Tips for Living

by Shafransky, Renee

“You killed them, didn’t you? In cold blood,” I rasped, the fear stealing my voice. “You murdered Hugh and Helene.”

  Abbas frowned. “And why would I kill them, Nora? Why would I kill my good friend and his wife? A man I adored and represented for years. He was like my own child. There’s no reason in the world.”

  “Because Hugh was going to leave you. You knew he was leaving. And that meant you’d be ruined.”

  Abbas flapped his hand dismissively. “Who told you this nonsense?”

  “You drove out here and shot them in bed. You posed them and stabbed the painting. You’re trying to blame me for it. All the evidence is in the book,” I said, glancing at the utility table.

  No! Why did you tell him about the book?

  “What book?”

  He followed where my gaze had led him. He saw the ninjas.

  “That book?” He took another step forward.

  “I said stop!”

  I jabbed the air with the knife and tried to look menacing. What to do? I had at least thirty years on Abbas. Could I grab the book, do an end run around him and make it out the door? Almost before I finished the thought, his hand went into his coat pocket and emerged with a small, silver gun. He aimed it at my chest.

  “Drop the knife and move over there,” he said, waving me away from the table toward the shelves.

  I thought my heart would pop; it was beating so hard. Obeying, I backed up. I heard the beautiful Japanese screen crack as Abbas walked across it to get at the ninja book.

  “You are a real problem, Nora,” he said, keeping the silver muzzle pointed and steady as he perused the pages of the sketchbook.

  I looked around frantically, my heartbeat thrashing in my ears. I can’t die here, I thought. Not here on the floor of Hugh’s studio, lorded over by his goat erection. Incredibly, that’s the first thing that came into my mind. Next—advice from some random crime-show psychologist. Best chance to stay alive. Make eye contact. Show empathy. He has to see a human being.

  “What happened, Abbas? What went wrong between you two?”

  Abbas looked up. I made contact with orbs hard as marble.

  “Damien Hirst.”

  “What does Damien Hirst have to do with it?” I asked, confused.

  The artist Damien Hirst had rocked the art world decades ago by placing a rotting cow’s head in a large container made of glass and steel. Along with the head came maggots that turned into flies, which fried in a nearby fly zapper. Later on, he displayed a bisected shark under glass. His bold and edgy work shocked, and it made him about as rich and famous as an artist could get.

  Abbas gestured with his free hand at the display of paintings in the studio.

  “We planned a big show for Hugh at the gallery next spring. A show to run six months and change each month—old work, new work, work-in-progress. A big idea. No one has done this before for a gallery retrospective. We would announce to the press at the Art Basel market in December.”

  Abbas stepped away from the utility table. Closer to me. I leaned back instinctively.

  “But last Saturday morning, Hugh brings Callie to her aunt in the city for the weekend. I think he does this because he is fighting with Helene—they need time alone out here. He comes to the gallery after. ‘Abbas, I’ve been thinking,’ he says. ‘Remember how Damien Hirst let Sotheby’s auction his work in ’08? He didn’t use his dealer.’ He tells me Sotheby’s gave Hirst a show much bigger than the one I offer. That they brought in collectors from all over the world, and Hirst sold over two hundred million. ‘He broke Picasso’s sales record. It worked for Hirst—the free-agent thing.’ Hugh says he wants to do what Hirst did. ‘I’m thinking I’d like to go solo, Abbas.’ Those were his words. ‘I’m thinking I’d like to go solo.’”

  Abbas stepped back, still aiming his gun at me. My heart thundered while he examined the book again in silence. Then he suddenly snapped his fingers. I flinched.

  “Just like this,” he said. “I am one of Hirst’s dead flies.”

  I blinked, absorbing this. “After all you’d done for him, he dropped you,” I said. “What a bastard he was.”

  Abbas didn’t seem to have heard me; he’d reached the final drawing. I flinched again as he let out a loud, guttural sound and swept the book to the floor.

  “This is how he would paint me?” he snarled. “Like a weak, submissive animal at his feet? And he calls it Abbas Knowing?”

  He spat on the book. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted.

  “Abbas knows this: when no one wanted Hugh Walker, I gave him a show at my gallery. When he didn’t have money, I paid his rent. When he was lonely, I took him into my home to sit with friends at my table. I believed in him. I made his career. And he dismisses me like I am a boy who does yard work.” Abbas paused and began rubbing his right temple again.

  I tried to stay focused on connecting with him, but my head was swimming.

  “He betrayed you. I know how that feels.”

  “You don’t know betrayal.” He let out a quick, disgusted snort.

  “When a man acts like a man, when he wants to taste other flavors, a woman calls it betrayal.”

  This tack wasn’t working with him. I had to stay cool and think. Think what to do. But it was impossible with Abbas glowering at me.

  “During the war in Beirut, men had to betray to stay alive. Betrayal meant food. It meant water. It meant wood and oil for heat in the winter. The difference between being able to buy medicine on the black market and dying of dysentery.” He kept kneading the flesh over his eye. “You became an artist of betrayal. You betrayed the ones who trusted you, and they never suspected. Your friends. Your neighbors. Your dog.”

  His dog?

  “Did you ever taste dog?”

  Cringing, I shook my head. All these years and I’d never imagined he was capable of such things. I had to get away from him. How?

  “After I arrived in this country, I worked hard to forget the ways of war. I became human again. I behaved with honor and loyalty. But if it means survival, I use the old methods.”

  Grimacing, he mashed the heel of his palm into his brow as I scanned the room. No other exit. Had he developed a brain tumor? Was that how he got so crazy? Or maybe he was about to have a stroke or an aneurysm? My only hope was to stall, then use the element of surprise and run.

  “Did you talk to Hugh? Did you at least try to convince him to stay?”

  Abbas snorted. “I am not a beggar. I only asked him for time. Until I worked out my strategy for damage control. Not to go to Sotheby’s, not to talk to anyone until I spoke with my publicist. ‘You owe me this at least,’ I told him. ‘Let me keep the respect I deserve.’”

  “But you had another plan, didn’t you?”

  Abbas’s eyes had begun to water. They narrowed into slits and his face contorted. His mouth opened wide. He looked like one of Francis Bacon’s screaming popes as he started a bout of uncontrollable sneezing.

  “Hachooo! Hachoo! Hachooo! Hachoo!”

  Now! This is your chance. Do it! Charge him and run.

  The fit ended abruptly. It was too late. Abbas grabbed a rag off the utility table.

  “Yes, I had a plan.”

  He sniffed the rag and his eyes grew small again. He was probably reacting to the chemical fumes. The rag must reek of them. Hugh’s dirty rags were releasing toxic chemicals, and Abbas was overly sensitive to them. He sneezed violently and threw the rag down. My pulse raced.

  Toxic chemicals from the cans on the shelf.

  “You weren’t going to talk to the publicist, were you?” I said. Slowly, carefully, I angled my body so I could move my right arm behind me unnoticed while Abbas wiped his eyes. “You were buying time.”

  Buy time.

  “You drove out here that Saturday night,” I continued, blindly exploring the shelf with my trembling hand.

  Don’t knock anything over.

  “You came here to the house unannounced and told Hugh you were very upset, you ne
eded to talk, right? You knew he’d let you in. Very smart, Abbas.”

  “I gave him one more chance. Only one. No pleading.”

  “And when he answered?”

  Abbas sniffed and used the gun in his hand to jab at an imaginary Hugh. “I made him go back to bed.”

  “Did you make them pose before you . . .” I shuddered. “And then you slashed the painting to make certain the police would think about me. Oh God.”

  “I thought they would arrest you sooner,” he said, scowling. His eyes were beginning to swell. “What will I do with you now?”

  All his phony concern. I’d been nothing but a “thing” for him to use in his scheme.

  I saw him glaze over and focus inward for a few seconds. I could almost hear him calculating. Then he began rubbing his eyes again with his coat sleeve. I took a small step to my left and continued frantically searching until my fingers found a tall, round can. Bless Hugh’s messy work habits: the cap was off. Abbas finally brought his arm down and looked at me again. Red light.

  “Walk over there, back toward the door. Away from the art,” he ordered.

  If I obeyed, I’d lose my only chance to get out alive. I stayed put, terrified.

  “What are you going to do? You can’t get away with another murder,” I said.

  “No?”

  Think. Think.

  I challenged him, desperate. “How will you explain killing me?”

  He paused again, the plan still forming in his mind.

  “We spoke in the parking lot at the funeral. You knew I would be coming here. You followed, uninvited, and offered to sell me a notebook you stole from Hugh.” He nodded toward the Princess Leia sketchbook on the worktable at the center of the studio.

  “I refused. I said I would report you.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “You got very, very angry, Nora. You went mad, dear girl. You admitted you killed Hugh and Helene and shouted that you’d kill me, too. Then you pulled out a knife and attacked me.” He brandished the gun. “I had to defend myself.”

  Think. Think. Think!

  “Now move,” he ordered, waving the gun.

  “But you used that gun to shoot Hugh and Helene,” I said, firming up my grip on the can. “They’ll match the bullets.”

  Abbas smiled.

  “That gun is at the bottom of the Hudson. This one is legal, and it’s not a .22.”

  He stooped to pick up the ninja book.

  “I must thank you for finding this,” he said. “Now I can burn it.”

  I seemed to stop breathing. Blood thundered in my ears. Everything was slowing down except my racing thoughts: if I tried to run, he would shoot me; if I didn’t run, he would shoot me. I had nothing to lose. Make your move.

  I bent over, dropped into linebacker stance and rammed my head into Abbas’s belly, knocking the wind out of him. The gun fired above me with a deafening crack as a sharp, burned smell hit my nostrils. I raised my hand high and pressed the nozzle on the can of Blair’s spray varnish, aiming at his eyes. Abbas howled. I pressed again. He screamed and fired a second time, shattering glass somewhere in the studio before the gun clattered to the floor. Abbas dropped the book next and tore at his eyes, shrieking.

  “I will kill you, you fucking bitch!”

  I sprayed one more time.

  “Fuck!” he screamed. “Fuck!”

  Tossing the can and snatching the ninjas off the floor, I scrambled to my feet and ran like the wind.

  Bursting out of the studio into the cold twilight, I blasted through the driving snow, shin-deep in snowdrifts. My coat flew open. Freezing air bit my face and lungs as my arms and legs kept pumping. I looked over my shoulder and saw Abbas’s dark shape emerging from the studio.

  The ninja book dripped with melting snow. I shoved it inside the waistband of my jeans to protect it and realized, shit . . . Princess Leia was still on Hugh’s worktable. There was nothing I could do about that. It was too late to backtrack.

  I struggled to close the buttons on Grace’s coat as I labored on, breathing heavily. The sky was darkening and I had to find the hunting trail while I could still see where I was going. Stay low. Keep moving. Stick close to the snowbound seagrass so Abbas can’t see you. The ground near the inlet had turned slushy and was slowing me down. My pants were soaked up to my knees, my toes ice. Was I close to the blind? I looked around pointlessly—the flying snow obscured everything. I could barely make out what was right in front of me. Had I already passed it? Suddenly my foot met with something hard and my big toe exploded in pain.

  “Fuck!”

  I went flying. I landed on my right shoulder at the edge of the inlet. The icy water began seeping through Grace’s coat almost instantly. Rolling onto my back to save the ninja book, I felt a pain in my foot so sharp I knew I’d be hobbled and unable to run. But I couldn’t stay there; I had to keep going. I managed to turn over onto my hands and knees and try to stand. A loud pop sounded as the bullet whizzed by my head and sent me diving face-first into the icy mud. Another pop. And another. I curled into a fetal position and clasped my hands over my ears.

  “I know you’re in there,” Abbas yelled.

  I couldn’t stay where I was. I rolled back onto my belly and crawled commando-style behind a large clump of snowbound grass. Through a small gap in the reeds, I could see him lurching through the snow a few yards away. There were no more moves to make except into the water behind me. I might not be able to walk, but I could swim. I could shed the coat, swim underwater, and pray that I didn’t freeze to death before Abbas ran out of bullets.

  The Polar Bear Club jumps in every winter. They survive. You can do it, kiddo.

  Daddy? Is that you?

  I began to inch backward on my elbows through the mud, but I hesitated. The ninja book. The ninja book would be ruined. Even if I survived the freezing water and bullets, without those sketches, I couldn’t prove Abbas’s motive to kill. Instead, he could tell a story that would get me convicted. Especially since he still had the other sketchbook. He’d claim I stole it from Hugh and tried to sell it to him.

  Kiddo, the water has got better odds than a bullet. You gotta bet the odds. Go.

  I started inching backward again, grunting with the effort. But my hesitation had cost me.

  “Give me the book,” Abbas commanded.

  I raised my head. Abbas stood over me. His right eye had closed, and it was the size of a golf ball, the skin burned red from chemicals. His mouth twisted into an ugly grimace. He was aiming the gun at the center of my forehead. Black spots swam in front of my eyes as I started gasping for air.

  “Take it out slowly and hand it to me,” he commanded.

  I managed to get hold of the book inside my coat and pull it out shakily, but I kept it close to my breast. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the only thing between oblivion and me.

  “I swear I won’t tell anyone you killed Hugh and Helene. Let me go,” I begged breathlessly.

  “Sorry, dear girl. It will be quick. You will not suffer.”

  It happened so fast. He was reaching for the book when I heard a whistling sound, followed quickly by a thud. The gun plopped into the mud. Abbas let out a deep grunt. Amazed, I stared at the steel arrow sticking out of his right shoulder. Bright red blood oozed from the wound through his wool coat. He staggered sideways, lowing like a cow giving birth, and then fell over. He writhed on the ground, clutching his arm, his horrid, bulbous eye aimed at me.

  I finally let out a scream.

  A man in khaki camouflage came running through the curtain of white holding a crossbow in one hand. I saw the alarm on his face as he rushed over and bent down at my side. His breath steamed warm mist at my cheek.

  “Lady, are you all right?”

  I couldn’t speak, only gasp and nod. With eyes wide, I stared at Abbas as he whimpered and bled all over the snow.

  “I had to do it,” the hunter said in a panicky voice. “I heard what he said. He was going to kill you.”

  He p
ulled off his belt, hurried over to Abbas and began tying a tourniquet around the bleeding arm. As I watched him work, I came back to myself. I could feel the throbbing pain in my foot again, the burning sting of icy water on my legs and arms. I also felt an enormous surge of gratitude toward this stranger. If he hadn’t acted so quickly, I’d be dead. Or if I’d survived the gunshot to my head, I’d possess the mental capacity of a parsnip.

  “What’s your name?” I rasped.

  He glanced over.

  “Jake.”

  He’d finished with the tourniquet and was packing snow on the wound.

  My throat was thick. “I’m Nora,” I said, trying to get up. I saw the gun lying in front of me, steaming in the muck. Overwhelmed, I collapsed again. “Thank you, Jake,” I said. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  Abbas moaned as Jake finished tending to him and returned to my side.

  “You’re freezing.” He helped me sit up and peel off Grace’s coat, which was sodden and heavy with brackish water. My lower legs and feet were soaked. He stripped off his camouflage jacket. “Here, put this on,” he urged. Shaking, I managed to slip into the dry jacket and stick the ninja notebook back in my waistband. Jake removed a phone from his pants pocket.

  “I’ll call 911 and stay with him until the ambulance gets here. You need to get warm. Think you can make it to the duck blind over there?”

  “Where?”

  I peered in the direction he indicated. I was completely snow-blind.

  “Hold on,” he said. “This will help.”

  Jake unzipped a compartment at the back of the hunting jacket and removed an emergency flare. He struck a match, lit the fuse and planted it in the ground. A fountain of orange sparks spouted into the air. I could finally make out the dark, rectangular shape of the duck blind less than a dozen yards away, barely visible in the waning light. Limping through peach-colored snow, shivering and growing numb with cold, I was suddenly overwhelmingly tired.

  Wailing sirens, men’s shouts and crackling radios clashed in the distance. I opened my eyes, completely dazed and confused. Why was I lying in the corner of the duck blind, curled in a ball, trembling all over, and hugging myself for warmth? How did I get there? What was going on? Hypothermia was muddling my brain. It felt like I was underwater. Ice-cold water. My body was sinking, incredibly heavy, while at the same time my thoughts were slowly rising to the surface. I remembered waiting in the snowy woods outside Pequod Point, watching Tobias in the kitchen . . .