Still Lives

by Maria Hummel

  I also envy Dee because everyone loves Dee. With her biceps, her smooth British accent, and her boyish look, she epitomizes white cool, like the guys on punk album covers from the seventies. She navigates both the office and the crew world with equal ease. When Brent learned of the onset of Dee’s diabetes last year, he bargained for her to get fulltime status and health insurance so she could stay on at the Rocque.

  “Because you’re so talented,” I told her.

  She snorted. “Because I keep my mouth shut.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Ha-ha. I told you. I keep my mouth shut.”

  An addiction? An affair? I thought booze or drugs. Yegina thought affair, maybe the woman on the crew who quit.

  Why was Dee missing last Wednesday and Thursday? Sickness seems like a feeble excuse. And she seems fine today.

  There’s a grinding sound as her saw sticks, and I see something stir in a chamber at the far end of the carpentry tables. Brent’s office. It’s the only office down here with a door, and while the crew was hanging the exhibition, he’d offered it to Kim Lord as her changing room so that she could doff her disguises for jeans and a T-shirt. She must not have changed on Wednesday, because she was wearing her trench coat and wig when I saw her hurrying toward Pershing Square. She must have been waylaid almost immediately after she arrived at the Rocque. A phone call on her cell? An encounter here? Perhaps she saw her stalker outside the museum?

  Through the open crack, I spot Brent, frowning over a pile of papers. I wonder how long he’ll stay at the Rocque, if he’ll leave on his own or be ousted for his hostility, maybe even for harassment. He doesn’t belong among us almost-somethings and has-beens anyway. Brent’s heyday on Broadway—the 1990s—brought the world Rent, Chicago, Angels in America, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He specialized in epic urban decay, Gotham crossed with Rome. His office has the air of a shrine, hung with black-and-white pictures of industrial sites—steel girders, half-finished roofs, crumbling bridge pilings. Track lights cast a moonglow over the man himself, now scribbling furiously, his dark head bent. He looks like a child caught in a feverish make-believe. When he glances up, directly at me, I swear I am completely invisible to him. His expression is still inward, transfixed.

  Dee switches off the saw and yanks the board free.

  “Need something else?” Dee asks, holding up the board. I catch sight of the clock above her head. It’s 9:31. Almost time for the press conference.

  I tell her no, and hurry away.

  Out in the loading dock, the massive door to the permanent collection is up, revealing the museum’s hidden trove, packed with leaning frames, canvases mounted on rollers, and plastic-covered sculptures crouching on shelves and standing free. It looks half like a labyrinth and half like a really expensive rummage sale. I spot our chief curator inside talking to someone obscured by a tall, bubble-wrapped Giacometti. Would Lynne know anything about the cloth behind the figure in “Disappearances”?

  As I hesitate beyond the threshold, hidden from view, I hear Lynne say, in a voice raspy with emotion, “I want you to understand something: I didn’t want this exhibition any more than Janis did. Sure, Kim was Nelson de Wilde’s shiny penny back in the early nineties, but I thought she was highly overrated. Until I saw these paintings. And then—”

  The saw from the carpentry room drowns out Lynne’s next words, giving my confusion a chance to register. Janis Rocque didn’t want Kim Lord on the exhibition schedule either? Then who did? Bas, obviously. A director can throw his weight around to make a show happen. But why this one?

  I creep closer to the collection, keeping concealed behind a shrouded sculpture the size of a horse. A male voice is saying, “… In search of the miraculous. I’ll have to look it up.” The voice sounds familiar, the way it softens and lengthens the I, but I can’t place it. An artist, probably. Lynne hates being interrupted when she’s with artists—it’s like bursting in on a high mass for a nun—so I’m turning to retreat when from behind the bubble-wrapped Giacometti steps J. Ro’s private investigator. He’s in jeans and a hoodie today, making him look younger. He doesn’t say anything, just chews his lip a little, as if he is equally startled to see me.

  “I was just walking by,” I say.

  “Who’s that?” says Lynne, appearing behind him. She glances at me without interest, but I’m surprised by the change in her appearance. Her hair and suit are black and sleek as ever, but her collar bunches; she looks damp and unwell.

  “Do you know Detective Hendricks?” Lynne asks, and then turns to him again. “Someone made a documentary about Ader in the nineties, but it glosses over some things. You really need to read the catalog.”

  I regard them blankly, trying to slow my speeding pulse. I don’t like the way this Hendricks person has been watching me since the night of the Gala. He’s studying me now, so I study him back, but it’s as if he has one of those nictitating eyelids that hawks have—an almost imperceptible veil slides over his blue eyes, and I can’t see past it.

  They’ve both fallen silent.

  “Ader?” I say.

  “Bas Jan Ader,” Lynne tells me impatiently, and then I remember: Dutch conceptual artist, used to film himself falling off things. In his last project, he set sail from Cape Cod, intending to cross the Atlantic. His empty boat washed ashore a year later.

  “He disappeared, too,” I say.

  “Exactly.” Lynne’s face tightens as if she has just stepped close to a fire. “After he vanished, everyone thought he meant to die. But he didn’t. He was making new work, he was devoted to it—” She cuts herself off and turns away, almost stumbling into a large Mondrian canvas. “Excuse me,” she mutters, and moves down a row of canvases hanging one after another on a large rack, the way they hang rugs in department stores.

  I’ve only once witnessed Lynne at a loss to articulate her feelings, and it was at an opening for a photographer documenting white supremacist gatherings. Lynne’s mother was a Bergen-Belsen survivor. Now Lynne wanders farther off, into rows of shelves holding smaller sculptures—she is a vanishing silk jacket and trousers, bound black hair. A waver in her walk, as if it hurts to step. She must have changed her mind about Kim Lord. What’s more, she seems terrified for her.

  “Journalists won’t leave her alone,” Detective Hendricks says. The drop in his voice suggests he dislikes the breed.

  “Are you helping the police?” I ask. “Because Greg wouldn’t have hurt Kim Lord.”

  The detective says nothing, but I feel his eyes on me.

  “And I wouldn’t have either,” I say, “so you can stop wasting your time spying on us and start looking for someone else.”

  “You have a someone else in mind?” he says.

  “No,” I say quickly.

  “I’m still free to talk,” he adds as Lynne rejoins us, folding her arms. She is paler than usual, but her eyes are hard and clear again.

  “How about tomorrow morning?” I say, realizing the time. “We have a press conference—”

  “Surely you can spare a few minutes,” hisses Lynne, but Detective Hendricks holds up his hand.

  “Tomorrow morning is fine.” The long i again. Southern? “But let me give you my phone number, in case that changes.” The detective hands me a card that is blank except for his name, RAY HENDRICKS, and the digits, in a glossy typeface.

  I tuck it in my pocket and then blurt my question to Lynne. “Do you know anything about the cloth behind the figure in ‘Disappearances’?”

  Lynne frowns. “The cloth? What about it?” Her question drips with distrust.

  Predictable heat floods my cheeks. “It looks like it was painted in a rush.”

  “It probably was,” says Lynne. “She told me she wasn’t finished.” She turns to Hendricks. “She wanted to finish it.” Her voice cracks. “She was not suicidal.”

  “No,” says Hendricks. “I don’t think so either.” He looks at me again, with sober eyes. “At least not in the conventional sense.”


  “Excuse me?” says Lynne.

  He turns to her.

  “Maybe she didn’t run away,” he says, “even though she knew someone wanted her dead.” He shrugs and reaches out with his palm open, toward a massive all-black canvas propped beside Lynne, as if he sees something hidden inside it. “Or maybe she did.”

  “I’m sorry, but you can’t touch that,” snaps Lynne. “It’s a Stella.”

  Hendricks takes a step back, still absorbed in the painting.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he says in a gentle, respectful tone. “It looks ugly enough as it is.”

  I leave them before I can fully hide the smirk on my face.

  15

  Within the next hour, I lie three times.

  First I lie to Jayme, who wants to know what behind-the-scenes stories I’ve gathered for the museum’s annual report.

  “I’ve done a few interviews,” I fib. “I already finished the write-up of Evie’s.”

  Then I lie to Kaye, who calls with a twang of payback in her voice for my drunken behavior at her post-cancer party. She can’t believe they’ve arrested Shaw and wants to know how I’m holding up, it’s so crazy, is there really a killer on the loose, and oh my God, she can’t even get tickets to the exhibition for three whole weeks, do I think there’s a way I can just sneak her and a couple of her survivor friends in today?

  “I wish,” I say, and fumble through an excuse about the fire marshal counting the people in the galleries. “Next week?”

  Then I lie to the ArtNoise fact checker who calls about Kevin’s article. “I’m in a meeting right now, but fax me the article and I’ll look at it.” I hang up on her protests.

  Then I tell the truth to Phil and Spike, because it is impossible to fib to two grown men wearing fisherman sweaters and Andy Warhol wigs, and carrying sitars. “We did some busking outside today,” says Phil. “How much do you think we made?”

  “Honestly?” I say. “Nothing.”

  “We had our fifteen cents of fame,” says Phil. “Hey, you could wear a blond wig and be part of our revue. Then we could be Edie Sedgwick and the Andies.”

  “Maggie is blond,” Spike points out.

  “Yeah, but not the right kind,” says Phil.

  I tell them I don’t know how to play the sitar anyway.

  “Neither do we. Chad traded us three lessons in exchange for designing his flyers,” says Spike. “He’s an awful instructor, though.”

  Chad, as in Yegina’s ex-husband.

  “Wretched,” says Phil, sliding the Warhol flop back to expose his broad brow. “Does not bode well for the new business.”

  “Business?” I say.

  “Teaching music to spoiled Silver Lake kids. Like us,” Spike says. He raises his hand and whack-strums the instrument, Pete Townshend style.

  “He’s started a music blog, too,” says Phil. “It’s wildly popular with his mother.”

  I don’t have time to listen to more twin patter, because it’s almost ten o’clock. So I feign extreme frowning over my copyediting until they trundle away, instruments banging their sides. Moments later, here’s my chance: Juanita T. Filippa, senior assistant to the director, is following Bas to the elevator. Juanita is wearing her usual conservative navy suit and alert but expressionless gaze, and I wonder what she thinks of the recent events. She is one of the Rocque’s oldest employees, and her manner seems to belong to another era, when cultural legitimacy was dispensed by a ruling class rather than earned from the masses. A thin gold bracelet slides along her arm as she presses the down button.

  I wait until the elevator doors close, then another two minutes to make sure Juanita and Bas have reached the ground floor. In the dozen steps it takes me to round the maroon wall of cubes to Juanita’s, my heart starts beating so fast it feels like a flash mob is assembling in my chest.

  Juanita T. Filippa has served as assistant to every director the Rocque has ever had. She is a broad woman, but not fat, with brown hair that she puffs into a smooth bob above small gold hoops always glowing in her ears. She sits twenty feet from my door, but I’ve never heard her on the phone. She doesn’t go out for lunch, and whatever she eats, she must consume with catlike neatness, because her desk gleams, crumb-free, under tidy stacks and files. She signs every e-mail with her full name and her full title. If Juanita has any unkind feelings toward the office’s congregation of raging egos, she keeps them inside. If she has a sense of humor, it must be buried somewhere deeper than the tar pits on La Brea.

  I know Juanita keeps two calendars, one in a blue leather cover that she brings to meetings, and one on her computer. I figure it will be easier to check the handwritten calendar because I don’t need a password. I stand in the threshold to her cube’s neat expanse, scanning for blue: Upright file marked TO DO. Horizontal file stacked with bills and invoices. Headpiece for phone calls. Virgin Mary candle, the kind you’d buy at a botanica. Framed photograph of a grinning boy, the print faded in such a way that I know the boy is much older now, possibly grown. No blue calendar. The computer screen is dark. I take a breath and step into the cube.

  “May I help you?”

  Juanita is standing behind me. She’s so short I can see her pale scalp through her parted hair, but somehow it still feels like she’s looking down on me.

  “Is that your son?” I say, wishing she would move so I could, so I don’t have to continue standing inside her private space. “He looks just like you.”

  “Nephew,” she says, her eyes sweeping over my body as if she suspects I have something stashed under my clothes. “What is it you need?”

  “Development said you might have a folder on Bas with his bio and background and stuff,” I say. “They want me to write a ‘meet the director’ type thing for a fund-raising campaign.”

  She repeats my last sentence, sounding particularly doubtful. “Who in Development?” she says.

  “Hiro Isami,” I say. How easily the lies are coming to me, Maggie of the butterfly earrings, who always stutters through the slightest falsehoods. “He’s new.”

  There’s a pause as Juanita digests this, and then she finally steps aside. I stagger out of the cubicle.

  “I’ll put something together for you today,” she says, pulling back her chair, sitting down.

  I gasp my thanks and don’t dare look back as I leave her threshold. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I see she is waiting, unmoving, hands on her keyboard, screen dark, until I am out of sight. Only then do I hear the beep and sighs of her computer turning on.

  16

  Two hours later, I’m still wincing about Juanita’s suspicious eyes as I walk to the gym with Yegina, Evie, and Dee. Fortunately Yegina is holding forth on the latest board efforts to jettison our boss. Prominent local artists have begun to voice their concerns about the schlockification of the exhibition schedule. How can a museum founded to predict the future of art defend a glorified car show? “The road to mediocrity is paved with product placement,” said one. “When’s the Art of Cola show, next year?”

  “I’m starting to feel sorry for Bas,” Yegina admits. “He came into my office this morning and asked how hard it would be to strike Art of the Race Car.”

  Dee and I cheer the news, while Evie looks dazed at the work she’d have to undo. We wind our way between skyscrapers and reach a short down-flight of brick steps. The descent lifts me in my ribs.

  “But do you know why?” I ask. “This sudden change of heart?”

  “Because it’s a bad idea,” says Yegina, a new note of pride in her voice.

  “He won’t last against you,” I say.

  She gives me a sideways look. “Art of Yegina,” she says appreciatively.

  Our shoes clack, thud, and slap the bricks: me in Mary Janes, Yegina in platforms, Dee in construction boots, and Evie in pumps. We toss our long hair, tuck our short hair, blink in full makeup or lipstick only. We’re so different, I sometimes don’t know what holds us together—is it just this moment of extended youth?
Is it that we don’t know how to grow older? Or why we should? None of us are married or mothers, none high enough in our career ladder, none younger than almost thirty. At this age, our own mothers were already raising their children, and their friends who never wed mostly chose from a short list of occupations: teacher, nurse, secretary, or nun. Our generation knows—we’ve known since childhood—that we could be anyone. We are pioneers in the brave new land that feminism and birth control have opened: sexually free, unencumbered by kids, able to pay our own way. We don’t exactly need men, and they get this and maybe bank on it, in a way that their fathers couldn’t. We support each other through their departures, and watch our age tick higher. Some of us marry our jobs. Some of us date women instead. Some say we’ll just wait until thirty-eight, find a sperm donor, and raise a kid ourselves. We read about extraordinary women, women our age leading companies and curing malaria, and remind ourselves we should work harder, be smarter, don’t waste time. We plan for a second master’s degree, in something practical. We try capoeira and knitting. We take care of our slim bodies. We can be fascinating in conversation, and fearless in bed. We can do anything. So why do I feel like we are frozen, too, set on display until someone rearranges us? Still lives.

  I ask Yegina if she knows about her ex-husband’s sitar school. To my surprise, she doesn’t seem especially interested.

  “Good for him,” she says. “Los Angeles was really lacking in businesses started by washed-up musicians.”

  “Speaking of exes, heard anything new about Shaw?” Dee says to me.

  I shake my head, willing Evie to stay silent. She looks blankly at a man in a dirt-smeared plaid shirt picking in a trash can, and says nothing.

  “Kim’s parents were on the news earlier,” says Dee. “Seemed like a normal Canadian couple, if you ask me. Distraught, of course, but they didn’t place any blame on Shaw.” She rubs her tattooed right arm, a sleeve of roses. “I’m just shocked that no one mentioned her sister.”