or want to? Whatever happened to imagination and research?

  I gave him an uncomfortable smile, but was saved from answering by Adam’s return with wine glasses and the open bottle of Merlot. He settled in the chair across from us and poured the wine.

  “What’s Kyle’s best book?” Brett asked, reaching for a glass.

  “They’re both good.”

  “What one would I like?”

  Adam rose and turned down the stereo. “Records,” he said, glancing up and catching my eye. “Remember LPs?”

  I remembered all Adam’s LPs. Mostly jazz. Jazz was forever equated in my mind with the smell of oil paint, the scratch of old records, the warmth of a man’s hand against my own sensitized bare skin.

  I felt Brett’s stare. “That’s a good color on you,” he remarked. “What is it? Burnt orange?” He plucked at my T-shirt.

  “Bittersweet,” Adam supplied. “That’s what Crayola used to call it anyway.”

  “Kyle hasn’t played with crayons in years, Adam,” Brett chided.

  There was a strange pause. Brett drained half his glass in one swallow. “So…what was Kyle like in the good old days of records and Clearasil?”

  Adam shrugged. His smile made my stomach do an unexpected flip flop. “I remember you used to read Louis L’Amour Westerns. In fact, I found one tucked between the sofa cushions today. Mustang Man.”

  “I always wondered how that turned out.”

  “Did you know you were gay?” interrupted Brett.

  “When?”

  “When you had a boner for Adam.”

  I managed not to spill my wine. “Yeah, I knew.” I took a sip and avoided looking at Adam. I’d known this evening was a mistake.

  Brett looked from me to Adam. “Come on, Kyle, open up. Did you have a dog and a bike and a baseball mitt?”

  What the hell was his fascination? “Yeah, sure.” And an eccentric genius for a father who didn’t care if I was alive or dead. “It was pretty average. How about you?”

  “Let’s see…” He leaned back, stretching out his long legs. “Foster homes till I was fourteen. A year on the street. A year modeling. A year in rehab. A year—”

  “Brett,” Adam murmured.

  “Shit,” Brett exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “The curry!” He disappeared into the kitchen.

  Adam’s eyes followed him. I wondered if all the tension in this room was mine or if they had been quarreling before I arrived. Adam looked back at me.

  “How are you Kyle? Really.”

  “Good. Really.” I set my glass on the table, my attention caught by the music. Something teasing and sexy and familiar; something I hadn’t heard in ten years. “Bebop in Pastel?” I guessed.

  Adam didn’t reply; his expression was odd.

  “What is it?” I asked, puzzled.

  He said slowly, “You know, until this second I never realized just how much Brett reminds me of you.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” That came out wrong. I was sure he meant it as a compliment. I tried, “It must be the light.”

  “Not so much your looks.” He reached out and turned my chin toward the lamp. It was automatic on his part, merely positioning a model, but I stiffened. He let me go at once. I still felt the warm imprint of his fingers on my face.

  After a moment he said, “You do have similar bone structure. Similar coloring. You both have that trick of tilting your head when you’re listening. I’m not exactly sure what it is.”

  “Coincidence,” Brett said lightly, dropping practically into my lap. I scooted over. “You like your boys slender and fair and—are you tanned everywhere, Kyle?” He ran his hand down my arm. My skin prickled as though from heat rash.

  “Give him a break, Brett.”

  Brett laughed and emptied his glass. “Shall we eat on the verandah, gents?”

  We ate on the verandah in white wrought-iron chairs that were less comfortable than I remembered. There were citronella candles in stone lanterns to keep off the bugs, and their smell combined with the garden scents and the curry. The curry was good if you like curry, which I don’t. This one was made of tiger prawns simmered in ginger, cilantro, coconut milk, and served over rice. We polished off the Merlot I’d brought, and Adam decanted a couple of bottles of Napa Valley white, which we also drank.

  Adam grew quieter as Brett grew more confidential, tossing out phrases like, “Since I feel like I already
know, Kyle…” By the time we got to the espresso, the feeling was mutual. I believed I already knew more about Brett than I’d ever need to know—which shows how wrong you can be.

  It was after nine o’clock when a slow moving pair of headlights turned off the main highway and wound down through the trees toward us. The music had gone quiet, moody, slow. Astrud Gilberto was singing “Once Upon a Summertime” in that slurred, slightly-off way, like she was tipsy too. I was listening to her rather than Brett’s theories on outing closeted politicians, but I did notice when he trailed into silence.

  We watched as the headlights turned into a 1967 Chevy convertible.

  “What’s that supposed to be?”

  “The welcome wagon,” I answered.

  “Not the Cobbs?” Adam said, sounding ready to laugh.

  “That’s Mayor Cobb and the Honorable Miss Irene to you,” I said.

  “Mayor Cobb?”

  “Mayor of what?” Brett wanted to know.

  “Of Steeple Hill. By formal election. We’re a township now.”

  We watched as Mayor Cobb unfolded himself from the navy blue Chevy. He turned to help his sister, precariously balancing a pie, disembark. Irene’s foot caught in the hem of her long cotton skirt, and for a second it looked like all three of them would end up on the gravel.

  “Spinster” is no longer politically correct, but if ever a woman fit the bill, it was Irene Cobb. Micky told me Irene had been attractive in an au naturel way back in the days of frosted lipstick, but by the time she was teaching my ninth grade biology class she wasn’t fueling any adolescent fantasies. She fixed her mouse-colored hair in place with plastic barrettes, and wore granny glasses that perpetually slid down her small, bony nose. A rumor circulated the freshman class that she was actually the mother of her nephew Jack, whom she and her brother Norman had raised from infancy. But then there were also rumors that Mitzie Stevens had made it with the entire Varsity Squad—and it turned out Mitzie was studying to be a nun.

  Brett laughed and poured himself more wine. Adam pushed his chair back and went to greet the Cobbs. A warm, callused foot rubbed over mine insinuatingly. I moved my foot away. Brett laughed again.