“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He said he didn’t want his work commercialized.” The man sets his son back down. “I mean, I understand that artists are different from the rest of us. But what did he think he was doing when he sold the sculpture to the city? That’s not commercial activity?” With his knuckles, he raps the bronze nose. “I build cabinets for a living. I build them as nice as I know how, but then I sell them and they go where they go. If somebody wants to stuff them full of old clothes, that’s their business. The way I look at it, when you write Paid on the invoice, it’s the end of the story.”
His younger son is tugging at his coat sleeve. So he says good-night, and the three of them head off across the Square, one boy on each side clinging to his hand.
Bogdan’s eyes are watery, and in the cold air they sting. How simple and clear and easy it sounds. An invoice marked Paid, the end of the story. He steps over to the sculpture and runs his hand over the cold surface, feeling the furrowed contours of the forehead, the wavy ridges that simulate hair. He looks over his shoulder, then turns and sticks his head through one of the sockets.
He buys a kebab and a sack of fries and sits down to eat them on a bench near the Florian Gate. By the time he finishes, it’s nearly seven, and he’s starting to shiver. Pulling out his mobile, he checks to see how much of a charge is left, then phones his old partner.
At the other end, the call produces consternation. Marek and Inga are in their bedroom, listening to Frank Sinatra. He’s sitting on the side of the bed, and she’s opposite him in the armchair. Both are naked. They’ve been staring at each other for the last few minutes, neither of them saying a word while they gently touch themselves. This kind of behavior started the day Marek learned of his friend’s arrest. Sex between him and his wife had gone the way of his grocery chain, but now he can’t get enough of her body. He wants her in the morning and again when she returns from work. At first, she acted surprised, put off, and embarrassed, but she quickly entered into the spirit of the endeavor. Last night, he licked Moldavian champagne off her nipples.
“It’s Bogdan,” he says after glancing at his phone, with which he was about to take a close-up of her navel. “What should I do?”
“Answer it.”
“What if it’s being taped?”
She’s quit touching herself. “He’s our friend,” she says. “Besides, if they were going to arrest you, they would’ve done it before now. I’m pretty glad they didn’t.”
So he takes the call. “Bogdan? Where are you?”
“Marek, how have you been?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, I’ve been kind of scared. The police . . . are you with them now, Bogdan?”
“No, they turned me loose.”
“For good?”
“Just until my trial. They appointed an attorney to represent me.”
“Does he think he can get you off?”
“Not a chance.”
“O, Jezu.”
“It’s all right, Marek.”
He hears Inga’s voice in the background, then Marek whispering back.
“Bogdan, Inga says why don’t you come over? You could have supper with us. Maybe even stay here tonight. You don’t want to be alone on your first free evening.”
Until his friend issued the invitation, he thought he did want to be alone, but he was lying to himself. The reason jail was not nearly as onerous as he’d expected, even with the toilet discharging its foul perfume, was that for the first time in forever, he had company. “Are you sure?” he asks, already on his feet and heading their way.
“So the pickpocket—his name is Pawel, and he’s got one of those faces where all the features have been compressed, making him remind you of a bulldog—he and his new partner run along the platform toward the far end of the first-class car, the partner pulling an empty suitcase. They jump on and start down the aisle just as the couple enters from the opposite end. The Australian guy’s big, well over two meters, probably about 110 kilos, and he’s dragging a pretty good-sized suitcase himself. You can see a string around his neck, so his passport’s probably in one of those security pouches, and for all they know his credit cards are too. But in his right front pocket there’s a bulge, and they’re sure it’s his wallet. His wife’s behind him, and she’s got a huge purse, but the strap is wrapped around her neck, so you’d nearly have to kill her to get it off. ‘Watch out for pickpockets,’ she warns when she sees Pawel and his partner. Her husband rolls his eyes like he’s heard the same thing twice a day for two weeks, or however long it’s been since they left Emu Park, Queensland.”
“How do you know this is where they were from?” Inga asks. She’s taking up two-thirds of the couch, one arm on the backrest, her big, bare feet drawn up beneath her. She’s wearing a green bathrobe, and her toenails are painted deep purple. You would not normally associate bright colors with Inga. She’s had a bit more to drink than usual too, though Bogdan did see her sloshed once back around 1990, on New Year’s Eve.
“I’ll get to how we know where they were from in a minute. The Australians start down the corridor, looking into each compartment, trying to find their seats. Keep in mind, this is the first-class car—”
“So it’s almost empty,” Marek interjects. He leans toward the coffee table and spears another morsel of pickled herring.
“Completely. Pawel and his partner meet them about halfway down the aisle. He starts by on the right, his partner on the left. ‘Excuse, excuse,’ he says, ‘sorry, sorry.’ The guy’s face is turning red and his nose has wrinkled up like he’s smelling a horrible odor, which he is. They wear really bad-smelling clothes on purpose, to add another level of distraction.
“Pawel’s got his fingers in the guy’s pocket, he can feel the wallet, but he’s having a hard time pulling it free. So what does the big Australian do? With one hand, he lifts that heavy suitcase into the air so he can turn sideways and let them pass, and when his hip moves, that wallet comes right out and he never notices. Pawel and his partner are on the platform within seconds.”
“And then what happens?”
“The police are waiting for them. Turns out the new partner was an undercover officer. It’s Pawel’s third arrest, so he’s probably going to get more than a brief vacation.”
“And what about you?” Inga asks.
“What about me?”
“How long are you likely to be in jail?” She reaches for the vodka bottle, and when she leans over, he realizes she’s wearing nothing beneath the green robe. Then he looks at Marek, who’s in his pajamas. When he got to their place, it was only seven thirty, and it seemed a little odd that they were already dressed for bed. But the three of them had several drinks in rapid succession, and this prevented him from putting two and two together.
When he phoned them, they were fucking. They might even have been making love.
His friend used to sleep around, whereas Bogdan didn’t. Marek still has his wife’s affection, whereas he doesn’t. At a different time, the disparity might have held a lot more interest. It could even have resulted in the kind of bitterness that makes your throat burn. But which is more worthy of consideration—inequity or mystery? He’ll bow before the latter, not the former.
A certain tightness has announced itself in his groin, and heat is rising into his neck and cheeks and ears. Until this moment, he never felt one milligram of lust for big-boned Inga, with her broad hips and manly shoulders, and this now seems to him grossly unfair. Controlling your urges is both decent and necessary. Deficiency of desire, on the other hand, is like anemia, a condition to overcome.
When he thinks he can look at her without revealing his burgeoning lust, he tells her his lawyer informed him that the maximum penalty for his offense is a year in prison. “But at least while I’m in there,” he says, “I won’t have to pay rent.”
This news provides Marek more than enough impetus to finish getting drunk. He downs shot after shot, and when the bottle is empty, he staggers into
the bathroom, where he leans over the toilet and offers up the contents of his stomach. As soon as he’s finished, he promises himself that when his friend is in jail, he will visit him weekly, no matter where he’s incarcerated. It’s the least he can do, and more often than not the least he can do is what he has done. He ought to be in jail himself. Why he’s been spared is a puzzle, the kind of thing he’ll ponder the next time he steps into a deserted church or visits the cemetery where the woman and her daughter lie buried.
He brushes his teeth, gargles with some antiseptic mouthwash, and takes himself off to bed.
Back in the living room, Bogdan and Inga have broken out the cherry cordial, the only thing left to drink besides water and tea. Time passes fast, as it often does when you’re on the glorious side of drunk. Eventually, the clock strikes three, and they drink a final toast to Pawel the pickpocket. What they’ve talked about, if they’ve talked about anything at all, Bogdan will not recall.
What he will remember is following Inga down the hallway past her bedroom, where Marek lies snoring, each release of air ending in a faint, almost dainty whistle. She opens the hallway closet, pulls out a towel, then steps into their sons’ old room and switches on a lamp. She’s saying something about breakfast, how he’ll have to fend for himself, that she’ll be gone when he wakes. She turns to hand him the towel, and that’s when she sees that she was right several hours ago in believing she knew what was on his mind.
So there they stand, the Brandenburg Gate and a felonious man. Let the moon shine down on this town of kings and dragons.
The house they’re watching is an airplane bungalow off Huntington Boulevard. Several roof shingles are gone, the gas grill on the porch is missing a wheel, and the front steps are rotting.
“Makes me feel right at home,” she says. “Stack some old tires up in the yard, and I could be back on the wrong side of Eudora, Arkansas.”
“Are you aware the town you claim to come from keeps changing?”
“Certain habits die hard.”
She insisted on coming with him today in case he ran into trouble. They’re sitting in her car. Given the neatness of her house, the old Honda is comically messy. Starbucks cups and Diet Dr. Pepper cans litter the floor alongside countless Bic ballpoints, a Pizza Hut carry-out box that reeks of mozzarella, and at least two umbrellas with broken spokes. CDs are everywhere, most of the cases damaged, many of them empty. She has horrific taste in music. The 1910 Fruitgum Company. Peppermint Rainbow. Tommy James and the Shondells.
“What year were you born?” he asks.
“Nineteen seventy. Not that you should ever pose that question to a woman. Why?”
“This music is all before your time.”
“I got a thing for sunshine pop.”
Nearly three weeks’ worth of sustained efforts, his as well as her own, have brought them to this house in southeast Fresno, which might or might not be the right place. It’s a cold, rainy day: the first rain to fall on the Valley since last February. The streets are slick, the oil deposited on them starting to run after lying there undisturbed for more than eight months. She still uses a pager, and it keeps beeping. All over town, people are crashing into one another. A lot of wrecks are going uncovered.
“Ever wonder,” he asks, “what’d happen if your boss finds out how you’re spending your time?”
She’s wearing a red leather jacket that looks good with her black jeans, though it clashes with her hair. These days, he can tell, she’s putting a little more thought into her appearance. She’s started applying lipstick and a touch of eyeliner, and he last saw a ponytail when they went to the ball game. At dinner the other night, she told him there was a period in Worcester when she wore nothing but warm-ups, even on the job—his old BU classmate finally spoke to her about it. Winter was getting to her. Turned out she had seasonal depression as well as the regular kind. That’s the main reason she’s here instead of there.
“I don’t have to wonder what my boss would do,” she says. “He’d send me packing. But hey, I been sent packing before.”
“But not from a job?”
“Not from a job. That’s a lesser kind of loss. Right?”
“Compared to what?”
She never takes her eyes off the bungalow. “When I was thirty-one,” she says, “I seduced a nineteen-year-old. Well, tried to anyway. He was hanging around the pool at the apartment complex. A total virgin, which I didn’t know at the time. Just as sweet as he could be but scared half to death, and that scared me too. So we’re sitting on the couch, beating around the bush, and I finally just blurted, ‘Let’s do it.’ And this poor child said, ‘Do what?’ I went all Lauren Bacall on him, graveling out ‘You know what.’”
“In other words, I should know the answer to my question?”
“In other words.”
“Have you read a lot of Faulkner?”
“Not a single sentence. Why?”
“Never mind.”
A couple of cars crawl by. It’s a quiet street, and this is late morning, kids at school, the gainfully employed at work. The neighborhood isn’t upscale, but it’s still predominately white. Huntington Boulevard, at one time one of the better streets in town, is only a block away. You might find the occasional CPA living nearby, a teacher or two, a smattering of city, state, and county employees, and no small number of attorneys, mostly public defenders and specialists in immigration law. You could also find people who successfully operate at the margins. One of the more memorable individuals he interviewed in years past was a Nova Scotian who’d taken up residence about three blocks from here and reputedly did a good business selling refurbished assault rifles. He spoke on condition of anonymity, and while he was coy about his supplier, his hints indicated a source in the Israeli defense forces.
“You eat much clam chowder growing up?” she asks.
“Not at home. We had it at school sometimes.”
“I ate a lot of ‘chowduh’ when I was living back there.”
“It’s good on a cold day.”
“I ate it with cornbread. Made myself a big skillet of it and ate chowder twice a day till the cornbread ran out, and then I baked some more.” She glances at her rearview mirror. “Don’t turn around, but I think this may be our guy.”
A maroon Dodge Ram passes them and turns into the driveway.
“Was there somebody in the passenger seat?” she asks.
“I couldn’t tell for sure, but I believe so.”
“How old you reckon that truck is?”
“Oh-seven, ’08.”
“Joe Bob must be doing all right.”
His name is not Joe Bob. It’s Rupert. Until about three years ago, as far as they’ve been able to determine, he lived in northern California, close to Clear Lake, where it’s not uncommon to see Confederate flag decals displayed on the rear bumpers of vehicles or suspended from the eaves of houses. It’s an area where you find a fair number of survivalists and white supremacists living in close proximity to aging Deadheads and assorted hippies. Sometimes they see eye to eye. Sometimes they don’t. Disappearances have occurred.
The driver climbs out. He’s a skinny guy with dark hair, and he’s wearing khakis and a blue windbreaker. While they watch, he walks around the front of the truck to the passenger side, opens the door, and lifts something out. When he steps back into their line of sight, they see that what he’s carrying is nearly as big as he is, that it’s white and has hot-pink paws.
“What the fuck is that?” she asks.
“Looks to me like a stuffed bear.”
Skirting puddles, he totes it across the yard. When he mounts the steps, she says, “Hadn’t you better get going?”
He lays his hand on her right arm. “There’s no rush. I’ll give him a few minutes.”
She sighs, then looks down at where he’s still touching her. He thinks he knows what she’s going to say: that for somebody so big, he has small, delicate hands that would look just fine on a woman. His wife said that
the first time they made love. He wills Maria not to. She’s already worn Julia’s bathrobe.
“I’ve always loved stuffed animals,” she tells him. “The bigger they are, the better.”
A few weeks ago, he did something he thought he could never do again, attending a performance of the high school chamber orchestra Anna used to play in. It took place in the main concert hall in the UCC Music Building, and the program consisted of works by Beethoven, Berg, and Mahler, concluding with the Adagio from the last composer’s unfinished Tenth Symphony. Richard has only a rudimentary knowledge of classical music, but he recalled that this particular Adagio was among the most mournful pieces ever written. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
When you’re pursuing a story, there are times when you want the person you’re interviewing to be back on his or her heels, worried, unsettled, confused, or just plain frightened. There are other times when you prefer exactly the opposite, which was why he’d decided to attend the concert. He wanted to talk to Danny Scanlon when he was comfortable, and he knew he’d be there and that in all likelihood he’d be by himself.
Scanlon was the father of the boy Anna had had a crush on in the fall of 2006. The kid would be a senior this year, and he’d casually gleaned a few facts about him through conversations with Sandy Lyons: he now had a girlfriend named Janette, who supposedly hated her parents because they were Mormon; his own parents had gotten divorced about eighteen months ago, and his mother had moved to the Bay Area; his sisters were living with her, but he’d elected to remain with his father, who never missed one of his performances, even if he had to take sick leave.
Richard used to talk to Danny from time to time, usually during intermission, or sometimes when he was waiting to pick Anna up from school. If Danny wasn’t wearing his uniform, the last thing in the world you’d take him for was a cop. He wore old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses and was average-sized, soft-spoken, polite to a fault. He was also deeply religious, though Richard couldn’t recall what denomination he belonged to.
The entrance was at the rear of the hall, the seats laid out below in tiered rows. He arrived about two minutes before eight and immediately spotted Scanlon, who’d taken an aisle seat halfway down. Fortunately, no one was directly behind him, so Richard waited until the lights began to dim, then walked down the aisle and grabbed the spot.
The Unmade World Page 16