by Susan Dunlap
In fact she had moved into the garage of what appeared to be a small, woodsy cottage but that ran two more levels down the hillside in the back, creating one of those bleacher-seat houses in which every room has a view of redwoods, live oaks, the Bay and Bay Bridge, or San Francisco beyond. It was her heavily mortgaged house. Rented out, she told me, to pay for her art. And it was her garage.
“I gave myself three years,” she said, turning off a soldering iron and pushing an irregular sheet of metal back from the edge of her workbench. The unconverted garage was just that. Stucco walls, pull-up door in front, exit door on the side. Room for one car or a five-foot-five-inch woman in caramel denim overalls over maroon sweatshirt, a sleeping bag rolled in one corner, canvas camp bed frame folded next to it, two suitcases under the workbench, and Peg-Boards displaying delicate copper crane necklaces, intricately entwined brass cuffs, earrings of silver irises, multimetal lotuses, and flowers and birds I couldn’t have named. The peacock ear cuffs with brass feathers that wound upward to reach to the top of the ears would be perfect with my short hair. I had to restrain myself from asking their price. Maybe after the case was closed.
She shoved a clump of her wild brown curls behind her shoulder, where there was no chance it would stay, then pulled one stool up to the workbench and motioned me to the other, the one with a back. “Sit. You want tea? I’ve got an immersion heater,” she said in just the same Bronx voice, with the same “I should come back from the deli with half the bag empty?” tone, my great-uncle’s Mrs. Bronfmann had had.
“I’m fine. But how do you eat here?”
“Well, when I rented, I chose stockbrokers. The West Coast market opens at six A.M., to coincide with Wall Street. So Don and Betty are on their way to San Francisco at five-fifteen. Then I’ve got all day to use the kitchen and bathroom. They know that, it’s part of the agreement, but I make a point of leaving things just—and I mean exactly—as I found them, so Don and Betty can forget I’m ever there.”
“What about weekends?”
“They ski; they sail; they’ve got time-shares at Tahoe and Bodega. They’re money people; their pleasures are money sports.” She put out a hand to stop the protest that hadn’t quite formed in my mind. “I don’t mean to put them down. They work like crazy. When they drag in here at four, they need the hot tub. Me, I merely love it, but them, they need it. On their weekends they need to go fast and hard and sweat out all that stress.” A grin crept onto her dark cherub face, rouging her cheeks and making her brown eyes sparkle. “What about the weekends they’re home, you’re going to ask, right? If I know beforehand, I cook beforehand. I’ve got an ice chest. On the Avenue I can get a deal on the fruit that hasn’t moved at the end of the day. If not, it’s take-out, but I’ll tell you, Jill—that’s your name, right, Jill?—it gnaws at me to blow money like that. Like I’m eating a sheet of copper, or an extra day and a half I could give myself here, before I have to go crawling to the house door and ask if there are any flunky jobs at the stock exchange. Those weeks I don’t get a decent number in the lottery and I can’t even get a space to sell my jewelry, I work for one of the out-of-town vendors, but it doesn’t pay shit. I’d be better off back here pounding the metal or cruising the galleries seeing what I can do when I get the cash for stones and fine tools. Where I can sell when I get a name. I’m an artist, but like I always say, that doesn’t mean I’m not a businesswoman. You don’t pay attention to business, you end up making jewelry for the unemployment line.”
I liked this take-a-chance life of hers. She was older than I, probably forty-five or so, and she could still afford to blow a few years? Of course she didn’t have nearly ten years invested in a pension.…My throat tightened. “Invested in a pension” had been my father’s condemnation for my friends’ fathers in the towns we moved in and out of when I was a child. I envied those girls their continuity of friends, but I despised their fathers chained like front yard dogs. When I was a high school senior, Dad gave up on the pot of gold at the end of the leprechaun’s rainbow and got a government job. He’s still at it. I’ve never asked him to tell me exactly what he does; I cared too much to hear the roteness of it; and he’s never mentioned pension. By the time I am his age I could be living well off my pension. I’ve made the smart choice. He never mentioned that; I think he cared too much.
Serenity Kaetz had given up that chance and gambled everything on her craft. If that didn’t pan out…In three years she’d be nearly fifty, too late to start dropping pennies in the pension pig. She could keep her hillside house, but she’d never be able to live in it. “You’ve got money invested with Bryant Hemming, right?”
“My savings, such as it is. I could put it in the ice chest, but I feel like I should show some responsibility.”
“How’d you choose to go with Bryant?”
“Griffon.”
“Do you trust Griffon?”
She grinned. “Oh, yeah. I figure if his money’s there, the fund’s safe. He’s the one who told me I’d never make it selling off a table in the middle of the street. I need to get into shops around town, then catalogs, then department stores. Griffon should know, hooked as he is on opening a shop on Union Square.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, amazed. “A tattoo parlor in downtown San Francisco by Lord and Taylor and the St. Francis Hotel?”
“You got it. And Griffon was on to that plan before tattooing became fashionable. Year or two you’ll be seeing discreet dragons breathing fire out of a cotillion décolletage. Griffon might just have the cash to do it by then. Or get the backing. He’s hot in the world of flash—tattoo design. His flash is inspired, and on the skin it shines like foil on a book jacket.”
I watched for signs she shared my incredulity, but if she found Griffon’s plan at all bizarre, she covered her reaction the way you do when describing a friend’s overblown dream to a stranger. Griffon and Serenity, counterculture burgomeisters and two people with futures tied up in the ACC fund. “Do you know Margo Roehner from the ACC fund board?”
Serenity nodded, and it was a moment before she motivated herself to say, “Not well.” The hesitation said: And not likely to.
That’s the tone I like to hear when asking for an opinion. “You’re used to assessing people, Serenity; give me your take on Margo.”
She considered for a moment, balancing the dry comfort of discretion against the creamy delight of dissing. “Committed, utterly. I mean Patient Defenders is a worthwhile project. She’s told me that, every time I’ve met her; the woman talks about nothing else. And if you’re not dumbstruck horrified about the haphazard care people get, Margo acts like you’re Marie Antoinette.”
“Do you have health insurance?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“Yeah. I’m still on my ex’s policy, I think. But I’m in good shape; I never need it except for the dental.”
And if she were struck sick, Serenity would be exactly the person Margo Roehner would charge in to save, a lamb who figures she’s too smart for the slaughter. I leaned back against the workbench. “So you wouldn’t say Margo Roehner had a great sense of humor.”
Serenity laughed openmouthed. Her long, curly hair shook in reaction. “In her book laughter is a waste of time. Making a joke just shows you don’t understand the seriousness of the problem.”
“What would you say if I told you she had a poster of a flashing pig—”
“Like naked flashing?” She was laughing so hard now I feared she’d rock off her stool.
“Right. And right in her storage unit.”
“Well, I’d say either you need glasses bad, or Margo’s letting someone else store in her storage.”
“Someone like Daisy Culligan?”
“Daisy?” She bobbed her head amid her shaking laughing. “Yeah, if she knew Daisy.”
Serenity knew Margo through Bryant’s organization, ACC. Daisy knew Margo because of Bryant Hemming himself. “Serenity, how is it you know Daisy?”
The laughter stopped as if so
meone had turned off the sound. Her lips pursed; her brows lowered. Anger, fear, pensiveness, I couldn’t decide. But for the first time Serenity Kaetz was not the chatty “friend” in the garage but the adversary I’d seen on A Fair Deal.
“It’s not just through ACC, right?”
“I do know her from there.”
“And?” I gave her time to offer another possible innocent connection; Daisy might have delivered dinners to fast-living Don and Betty Davis in the main house. When Serenity didn’t respond, I moved on to my real suspicion. “Daisy’s into pranks, right? Practical jokes? Just the type of thing to use a poster of a naked pig. Isn’t that right, Serenity?”
Her stool jiggled. She grabbed the edge of the workbench to save herself and then fussed, resettling her feet on the rung, shifting her butt, her shoulders, rearranging her hands. Giving herself time.
“Just tell me the truth, Serenity. I’m not out to get Daisy. I like her. But you’re carrying on like she’s involved in something illegal.”
“She’s not breaking any laws! She’s just—” Serenity did a double take realizing she’d committed herself and Daisy. She pushed her hair back off her face where it had fallen in her flurry of distraction attempts. “You won’t use this against her?” It was more of a plea than a question.
“My job is to find Herman Ott. Ott was a friend of hers.” I hadn’t answered her question, but she chose to take it as the assurance she needed.
“Okay, here’s the thing. Daisy’s got one of those senses of humor with a zinger. When you’ve been had and you’re pissed, Daisy can always think of what to do. I mean, I’ve heard enough stories. I’ve never used her myself—No, really. I don’t mean I’m above a little recreational getting even, I’m just too busy now.”
“So how do you know—”
“Let me tell you about a friend of mine. Sara. She doesn’t even live in town anymore, so it’s not like I’m incriminating her or anything. But she was still here last year, and she needed a new hairdresser. You know what a pain that can be, calling everyone you know who looks halfway decent and getting recommendations and then weeding out the friends who are willing to spend more than you are and others whose hair would look shitty on you.”
Of course I knew; every woman knows.
“Finally Sara takes the recommendation of a friend who’d been to a wedding and asked the bride, ‘Who does the minister’s hair?’ So, Sara makes an appointment with a guy named Damon, who does the hair of the Episcopal minister who she’s never seen. She makes two appointments, one for a cut and one a week later for a color job, both at ten on Tuesday mornings. The first Tuesday she goes swimming and gets back at eight-thirty to find a message from Damon saying he’s real sorry but he’s at the dentist having an emergency root canal and has to cancel. Can she reschedule? So she calls the shop at ten and reschedules for two weeks later, same time.
“The next week, at nine, there’s another call from Damon. He’s sorry, but he lives in San Francisco and he’s had car trouble. This time she doesn’t reschedule. She’s pissed, but she’s not certain about him. After all, Tuesday is the Monday of a hairdresser’s week, and she can remember her first job out of college and calling in sick after a hard weekend or a good weekend that hadn’t quite ended. So she waits for the next Tuesday, hardly able to believe a guy in business would cancel a third time. But he does. He leaves a message saying he has to go to the hospital for medical tests. Now she’s torn; she’s sure the guy’s lying. Well, almost sure. But she can’t dismiss the thought: Suppose the guy really was sick, sick enough to go to the hospital for tests.…
“Well, you can see her dilemma. Is she heartless or just a patsy? She wants to call the salon and let loose, but suppose she is the reason a sick man is canned? He’d lose his job, his health coverage, any hope.…The guilt! She agonizes; meanwhile she’s got to find another hairdresser. Then, suddenly, she runs into a friend whose hairdresser used to work with Damon and says, ‘He’s famous for canceling appointments.’
Well, then she’s really furious, first for the inconvenience and doubly for the grief she’s wasted feeling sorry for the asshole.”
“So?”
“Calling him at the salon isn’t enough now. Neither is calling the manager.”
“So?”
“She gets on the horn to Daisy.” Serenity smiled. “It took Daisy about twenty seconds to come up with the right scheme. She told Sara she’d get three friends who had never been to that shop, have each one make an appointment with Damon for a cut and color, or a perm—things that take three hours and are a big part of the beautician’s income—and make them for the middle of Saturday afternoons, the busiest time of week. Then not show. Brilliant, huh? And the best part was that Sara got an appointment with someone else in the same shop the third Saturday so she could watch him wait and sputter and wonder why life was abusing him.”
I laughed. It was perfect. It fitted Daisy; it told me what Howard would have said if I’d shaken him awake last night. No wonder he had grinned at the mention of Daisy’s name. Like him, she was a pillar of the posse of pranksters, an amorphous group that never met but knew of one another and delighted in their stings. It made me like Daisy even more.
It also made me wonder just what perfect revenge she had concocted for an ex-husband too self-absorbed to warn her about the restaurant debacle.
Howard would never let a slap like that go unanswered. Maybe Daisy was a “better” person than Howard, but I doubted it. I tapped my finger on the workbench. “Serenity, the last time I saw you was on A Fair Deal. I have to say I would never have guessed the mediation would turn out so well.” For you.
“Yeah, Bryant was a genius, wasn’t he? I figured the best I’d get would be that asshole Cyril wouldn’t be able to storm-troop down the Avenue chasing off customers like a bad smell. I figured Bryant’d get him into the lottery for an Avenue space like the rest of us, and I’d have him preaching from a booth on the next block, which would still be one big pain in the ass.”
“But he’s banished to People’s Park, so far off the Avenue no one has to deal with him at all.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, the guy’s aim is not to save souls but to be in your face.”
“Serenity,” I said slowly, “you must have put up with a lot from him before you contacted A Fair Deal. In all that time did you find out where he stays in Berkeley?”
“No. Guy’s slippery. That was the infuriating thing; he could always pounce where I was, but I could never find him till he burst onto the Avenue. Best I can tell you is it’s not a church here.”
“How do you—”
“One of his boys laughed when I suggested it. He said, ‘Yeah, like I told the little man, he stays at Grace Cathedral.’ ”
“Which ‘little man’ did he tell?”
Serenity shrugged.
“Bryant?”
“No. The kid already admitted that Cyril ordered them not to talk to Bryant.”
“Herman Ott?”
“Look, I just don’t know.”
I nodded. It didn’t have to be Ott. Cyril was the type who would have a lot of guys after him. But it could easily have been Ott—the little man. If Ott had been looking for him and got that close…If he’d been hot on the trail, he would never have stopped to call me. If he had found the kid between the time he called me Sunday and when he saw me, of course he’d blow me off.
I pushed that possibility back for later consideration and returned to the issue of the mediation. “Brother Cyril didn’t argue with Bryant. Why not?”
“That’s Bryant for you. You saw him. The man was such a charmer. It was like you were the only person in his world. He hung on your every word. He never had that glazed look, you know, the I’m waiting to talk about myself look. It was like he gave his all to figure out what you really wanted and how he could help you get it. It was, like my niece says, awesome. I don’t think that’s happened to me more than once or twice in my whole life. I can see h
ow Bryant seduced Cyril.”
“How, yes. But why? He gave you an eighty-twenty deal. Why?”
“Because it was right,” she insisted. But she didn’t meet my gaze.
“And what else? Let’s talk practicality.”
“Got me. Whatever the reason, I’ll take it. Cyril’s gone half the time. He’s got ‘congregations’ in Monterey and in the valley, if you can believe that. But I guess they grow suckers like they do strawberries in Monterey and vegetables in the valley. I’m hoping that the next time he takes a trip he’ll forget to come back.”
I jotted a few lines in my notebook. When I looked up, Serenity Kaetz was holding a copper lily, eyeing where the etching should go. Now there was a certain serenity in her, a sense that she was mistress of what she created, that she had settled into the life niche she had mastered, the one that she loved. Once again she reminded me of Mrs. Bronfmann, her skin glowing rosy from her walk, the keeper of the lives in one building on the Grand Concourse, handing Uncle Jack a box of soda crackers, two cans of ginger ale, a package of onion soup mix he would savor but wouldn’t have asked for if he’d been without food for a fortnight.
Mrs. Bronfmann had been the epitome of Bronx domesticity. And then she’d run off with the exchange student. “About Bryant Hemming,” I said, “I know what you mean about that burning light of attention. But attention’s not forever. Sooner or later the light shines on someone else.”
Slowly Serenity shook her head. “No, it’s not light; it’s like helium. It pumps you up till you’re floating. Then suddenly he looses the cinch, and you sputter out of control. You make humiliating noises; you feel like you have no control over where you’re going. When you hit the ground, you’ve got nothing left.