I turned and faced her. I didn’t answer.
“Let me make a proposal,” she said. “Whatever we’ve learned so far today about Levette Asmore—and whatever we learn when we go in the building—is privileged information that stays between the two of us. It’s to be shared with no one else, not even Patrick Marion. Can we agree on that?”
“I hear you, Rhys.”
“But can we agree on it?”
“Sure. Sure, we can. Let’s agree on it.”
It was around four o’clock in the afternoon. Classes must’ve just let out, ending the day, because about a dozen young people suddenly came charging out of the building, most of them African-American women of college age or older. They were lugging books and knapsacks and talking in animated voices. Some headed for the bus stop, others for the pizza restaurant across the street; a few more sped off on bicycles. Every good-bye seemed to inspire more joyful noise, more grab-ass.
The last person to leave the building was an elderly white woman who came down the stairs sucking on a cigarette, sucking so hard that her face appeared to cave in on itself. She was wearing a loose-fitting polyester arrangement with her skirt hiked up near her chest, forming ripples along the beltline. Her stockings hung like flab at her knees, and a crocheted sweater rode her shoulders attached by a single pearl button at the neck. As she slowly made her way to the sidewalk she stopped to pick up gum wrappers and flattened potato chip bags. At the bottom of the stairs she dropped the trash in a can and stood gazing up at the building, the cigarette sticking straight out from her mouth. She cleaned off her hands by patting them together, then she made loose fists and propped them against her hips. Her eyes tracked from one window to the next, and her thin lips moved as she mumbled something I couldn’t make out for the distance. Finally she lowered her head and walked over to a car parked on the street in front of us.
Passing in front of the school, she braked and came to a stop and leaned across the seat and once again stared up at the building. Maybe she was checking for damaged flashing where the gutters hung from the roof, or for broken windowpanes, of which there were plenty. Or maybe she was looking at all the pigeons roosting in the eaves, or for roof tiles that had blown away in a recent storm. But her expression suggested something else. It was only a building, and a dilapidated one at that; and yet she looked at it with expectation and longing, as though, in a window upstairs, she hoped to find the face of someone she loved.
“Tell me what you think about when you imagine Levette’s mural,” Rhys said.
“How’s that?”
“Do you think about what Patrick said to Elsa at his dinner party, that he was going to be rich? Do you want the painting to make you a lot of money?”
“Money?” And I laughed. “Slow down there, Rhys. Since when did it become mine to sell? Why would you ask me such a question?”
“What if I told you that in some instances a painting on canvas, one that’s been whitewashed, can be restored to its original condition? What would you say to that?”
“I’d say, ‘How nice.’ Or maybe I’d say, ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ But I don’t think I’d get too worked up about it, if that’s what you want to know.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “I think your response would be quite different. I think you’d try to convince me to help you remove the mural from this building. Are you going to propose that, Jack? That the two of us, having discovered it, work out a deal together to save it and place it with a wealthy collector for a king’s ransom?”
“First of all, Rhys, I’m not a thief. And, second, aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself? I really just want to see the thing, if it’s even there. In all likelihood it was removed some time after the authorities forced Levette to paint over it, perhaps during a renovation. Have you considered that? Or that some enterprising collector or dealer came around before we did and got his hands on it? So many things could’ve happened. It’s incredible to believe we’re the only people who know about it.”
“I think we are the only ones,” she said. “Those newspaper stories said the mural was destroyed, and to most people whitewashing an existing painting amounts to destruction. But I’m a restorer. I encounter paint on paint every day, and I remove one layer to get to the next, and it isn’t easy but in many cases it can be done. Remember what the newspaper story said? It said the artist himself whitewashed the painting. Now what does that tell you? I know what it tells me.”
“It tells me he must’ve been one strong, stout-hearted sonofabitch, to cover up what he’d probably spent months working on.”
“Yes, it does say that. But it also says he was a smart man, and a clever man, and maybe even a conniving man. The painting was still new, and so the oils Levette used hadn’t had time to oxidize yet. In other words, the mural’s surface was still wet—the paint was wet. He had to know he couldn’t cover the painting with an oil-based wash because that would’ve made for an irreversible situation. The oils used to paint the picture would’ve cross-linked with the oils used to cover it, essentially making their chemical composition one and the same. You also have to remember that Levette wouldn’t have had time yet to coat the painting with varnish. As a rule you don’t varnish over oil paint for at least nine months after application. So while varnish might’ve offered some protection to the surface from a whitewashing, Levette wouldn’t have been able to go that route.”
“Rhys, you’ve lost me.”
“Okay, let me go at it from a different direction.” She sat up in her seat, raised a finger to her face and pulled at her lip. “What artist in his right mind would volunteer to destroy a painting that he’d just created? None would. But an artist, faced with a mob bent on seeing him punished and ridiculed, might’ve thought of a way to save his painting even while giving the appearance of destroying it.” She was smiling now. “Rather than allow others to round up buckets of oil paint to cover up his painting, and to effectively eliminate any chance of saving it in the future, the artist himself finds a material that doesn’t pose a threat to his painting. He uses something that, quite the contrary, works to preserve the painting. He covers it with a material like distemper or casein paint so that it can be restored.”
“Casein and what is the other one?”
“Distemper. Casein and distemper. They’re types of paint, and they’re both water-soluble, which means they wouldn’t cross-link with the oils he used to make the picture. Either one would’ve given the mural a kind of barrier or skin that’s dissolvable and could be removed later without much trouble.”
“You think Asmore did that?”
“I do. And I intend to prove to you that he did it.”
“Prove to me?” I said. “Why prove it to me?”
She leaned forward against the steering wheel and stared up at the building. When she’d seen enough she looked back at me and held my eyes with hers. “I want to trust you,” she said. “I do. I’m not going to pick up the newspaper tomorrow morning and read about the discovery of a lost masterpiece, am I?” She reached over and gave my leg a poke. “Jack?”
“What?”
“Will I read about the mural in the paper tomorrow?”
“If you do, I won’t have been the source and I certainly won’t have been the writer. Rhys, I have to tell you, you’re starting to make me nervous.”
“It’s not about what they’re worth,” she said, lowering her voice so that I had to strain to hear. “It’s about what they are. Will you promise never to forget that, Jack?”
I didn’t promise, I didn’t say anything. I was only starting to get to know Rhys Goudeau, but already I believed she was too intense for her own good. To begin, she could not distinguish between what she did for a living and what she valued most in life.
“You think whoever owns this place now—this Wheeler guy—even knows the painting’s there?” I said. “Or that it once was there?”
“Only one way to find out,” Rhys said, then shouldered her door ope
n and stepped out on the sidewalk.
We’d timed it just right, without even meaning to. When we entered the building everyone but the janitor had gone for the day.
The doors opened into a small reception area that in turn led to a hallway that spilled into a much larger room holding rows of beautician’s chairs, each of them covered in pink vinyl lined with black piping and standing on chrome pedestals. The janitor was cleaning the floor with a rag mop, and though he trained his eyes in our direction he didn’t stop working to greet us. Instead he placed a warning cone next to his bucket cautioning to step carefully. Though stooped over, he was still half a foot taller than I was, and nearly twice my weight. Music poured from the headphones of his portable CD player, the tinny whisper of which I could make out from across the room.
“Hello, there,” Rhys said, as though he were a stray tabby that had crossed our path. But clearly the man was busy: busy mopping, busy listening, busy avoiding having to acknowledge us.
Photo composites showing former students crowded the walls, each arranged with individual head shots fitted into identical ovals. The same four teachers stared out from the top row of most of the groupings, as did the woman we’d seen outside earlier. Her oval and one other were twice as large as everyone else’s. The name under her picture said Gail Wheeler. The name under the other photo said Jerome Wheeler. It showed an unhandsome man with eyes that peered out in different directions, one looking left, the other right. Thirty years ago student enrollment had run about a hundred, but the numbers began to decline sharply beginning a decade ago. Last year, if the composite accurately represented the student population, there were only fourteen people enrolled in the school. The faculty also went from four to two instructors, and Jerome Wheeler’s photograph wasn’t included in the most recent collection of photos.
“Think they divorced?” I said to Rhys.
“I don’t know what to think,” she answered. “Maybe he died.”
The room also came equipped with antiquated vending machines for candy, cigarettes and soft drinks. Yellowing posters from another era said, “Learn to gratify a multicultural clientele” and “Don’t hesitate, dear, for an exciting career awaits.” But there was no evidence of Asmore’s mural, nothing high on the walls to indicate that a canvas lay hidden under coats of paint. The room had probably served the post office as a foyer, while my guess placed the lobby in the large open space with the beautician’s chairs.
Rhys sidled up to the janitor, bravely depositing footprints on the freshly cleaned floor. She pulled at imaginary headphones. “May we have a minute of your time, sir? May we have… sir, may we have a minute?”
The man continued mopping, making bigger circles than before.
“Okay, then,” Rhys said, “what about half a minute? Is half a minute too long? How about fifteen seconds? Would you allow us ten seconds?”
He tugged at his headset and let it drop to his neck, and I could hear the music better: seventies R&B.
“Hi, there,” Rhys said, flashing a smile. “We were hoping to have a look around in that room there.” She pointed to it. “Would you mind?”
He might’ve been fifty years old, but his body was cut with slabs of muscle that padded his gray, work-stained coveralls. His head was shaved and scars stood out on his shiny, copper-colored scalp. He glanced back over his shoulder and acted as if he’d only now noticed the room with the beautician’s chairs. His mouth formed a circle, as if to say “Oh.” “I take it you talked to Mrs. Sanchez,” he said.
“Mrs. Sanchez? Yes, well, we have talked to Mrs. Sanchez, as a matter of fact. And she said it was fine with her. Would you mind?”
That was all it took to get him to move out of the way: permission from Mrs. Sanchez and far more obsequiousness than I thought Rhys Goudeau capable of. “Watch your step,” the janitor said. “Those tiles tend to get slippery.” As we were moving past him he said, “Mrs. Sanchez in Admissions, right?”
“Right,” Rhys said.
The man dunked his mop back in the bucket, intentionally splashing water on the floor; I had to step quickly to avoid getting my shoes wet. “There is no Mrs. Sanchez in Admissions,” he said. “There was a Mr. Sanchez who taught hair weave, but he was only part-time and hasn’t been around here in ten, twelve years.” He was gripping the wooden mop handle with both fists, holding it close to his waist. “State your business,” he said, with nostrils flaring. “You two from Baton Rouge?”
“Baton Rouge?” Rhys said.
“I can spot you people a mile away.”
“What people?”
“You know what people.” He paused, wiped the sweat off his face. “You’re inspectors with the government, aren’t you?”
“Inspectors?” Rhys said. “Why would you say we’re inspectors?”
“And why would you want to torment Miss Wheeler?” he shot back. “You oughta be ashamed. You really should.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “We’ve never even met Miss Wheeler. How can you torment somebody you don’t know?”
He started mopping again. He erased our prints and reached to where we were standing. It was my impression that he would’ve erased both Rhys and me had he been able to extend his mop that far.
“We’re not them,” Rhys said. “I swear to God we’re not them.”
“You look like them.”
“Listen to me,” she said. “We heard this building was once a post office and we came today because we’re curious to learn more about it. That’s all. We’re amateur historians who appreciate fine old architecture. We were doing research and we read about the building in some newspaper clippings in a museum archive. The truth is, we came to snoop around. We’re snoops, all right? I’m not ashamed to say it.”
He was looking at her the same way I was. It was a look that communicated as much bewilderment as amusement.
She stepped up closer to him, leaving more tracks. “We’re no more the government than you are,” she said. “And I think you know that. Why would inspectors be coming around here, anyway?”
“That ain’t my place to say.”
“Do you have a name?”
“I never met ‘em.”
“I meant your name.”
“Cherry,” he said. “Rondell Cherry.” He put the headphones back on. “Go see what you want, just keep me out of it.”
We walked past him and entered the room with all the chairs and slowly made our way to the center. The only light came from a couple of fluorescent panels high up on the ceiling. Although it was dark in the room it didn’t take long to locate the mural. It was right where it should have been. That is to say, it was directly in front of us, some ten feet off the ground, and up above a run of mirrors and sinks for washing hair. The canvas, though covered with paint, was a different texture than the wood paneling and drywall that built out the rest of the room.
I glanced over at Rhys. I might’ve anticipated the tears, but not the intensity of her crying jag. The woman wept. She wept just as those young women probably had wept sixty years before at the House of Bultman when Levette Asmore’s empty coffin was laid out with a single magnolia flower on the lid.
“You want a Kleenex or a handkerchief or something?” I said.
She shook her head.
The paint covering the mural—corn yellow streaked with dirt and water stains—also covered the rest of the room. The painting itself, from what I could see of the outline, was about the size of a small outdoor billboard. The corners were curling and in other areas bubbles were lifting on the surface. A couple of air-conditioning vents had been cut into the canvas and one of the vents had leaked. You could also see seams running between each of the four panels.
“He used some kind of glue, probably wallpaper paste, and tacks,” Rhys said. “See the tacks running along the edge? They just painted right over them, too.”
“It’s really there, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” she said.
I supposed you c
ould look at any wall with nothing on it and see the same thing, but the space possessed a power that was unexpected. The power came from imagining the image that resided beneath the grime and paint, the one Asmore had put there.
Wholly unprepared for any voice but Rhys’s, I jumped when one sounded a few feet behind us. “That used to be a picture,” Rondell Cherry said.
“What was a picture?” Rhys said, making sure to keep her back to him. I had to give it to her: she was good, she could turn it off as quickly as she turned it on.
“That place up there on the wall,” Cherry said.
“No kidding?” And still not even a sniffle.
“The beauty school’s been here thirty-one years, that’s since 1970, and before that they had an insurance agency here. The insurance people bought it after the old post office moved and the government sold the building, and they were the ones that redid all the insides like you see here. They had all their desks in this room. It was one of the insurance people who told the Wheelers about the painting.”
“My name is Rhys Goudeau,” Rhys said, offering him a hand to shake. “And this is my friend Jack Charbonnet.”
He nodded at us both.
“You been working here long, Mr. Cherry?”
“I started in ’87. I’ll make fifteen years next January.”
“You really think there’s a picture under there?” Rhys said. “When did Mrs. Wheeler tell you that?”
“Oh, whenever it came to her, I guess, a long time ago. I never knew her to lie. On top of that, we had some new air ducts put in and the electrician had to cut bigger vents. He made his cuts and I took out my pocketknife and scraped off the paint that covered the piece of board and cloth and whatnot and you could see it was something under there. Just too bad it’s all ruined.”
“What sort of person is Mrs. Wheeler?”
“What sort of person?”
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