Raw Deal

by Les Standiford

  She felt as if she had a summer cold coming on, but it might simply be the confusion she felt, this grinning idiot in front of her talking about ratings, a makeup woman toweling away his perspiration, patting his cheeks with powder. “This is an event of some artistic…some political significance,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. What was his name, anyway? Tad? Chad? He was tanned, fit, radiant with health and good cheer. He had bent down a bit so the makeup woman could reach him with an eyeliner pencil. “We do a lot of important stories. It used to be just fluff, neighborhood Christmas lights, the dog show, but now we’re doing quasi-hard news in the background, stuff with a setting, at least, weaving that in with the weather.”

  He waved his hand in the direction of the building, her building, as if it were some stage set, some false front set up for his convenience. Built by Coral Gables developer George Merrick in 1927 out of solid coral rock. A mansion with barrel-tiled gables, massive overhangs, and walls two feet thick, where Paul Whiteman had once wintered, where a Du Pont cousin had kept a mistress for five years, where, it was rumored, Miami habitué Al Capone had bludgeoned a man with a leaden doorstop cast in the shape of an angel.

  After World War II, a North Carolinian manufacturer of furniture had made it his second home. Facing great pressure from the import market, the furniture titan shot himself in the mansion’s attic, but his widow had stayed on until her death in 1980. The place had sat in probate, untended for nearly a decade, until Marielena discovered it and made it her own.

  She had walked down that overgrown pathway where a Ford van with a satellite dish atop it was now blocking the way, had stepped into the forlorn courtyard, taken one look at the fountain, the shy nymph who seemed to bow with pleasure and gratitude at Marielena’s arrival…and had known immediately that this was the place where she would do her work.

  For the past four years, she had set about making Galeria y Ediciones Catalan the center for the preservation and promotion of Hispanic-American art in the United States. Hers was an unusual, multifaceted approach: The building contained a modest museum where Marielena’s collection, and that of her deceased father, which contained several Picassos, two pieces by Miró, and even one Goya, were on permanent display.

  She had added a gallery, where the works of contemporary Spanish and Latin-American artists were featured. And there was also the publishing arm, concerned not only with the production of elaborate coffee-table books but with works of scholarship and matters bearing on the world of Hispanic-American art as well.

  Marielena was herself no artist, could not draw so much as a stick figure. Yet she knew what moved her, as she knew what fire was latent in the hearts of her ancestors, her people. And while her own family had been content to live upon the earnings of a fortune so old it had lost the scent of the pressed oils it was founded upon, she had made it her mission to do something, something of importance.

  She had invested every cent of the remaining Marquez wealth in her enterprise. Although she had offended some, mostly local politicians who wouldn’t know the difference between a palette knife and a butter knife, she had succeeded in gaining the attention of the international art community for her efforts. This opening, for instance, was an event of great significance. And the book that she would soon publish, well, that would turn this community on its ear.

  She sighed. On the eve of all this, she had been delivered into the hands of Chad, the Action Weatherman.

  “A prophet without honor,” Marielena murmured.

  “Say what?” the weatherman asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just philosophy.”

  “Oh.” One of the weatherman’s eyes seemed to be focused on Marielena, while the one being worked on by the makeup artist canted off toward the bright evening sky, where a huge seabird, perhaps an osprey, drifted overhead.

  Dive, Marielena willed her thoughts toward the bird. Carry this person away.

  “I spoke with your news director. He assured me that a reporter would come.…”

  The weatherman pushed his makeup person aside, pulled the towel from the neck of his sports shirt. His good cheer had transformed into something more intense.

  “Ms. Marquez, I am a reporter,” he said. “I covered the ouster of Commissioner Lender, the same night a tropical wave came through. The week we broke the January rainfall record, I was live from the courthouse with the weather. Who do you think was at that big pileup on Alligator Alley, hottest February third on record?”

  She stared at him, speechless. Madness, she was thinking, for she had spent a lifetime among artists. She was searching for some reply when he noticed something behind her.

  “Shit, look at those thunderheads,” Tad/Chad said abruptly. He turned to shout at the camera crew. “Let’s factor those clouds in.” One of the men nodded and the crew began shifting their cables.

  Marielena glanced into the sky at the massive cumulus banks that were piling up over the Atlantic. Piling up so high that their tips reflected the last of the sunlight in a patchwork of pink and gold, their undersides a brawl of cobalt, gray, and purple. Sunsets that the Englishman Turner should have seen, she thought. Instead, there would be storm clouds by Chad, video replay at eleven. She sighed and bent to lift the now-gelatinous carbon sheet from the reflecting pool, then followed the director toward the X they’d chalked on the flagstones, the place where she and Chad would talk about art and politics.

  ***

  “We’re going to be back with the weekend forecast in a minute, folks,” weatherman Chad said, “but first let’s have a look at some of this art we came to see.” He grinned and thrust his microphone in front of Marielena. “So, we’ve got a red one from Cuba and a blue one from Brazil, is that right?”

  She forced herself to smile for the camera. The director had persuaded her to have a pair of smaller canvases brought out into the courtyard—“It’s a visual medium, sweetheart”—and as the assistants holding the pieces stepped forward, she cast a nervous glance at the looming thunderheads above.

  In a second-story window of her building she saw Rafael Quintana, her chief editor, smiling down upon the scene. Handsome Rafael, the picture of confidence in his cream-colored suit. There was someone else in the room, another man, but his face was lost in the shadows. Rafael gave her a thumbs-up as she began to speak.

  “Yes, this acrylic, the blue one…”—Good Lord, was she actually descending to his level?—“is an abstract by Antonio Real. It features some striking work with the rearrangement of perspective, and though you probably can’t see this on the camera, the textures are incredible—you can actually see the movement of the artist’s hand.”

  “It’s really blue, folks, that much I can tell you.” Chad grinned. His thumb, apparently out of camera range, was jabbing urgently in the direction of the other canvas. “So tell us about the other one. We can almost see people here, can’t we?”

  The camera moved in tight on the second canvas. It was a surrealistic oil by Sucrel, a young Cuban painter with the face and demeanor of an angel. The subject was a cane field, with stooped, painfully distorted laborers in the foreground, a line of field-clearing fires in the distance, an angry sunset refracting through a haze of smoke. In the sky above the fields, the smoke and the fiery light had somehow congealed into the specter of a huge jungle cat, leaping down upon the unsuspecting workers, its claws and fangs bared.

  How ironic. This young painter subtly criticizes conditions in Cuba and yet draws the wrath of exiles living in America. Perhaps if Sucrel had given the beast the face of his country’s dictator…but she doubted anything would mollify those who were beyond reason.

  “It is called ‘A Tiger in Red Weather’,” she said into the microphone, “after a poem by the American Wallace Stevens. Quite a powerful commentary on the exploitation of labor. Sucrel is perhaps the most interesting young painter in all of Cuba.”

  The camera was back on her now and she straightened, lifti
ng her chin to the eye of the lens. “We are very proud to be the first to show his work in this country.”

  “That’s created a bit of controversy in our community, I understand.” Chad was still grinning, as if it was amusing.

  She paused.

  “Sucrel is a gifted artist who happens to come from Cuba,” she said. “His subjects speak of the beauty and the anguish of everyday life. They inspire us with their strength.” She tossed her hair, feeling her passion welling up inside her.

  Sucrel himself stood at the gateway to the mansion, his doelike gaze upon her, the fierce-eyed, bearded Antonio Real at his side. It was they who should be before the cameras, she reminded herself, but neither artist spoke English and the museum director had scotched that idea in an instant.

  “And yet,” she continued, “there are those who would deny us our access to Sucrel, who would not allow him to travel here, who would see this gallery closed rather than share the beauty and the passion of his work.” She glanced up to see Rafael’s reaction, but he had disappeared.

  “Kind of like those great cigars,” Chad chimed in. “A darned shame we can’t get those anymore.”

  Marielena felt the color draining from her face. She could only pray that the artists had not understood this moron. “I want to invite everyone to the Galeria Catalan this evening,” she said, fighting for composure. “Come to see these marvelous works and judge for yourselves what…”

  And that was when it happened. She never got to finish her sentence, would never know, in fact, just what epithet she intended to hurl at the rock-skulled, heavy-jowled men who were out there watching, if they were watching, hating her every word, hating every molecule of her. The same men who had lobbied the State Department to deny Sucrel’s visa, who had pressured her bank to rescind her line of credit, who had called in the building inspectors time and again with spurious safety violation charges.

  Her own countrymen, she thought, in the very moment she began to fall, but the worst of them, those so embittered by personal loss that they had become the very thing they hated most, so threatened even by art, so devoid of humanness that one of them had surely caused what was happening to her now.

  In the first instant of the blast, her breath had left her. It was as if an invisible, searing hand had swept across the courtyard, hurling all of them away like so many skittles from a game board.

  There were a few images of startling, slow-motion clarity: the weatherman, his grin vanished at last, soaring over her, flames trailing from the back of his shirt and trousers; the roof of the mansion exploding upward, the lovely red tiles fragmenting into shrapnel; a massive sabal palm lifting up into the heavens, then tottering, veering downward like a space missile gone awry.

  Not sure any longer if she was hurtling upward or if the sky itself was rushing down to meet her, she watched as the shadow of the great tree grew and grew, enveloping her, its vast shade bringing a hint of ease to her burning body, the tree itself much closer now, finally turning the dusk to nightfall, and then there was darkness altogether.

  Chapter 4

  “Why are you laughing?” Deal asked. He was behind her now, but he had caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror the Mayfair decorator had installed across from the huge bed.

  “I’m not laughing,” Janice said, turning her face against a pillow. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks were bright crimson, her hair, gone from blond to dark with sweat, was plastered against her forehead. She bit her lip as he moved against her, then gasped with pleasure.

  “I saw you,” he said, but he’d had to close his own eyes now. He clutched at her hips, as if to pull her closer, as if it would be possible to move her inside him somehow, but her flesh was slippery, and his hands were starting to work in some rhythm they had concocted on their own.

  “I can’t believe…” She broke off, tossing her head against the bedclothes.

  He pulled back, trying to prolong this moment, then quickly gave it up, rejoined her, fell to his side. She groaned softly, keeping herself glued to him, keeping their rhythms intact. She arched upward, rocked slightly, managed somehow to work him onto his back.

  He opened his eyes again as she began to rise and fall above him, her face upturned, her hair tumbling free, her lovely neck arched. “Can’t believe what?” he managed. He was feeling giddy, slightly delirious, nothing in his mind but sensation. Slipperiness. A wet silk glove that clasped him, unclasped him.

  “That…you had this planned…all along.” She spoke in bursts, her hands digging into the flesh of his chest for punctuation.

  “Mrs. Suarez…she was very…understanding,” he said, surprised at this coherent voice that seemed to come from some other Deal, some version of himself he’d met on the street one day. Talking. How could conversation be an aphrodisiac?

  “Oh yes,” she said finally, but she wasn’t talking about Mrs. Suarez anymore.

  “…yes,” he answered. On his way to some other galaxy, hearing her bright cries of pleasure spiraling upward with him. Higher and higher and higher…until they had collapsed into the soaking bedclothes, panting, both of them gasping now with laughter.

  He lay there thinking, I am a drooling, brain-dead creature of happiness, yes indeedy, and was already reaching out for her again…when the telephone began to ring.

  ***

  “Calm down, Mrs. Suarez,” Janice was saying. Her face was drawn into a mask of concern. “Please. I can’t understand you.”

  Deal struggled up from the tangle of sheets, a cold apprehensiveness coming over him.

  “Isabel?” he asked.

  Janice shook her head, waving for him to be quiet.

  “The TV?” she said, puzzled. “Wait…just a minute.”

  She jabbed her finger at the remote unit on the bedside table. Deal reached for it, punched the set on. Clint Eastwood shotgunning a cowboy off a western rooftop. He stared at Janice, puzzled.

  “Channel 7,” she said, the phone still tucked under her chin.

  Deal skipped through the channels until he found it, where a reporter was doing a stand-up in front of a ruined building. It could have been a war zone in the tropics: a few shards of wall poking out of the smoking rubble, an overturned equipment van, still smoldering, emergency technicians combing the wreckage, all of it framed by shattered palms, scorched fronds of foliage.

  “…and those seriously injured, including our own Chad Eddings and the owner of Galeria Catalan, Marielena Marquez,” the ashen-faced reporter was saying. “Meanwhile, the search goes on for other survivors. No word as to what might have caused the tremendous explosion, but fire investigators are on the scene. We’ll be here to bring you details as they come to us, Reese.”

  The scene cut away to the studio, where the anchorperson, an overweight man with a bad hairpiece, shook his head at the news—“We’ll be back with more, folks”—then on to a commercial for Craftmatic Beds. Deal pressed the mute button and turned to Janice, stunned.

  “That’s the place where we were today?”

  She nodded slowly. He could hear the voice of Mrs. Suarez nattering away on the other end of the line. He reached out to take the phone from Janice, who stared at the TV, transfixed.

  “It’s me, Mrs. Suarez,” he said, cutting into her rapid-fire Spanglish.

  “Señor Deal, ay Dios. You are alive. Madre de Dios. How is it possible…”

  “We’re fine, Mrs. Suarez. We weren’t there. Not for hours.”

  He held the phone away from his ear while she praised various deities for their good fortune. Then there was a lusty cry in the background and Mrs. Suarez broke off. “Is the baby,” she said. “Is waking up.”

  “Isabel?” he said. “She’s okay?”

  “Is fine,” Mrs. Suarez said. “Everything is fine here. Thank God for you and the señora.”

  The commercial had ended and the grim-faced anchorman was back now, a photograph of the building as it had looked before the explosion on a screen b
ehind him. One of the grandest of the old mansions on Brickell. Deal shook his head, remembering the lush patio, the massive overhangs, the feeling of security the thick walls of the place had lent. Like being in a cave or a medieval fortress, he was thinking, then stopped himself.

  There was another shot live from the scene then, the original reporter running after a fire marshal who was getting into his cruiser, pushing the reporter’s microphone away.

  “Look, Mrs. Suarez, we’re fine, okay? But thanks for checking up on us. Go take care of Isabel. We’ll see you in the morning.” He was distracted, wondering what the reporter was so intent upon.

  He heard something of indignation in the older woman’s voice as the TV sound came up. “Sure I’m gonna take good care of her. You have a good time now.” He was conscious of the disapproval in her last comment.

  He heard the connection break, then focused on the TV, where the reporter was running alongside the departing fire marshal’s cruiser. “Well, what can you tell us?” the reporter was shouting. “Do you suspect one of the exile groups?” The image was jiggling wildly as the cameraman ran after him. A uniformed cop stepped into the picture suddenly, his hand growing huge as the lens approached it…Then everything went black.

  Janice glanced up at him, bewildered. He shrugged, reached out to put his arm around her, pulled her close as the scene cut back to the studio, the anchorperson looking into the camera, somewhat perplexed.

  “We apologize for the technical difficulties,” he said, gathering himself. “But you heard it for the first time here on 7. A suspicion that foul play was involved in the explosion at Galeria y…” The anchorman stopped to check the script in front of him, then glanced back up at the cameras, mangling the rest of the Spanish, before announcing a return to regular programming.

  Deal snapped off the set as Angela Lansbury’s face swam into focus. Janice glanced up at him, her eyes fearful, questioning.

  “Dear God,” she said. “Who could do that? Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  He shook his head, pulled her tight against his chest. In years past there’d been other bombings in Miami—a theater that had invited a dance troupe from Havana; the set of a film rumored to present a sympathetic view of Communism; a travel agency said to be doing business with Castro’s regime in Cuba.