The Empress of Tempera

by Alex Dolan

  Paire hadn’t spoken to Melinda since the evening of the robbery, back when she’d phoned from the school library. She had wanted to speak to her ever since, but wasn’t confident she could connect with her without conveying remorse, and possibly confessing. Instead, she followed Melinda through online news alerts, and imagined her voice behind all those quotes.

  A few days into the media frenzy, another development unfolded. The Empress Xiao Zhe Yi vanished from the evidence locker. Paire didn’t know whether or not this would please Melinda, but it twisted her insides.

  She read the news on the most sweltering day of the year. Montague Street was steamed by a swampy heat she’d rarely known in Maine. People walked as if they were learning their first steps, their slick skins pinned under the enormous thumb of the heat. Even the traffic slowed down, as if the cars themselves were exhausted.

  That day she had been visiting vacant apartments. She needed to move out of Rosewood’s flat, if for no other reason than it wasn’t hers to begin with. In the past two days she’d seen three apartments, the most promising one in Carroll Gardens with a Fashion Institute of Technology student close to her age. To make a favorable impression on possible roommates, she dressed up in a stylish green cotton chemise whose color closely resembled the sprig on the Fern’s marquee. It was too heavy for a day like this, and perspiration soaked under her arms and beneath the folds of her breasts.

  As soon as she returned home to the brownstone, she knew something was wrong. Her door had been knocked open and the doorframe splintered where the lock had torn through the wood. Someone had smashed his way into the place. Later, she’d consider that she could have retreated and called the police, but given her involvement in a number of crimes, she didn’t see the police as a viable resource.

  Instead, she grasped her collapsed spring baton and pushed open the front door with her finger.

  On the first floor, a heap of broken belongings had been shoveled to the center of the room like a compost pile. These were mostly Rosewood’s possessions, but some of her things were mixed in too. They’d all been torn, cracked, and split. Everything had been pulled from the edges of the room, artwork ripped off hooks and smashed. Kitchen drawers were pulled out, utensils bent and then cast to the floor. Canvases, whether blank or painted, had been slashed, and the wooden frames snapped by boot heels. Everything had been collected, destroyed, and deposited in the pile. From upstairs, someone had pulled clothes off the hangers, brought them down here, and shredded them. She recognized some of Rosewood’s scrapbooks, pages torn out and photo prints reduced to strips. It seemed as if the center of the room had opened like a drain, drawn the contents of the flat, and then clogged with the mass of possessions. The pile reached her navel, the right consistency and height for a pyre.

  As she examined the pile, Paire found traces of her belongings, all broken. She came to the sickening realization that nothing had been stolen. Everything had simply been vandalized. The intruder had taken care to ensure each object was properly ruined. Her easel, for example, wasn’t a fragile structure, but it had been hurled at the wall—most likely several times, from the dents and divots that tore into the plaster—and dismembered at the joints. She pulled out the hand-shredded ribbons that used to be her wardrobe. At this point, she couldn’t distinguish between shirts and skirts. Even her tube socks had been cut into calamari rings with a pair of shears. Corners of ceramic dishes crunched underfoot, and from the stegosaurus ridges of glass in the walls, she surmised that her glasses had burst like Molotov cocktails. The entryway mural had been soaked with fluids, and the paint ran.

  She noted slashes in the sofa and chairs. Their fibrous and cottony filler spilled out like entrails. None of her usual sitting places existed, so in the dim sunlight that seeped in from outside, she sat in the corner of the room that seemed the cleanest. She felt violated, but wasn’t moved to scream. Not while her adrenaline kept her alert.

  The smell, a soupy concoction of paints, thinner, toiletries, food, and perfume might have been toxic. Paire’s nose ran from the fumes. She wiped it on her sleeve, since the toilet paper in the bathroom had been run off the roll.

  She continued to the kitchen. They hadn’t stored much food in the fridge, but all of it now decorated the walls.

  When she composed herself, she started to count her belongings to see if there was anything within the pile that could be salvaged.

  She was scavenging fastidiously when a voice said, “It’s nice to see you wearing green again.”

  Abel Kasson walked soundlessly down the stairs. He’d dressed down today. No suit. Instead, he wore a pink polo shirt that stretched over his stomach and golf slacks. The country club clothes seemed even more offensive in a room filled with trash. In the heat, and likely from the exertion required for this destruction, he’d sweated through every inch of the fabric on his body.

  Paire was terrified, but she found the baton in her purse and snapped it to attention. Occupying his particular spot at the base of the stairs, he blocked her path to both the front and back doors. Without an immediate exit, she tried to mask her fear with spite. “You do all this yourself?”

  “Ambition is a family curse.” He held a pair of shears, and snapped the blades together for effect.

  “Not the only family curse, though.”

  “When I first met you, I envied your blissful ignorance. In nature, the animals that live the longest are the ones that are ignored by predators. Being a wallflower can be an evolutionary advantage. You should have stayed that way. You were much safer when I couldn’t remember your name. The old one or the new one.”

  Panic surged through her like venom.

  “You know how I knew I could exploit you?” he said. “Because you’re a kleptomaniac.” So, Rosewood must have shared that with him. Her guts knotted. “Except you don’t steal things to own them or to sell them. You steal things so you can destroy them. But a thief is a thief. Once I gave you the right excuse, it was like lighting a fuse on a rocket.”

  With that confident, vanquisher’s smile, Kasson was in complete control. He stepped closer, ready to charge at her at any moment. For the first time, Paire was happy that Joyce had forced her to club him with the baton. Otherwise, she might not know what it felt like to use it against a man. What level of strength it took to make it hurt.

  Kasson stood on the other side of the trash pile, but started to work his way around the perimeter toward her. Paire took a step whenever he did, to keep her distance, as if they were manning opposite positions on a clock face. She kept an eye on his shears, and remembered Rosewood’s stomach wound.

  Kasson said, “I hear he’s going into the army. Maybe they’ll send him to Afghanistan or some other shithole of a place.”

  “He might die over there.”

  “You might die right here.”

  Paire stiffened, and wiggled the baton so she could feel the slight undulation of the weighted tip.

  Kasson snapped his shears. “In the end, we’re only accountable to ourselves. He made his own choices, just like you made yours. Whatever the reasons for obsessing over that painting, you’re accountable for all the choices you made to get it.”

  She gestured to the pile between them. “So this is what, retribution?”

  “This? No. I was just trying to find what you’ve taken, and I got carried away. Where is it?”

  Paire was confused. “What are we talking about?”

  He seemed exasperated that he had to explain himself. With a free hand he swabbed the sweat from his face. “The painting. It’s gone missing. Where is it?”

  So he doesn’t have it, she thought. “You think I could have broken into a police storage locker?”

  “Is that so hard to believe? You’ve been shadowing Derek Rosewood for months, and just broke into the Time Warner Center. Not to mention my home.”

  Paire was actually relieved to hear this. As soon as she’d heard that the painting had gone missing, she’d assumed that Kasson had bribe
d an officer to steal it back for him. In the same moment, she felt vulnerable that he could link her other recent break-ins. She didn’t try to deny any of it. Someone was in his home when she was there. Someone had seen her. “I don’t have it,” she said.

  “Clearly.” He looked around. “You don’t have it here. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have it. Where is it?” His temper rose. He kept advancing around the circle of debris, and she kept retreating.

  This wasn’t going well. If he didn’t believe her, there was no answer she could give that would satisfy him. Instead of repeating the truth, she verbally parried while she figured out how to escape. “Why would I tell you when you have a weapon pointed at me? Say I have it hidden somewhere. Say I was that crafty. And I knew you might even show up here one day to throw a tantrum because you can’t control every wrinkle of universal space-time. Say all that. Why would I tell you, when I’d be giving away my only point of leverage?”

  “You’d tell me out of desperation. That’s what they all do.” Kasson looked through her and snapped his shears.

  Paire’s flailing attempt at self-preservation was an empty warning. “If you hurt me, the police will be all over you.”

  He hesitated for just a moment. “Let’s find out.”

  Kasson sprinted around the pile, faster than Paire could have anticipated, with a strength and agility that shouldn’t have come from a man of his bulk. The speed his body remembered from when he was an athlete. She didn’t have time to defend herself against him. In the second she was afforded, she readied herself to block the hand with the shears. But Kasson didn’t use the shears. He punched her with his other fist, bringing his arm down like a cudgel on the top of her head. The force was deadening. The shock plunged into her jaw, her neck, and down through her ribs. She crashed against the carpet—too thin to cushion her—and her skull smacked with a sparkling pain.

  Kasson stood over her. Other than a slight heaving in his chest from the exertion, he had reverted to his poised reserve. He said plainly, “I just assaulted you. Let’s see if the police come running.” The stinging in her head was too intense for her to speak. “Where is it? Quick now, before I use my other hand.” The twin blades of the shears opened like crocodile jaws.

  Paire clambered to her knees, her head still sparkling from the blow.

  Kasson enjoyed his triumph, and the top half of his body puffed exultantly. He only took his eyes off her for an instant, never expecting her to do anything but succumb.

  Snapping her wrist, Paire lashed out and caught Kasson in the shin with the baton.

  He yowled and stumbled back, until he tumbled into the wall. He rubbed the hurt shin with his unarmed hand.

  Paire climbed to her feet. Dizziness kept her from walking a perfect line, and she zigzagged away from him.

  Kasson’s jowls clenched. His face flushed, and the blood vessels in his neck seemed tumid to the point of rupture. He rushed at her, too fast again. He swiped at her with his bare hand, and caught her on the ear before she could dodge him.

  She bent at the waist as what sounded like a mosquito mezzo-soprano sang in her ear canal.

  His hand closed around her throat. With sumo momentum, Kasson marched Paire back into the window. He almost carried her, and his fingers smelled like talcum.

  She kicked her knee up to his groin, but she only grazed his testicles, and he guarded himself for the next kick by pivoting his hips. Kasson didn’t seem like the type who would actually kill someone himself, certainly not in a public place like this. But he wasn’t the impassive strategist she’d come to hate. He seemed feral. As his thumb pressed into her windpipe and her eyes fogged, she knew he had no intention of stopping. In a moment she wouldn’t be able to talk, wouldn’t be able to breathe. The other hand, the one with the shears, brought the tips up toward her eyeball, grazing her lashes.

  Knowing this might be the last action she made before she lost consciousness, Paire brought the baton down on his wrist as hard as she could. She heard something snap. Maybe his forearm, or maybe it was wishful thinking. She couldn’t see well enough to know where she’d connected. But he howled. The shears dropped to the floor. With effort, Paire pushed him away with a leg. They gave each other room, taking restorative breaths, rubbing the parts of themselves that had been hurt. Each having inflicted pain on the other, they were both wary.

  Kasson growled, “Tell me.”

  Her heart pounded, but Paire remained defiant. Her throat hurt from where he’d choked her, and stung when she spoke. “Keep looking.”

  He trembled with fury. “You have no idea the situation you put me in. This is a family matter, do you understand? This is my name, you little shit.” Kasson bent down slowly to pick up his shears, but before he got to them she struck his clavicle. He swore something awful. While he absorbed the pain, she clubbed him on the head and shoulders. From the way he shouted and fought to cover his head, she knew she’d wounded him, but these were just bee stings to a bear.

  After a momentary falter, Kasson regained his strength and charged, head down, and barreled into her chest. He knocked her flat on her back and the wind flew out of her lungs. Continuing on his own momentum, Kasson trampled over her and then clumsily tripped on some of the loose debris on the floor. He collapsed onto his belly and careened headfirst into the opposite wall. His skull collided with the baseboards. The floor rumbled with his weight.

  Once air leaked into her lungs again, Paire rolled onto her side and fought to scramble to her feet. She tasted blood in her gums.

  On the other side of the room, Kasson crawled on all fours as he found his bearings. He found a way to his feet, and stood before the front door. She might be able to run to the back of the flat. He was slow now, but her legs were just as wobbly.

  She squeezed the baton until her knuckles blanched. “We’ve been making noise. How long do you think we can keep this up before someone calls the police?”

  His round face flushed, its expression vicious. “As long as it takes for me to strangle you.” He ambled toward her, hand cocked for a haymaker. But he was still groggy from the pain, and when he took a step toward her, he put an awkward, drunken foot forward.

  Paire moved faster. She was so amped up from the fear, she stepped toward him and whipped the spring with all the power she had into the bridge of his nose. The cartilage crumpled with an audible crackle. His hands covered his face, and moments later blood seeped out between his fingers. She continued her assault. She couldn’t afford to let him recover. He had a hundred pounds on her, and he was used to fighting. The briny fumes of blood diffused into the air and ignited something primal in her. She whipped the baton at the crown of his head. The weighted tip came down on the thinnest part of the skull. Kasson dropped to the floor.

  Paire stood over the man, nerves jangling, panting in short, shallow breaths as she gawked over the fleshy heap. After a minute, when he didn’t move, she slowly reached toward his neck, and pressed two fingers into his jugular. The pulse was barely there, but it was there.

  Then she snatched her purse and fled.

  Chapter 19

  Paire clanged an iron gate with her shoe, because Melinda Qi’s compound in Long Island City didn’t have a doorbell to ring or a door to knock on. Through shouting and banging, she tried to approximate the volume of a riot.

  She was trembling. Adrenaline had kept her going for the past few hours, and now it was wearing off, leaving her shaking like a junkie. Everything made her nervous right now.

  Paire had nowhere to go. She felt hunted and, out in the open air like this, exposed and vulnerable. She couldn’t call the police, and without the law as an ally, she had a drought of options. She was wearing the only remaining clothes she owned, and these were now torn in places and stained with blood, both hers and Abel Kasson’s.

  On her way there, Paire kept looking over her shoulders. Cabs wouldn’t pick her up, not with all that blood on her. On the subway, her fellow straphangers gave her a wide berth. Suspicious o
f all of them, she wondered if they’d call the police, or if one of these strangers might be following her for Kasson, just to see if she’d lead them to the empress.

  As she drummed against the fence rails, Paire began to cry. She held it back for as long as she was able. Then she curled slowly into herself like a wilting flower. She felt mortified for crying in the street, even an empty street, but was unable to stop. She slid down with her back against the bars and let the desperate sorrow consume her.

  Melinda found her like that, leaning against the fence, holding one shoe in her hands. She was walking down the sidewalk, carrying groceries in cheap pink plastic bodega bags. Resting them on the pavement, Mel crouched and placed a hand on Paire’s knee. “Do you need a doctor?”

  From her tone, Paire couldn’t tell if she was happy to see her or suspicious. They hadn’t spoken since the night of the robbery, and so many things had changed since then. If Melinda Qi had a fraction of Paire’s paranoia, she must have wondered by now if Paire had anything to do with these events.

  “It’s not all my blood.” Paire had intended to diffuse Melinda’s concern, but this only made it worse.

  “We should go to the police,” Melinda said.

  “Please, no.”

  “Your voice sounds froggy.” Mel looked under Paire’s chin at the finger bruises. “Someone hurt you.”

  Her voice shook. “Can I come inside?”

  Melinda looked up and down the street, likely wondering herself how much danger Paire might be in, and how much she’d be heaping on herself by harboring her. “All right.”

  She unlocked a number of doors in succession, first the gate, then the exterior door to her building in the compound, and then her apartment door. She led Paire to the dining table and gently tilted her chin so she could examine her neck. “Was this Derek Rosewood?” Apparently, she hadn’t heard about his abrupt retirement, or his decision to join the United States Army.

  Paire shook her head, afraid to provide another answer.