“The Ritz is for tourists,” he declared, after making sure we’d been handed flutes of champagne by a man with dyed blond hair and a serious stare. And then he must have noticed that this was not what Peck wanted to hear, because he quickly added, “That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. I usually stay at my friend Jamie’s apartment.”
He was wearing another version of the collarless jacket that seemed to be his signature style, and he’d gotten too much sun on his unfortunate nose, so it was peeling. He’d appeared genuinely pleased to see Peck and me at his door when we arrived and immediately suggested a tour. It was that sort of house, the kind that was built for showing. Now he looked mystified as he listened to Peck explain how writers could receive mail at the Ritz hotel, just as Scott and Zelda had when they lived there. People often looked this way around my sister. Miles stared at her as though she were speaking a language he’d never heard before.
The layout of the house was that of a traditional colonial, but one gone berserk on cheap rum and wanton sex. There was the center hall, in the colonial tradition, but this one was a soaring two-story space with an immense staircase. And then there were other halls, which seem to run in all different directions, with extra alcoves, unnecessary rooms, and odd seating arrangements popping up at strange junctures. It seemed to go on forever. Some parts of it were “upside down” to take advantage of the field views, so the kitchen and the dining room were on the second floor, and there were living rooms on every floor. The woman who’d been on the helicopter was nowhere to be seen as Miles led us through hallways that seemed to go on and on, proudly pointing out details he wanted us to notice: hand-hewn beams flown in from France; floors that were battered and treated in Tuscany; plaster walls that took thirty men more than a year to finish properly; pewter doorknobs the size of footballs.
The color scheme seemed to be “multi”—lots of purple and orange and patterned greens mixed with striped yellows—and chosen to be as jarring to the eye as possible. Really, I’d never seen anything less conducive to comfort. It was all layers upon layers of silks and velvets and mirrors and a mix of spindly coffee tables and squat chairs and expensive-looking pieces that served no purpose. The art seemed to have been chosen by four or five different people, all with competing tastes. None of it went together, or with the house. Or with Miles, who, despite the contrived clothing, was more appealing than I would have expected. He was self-deprecating in a charming way and seemed almost childishly eager to impress both Peck and me.
Peck didn’t feel the need to ooh and aah. She acted like she toured forty-room palaces every other day. Somehow she managed to sound both imperious and seductive and, in a pretty sun-dress that highlighted her tan and her figure to great advantage, she was definitely having an effect on Miles as she chided him for not remembering that he’d given her The Great Gatsby in the first place.
I was surprised to see petulance used effectively—it so rarely works—but Peck was an expert at it. Miles was practically melting under her haughty glare. I felt like the third wheel as he kept gazing at her in wonder, but he made sure I was included in the conversation, touching my arm as he pointed at a detail—the bullet hinges on the doors, for example—I might not have noticed on my own.
“You were good too, like a lit major,” she went on, airily amused, as though the memory was just coming back to her now in the vaguest way. “I remember staying up all night talking about that damn book.”
Miles raised his shoulders to his ears with a sheepish look. “I wanted to go to bed with you, babe.”
We’d been slowly moving through the house, and Peck stopped to give him an exasperated look. “That’s ridiculous. It probably took you as long to read the CliffsNotes as it would have to read the whole book.”
“Sorry,” he said. He didn’t sound sorry; he sounded like he wasn’t in the habit of having to be sorry but knew it was the right thing to say. “A guy’ll say anything to get a girl to go to bed with him. Haven’t you heard that about us?”
“But you knew so much about it.” She had her arms folded over her chest in the classic pose of a woman discontented with male behavior. “You could’ve written a thesis on Gatsby and the American dream.”
He shrugged again, looking pleased with himself. He seemed absolutely delighted by her, as though she’d gone on to become the famous actor she’d always intended to be, and was now a celebrity who’d deigned to visit his humble abode.
“And then,” she continued, as we started walking again (at the rate we were going, it would take the whole evening just to see the house), “you didn’t even remember that you gave it to me.” Here she looked at me. “What is it with you people and your faulty memories?”
“What people?” Miles glanced over at me for explanation.
“Stella here doesn’t remember a thing,” she said, gesturing at me. “Her brain is a sieve.”
“Sorry,” he said again. He wore a look that indicated he might once again say anything at all to get her to go to bed with him. For all his braggadocio, there was something very sweet about the way he seemed so enamored of Peck, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the explanation he’d given Peck for how she ended up at his house on the Fourth of July in a white dress and a hat for a Gatsby-themed party. He had told her that both the theme and the guest list, as well as the menu, décor, and music, were the work of an overzealous party planner who took it upon herself to invite everyone in his address book. But the kind of guy who just told us he chose every single doorknob in this house of his would not have left details like the theme and the guest list for his first party at this house to chance, would he?
“Some house, huh?” he said, trying to prompt a response from Peck, who thus far had not offered one word of praise about the house. He led us into the living room—or the largest of the many rooms that might have been designed for such a purpose, living, which, in this extravagantly unattractive house, meant displaying far too much presumably expensive but ill-chosen furniture, art, and decorative objects. He gave Peck an eager look. In his gaze, I could see a glimmer of what she’d said about men who build their own house and then look to fill it with a wife. He was like a film producer, both auditioning and wooing a reluctant leading lady for what he believed, whether she knew it or not, would be the juiciest part of her acting career.
“It sure is big,” I offered when it became clear that Peck was not going to answer him. She looked around dispassionately, as though she wasn’t impressed at all. In fact, she looked slightly horrified, as if she hadn’t fully realized the magnitude of the poor taste on display. Miles gave me a fleeting grin, the kind that leaves you unsure whether you’d been granted a smile at all, or just given a sneak peek at private thoughts that were meant to be hidden. Had he smiled like that at Peck when she fell in love with him the first time? Or was this a newer variation, acquired later, along with the money and the other things?
“Thirty fucking thousand square feet,” he bragged, like he just couldn’t help himself. I wished he wouldn’t. He seemed determined to get Peck to comment on the house, but for some reason, perhaps because she knew it would have an effect, she seemed equally determined not to. “Not counting the indoor pool.”
He had his BlackBerry in his hand and it vibrated now. He stopped in the hallway to take the call and we stopped too as he dismissed the business at hand with a few quick noes and then, “I gotta go.”
He really does look like a frog, I thought as his eyes moved up and then down Peck’s body in a distinctly appraising manner, lingering on the twins. She preened slightly under his gaze. Once he was off the phone, he steered us in front of a painting that hung above the sofa with one hand at Peck’s lower back and the other at mine. “This is a Jackson Pollock,” he intoned with a preacher’s reverence as we stared at the painting, lit from above with its own brass picture light. “This is a Pollock?” I asked, surprised. I’d been expecting the recognizable Jackson Pollock, he of the wild splatters of color, the paintings for wh
ich he’d become known as Action Jackson. This painting was quieter, an abstract in browns and earth tones, but without the splatters and the energy.
“An early one,” Miles explained.
Peck pulled out severe black glasses I’d never seen her use, and was quite sure she didn’t actually need, and perched them on her nose so she could get a better look. I would have laughed at her but she looked so grave and humorless, like a serious art historian, as she inspected the painting that it kept me from even cracking a smile. “Is it signed?”
He nodded. “Pollock always signed his work.”
“Tell that to the lady who bought one for five bucks at a thrift shop and then decided it must have been worth fifty million, if it was real.” She was still squinting up at the painting from behind the glasses. “They made a movie about it. Nobody would authenticate it for her and she got really mad.”
“I hope this one’s real,” Miles said. “If it’s not, I got hosed.”
She examined him over the frames of the glasses on her nose and paused. Her expression softened and I watched as her entire demeanor shifted and she offered up her first smile since we walked through his door. “I doubt that.”
He returned the smile with one that lingered and they gazed at each other, almost in wonder, for a few seconds. I turned away, staring more closely at the painting so as not to appear to be staring at them. I was trying to figure out a way to leave them alone and was about to suggest that I take a walk outside when Peck tapped me on the arm.
“What does this look like?” she asked, in the manner of a teacher with an unprepared student. She’d taken off the glasses and was gesturing with them toward the painting.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I might have slept through that class.”
“It looks like ours,” she replied briskly. “The missing one.” She turned to Miles. “So.” She gave me a conspiratorial glance as she took his arm. “Where is it, the other one?”
“What other one?” He looked confused again, like he was having trouble aligning the woman in his memory with this person who kept shape-shifting in front of him. “I still haven’t paid for this one.”
At this she gave me a meaningful stare, as though this were a clue.
“Come on, Miles, we know you did it,” she said softly, the way a hostage negotiator might begin a dialogue. “You know we know. But nobody else has to know. You can just return it, no questions asked. Nobody gets hurt.” She paused, taking in his look of utter shock. “Don’t do that. Don’t play coy,” she said, using words I’d heard from her more than once. “It’s unbecoming. Let’s just cut to the chase here. Is it a game of seduction? A cat and mouse thing? Should I be casing the joint for a reciprocal take?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, sounding totally confused. I believed him. He seemed much more the type to have overpaid for a painting at auction, only to find out it was actually not authenticated, or to have bought one that was considered by all experts to be the worst of its kind, than to have stolen anything. “What is it you think I did?”
Peck smiled and held up a hand. “You took the painting that was hanging above the mantel at Fool’s House.”
“What painting?” he interrupted her, and then she spoke over him: “That’s exactly what we’re trying to ascertain.”
It then dawned on Miles what Peck was insinuating. “You think I took a painting from your house?” He sounded hurt and incredulous.
I intervened. “No, no,” I said quickly. “My sister was just wondering if you might know how we could try to get more information. The painting above the mantel went missing that night and we’re trying to figure out what happened to it. And what it was. We were wondering if you saw anybody do anything strange that night.”
“I’ll tell you what I saw,” he said to me. “That weird kid in the suit sniffed her shoe.” He jerked his thumb in Peck’s direction.
“Biggs?” She made a face, like she wasn’t going to believe anything negative about our artist in residence. “He likes me. But he told us you were staring at our painting all night, like you were planning to do something with it.”
“That guy kept following me around. He was trying to sell me something. He wanted to come live in my house and teach me how to paint or something. I finally had to ask him to get me a drink, just to get rid of him. That’s why I got out of there—he wouldn’t leave me alone. There’s something not right with that dude.”
“He’s an artist,” Peck said. It seemed pretty evident to me that Miles had not taken our painting, but Peck seemed determined to continue believing that he had.
“If you think anyone took anything from your house that night, I’d check him out,” he said. “That guy’s loco.”
“You think Biggs took our painting?” Peck looked to me for confirmation. “Why would he do that?”
“It has the ring of truth,” I said, suddenly thinking Miles might be right as I replayed Biggsy’s words and actions in the hours following the theft at the party. He’d been so quick to focus blame on Miles, and Peck had been so willing to go along with that theory, that we hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might have had something to do with it. “He’s always talking about the ghost. Maybe it’s one of his pranks.”
“Who was the artist of this missing painting?” Miles asked. An obvious question to which we still did not have the answer.
“We don’t know,” Peck explained. “It wasn’t signed. On the back it just said, ‘For L.M. From J.P.’ ” She turned to me breathlessly and grabbed my arm. “Oh my God. J.P. Jackson Pollock? Is that possible? We had a Jackson Pollock?”
I shook my head slowly. “I doubt that.”
But Peck was already squirming in excitement. “Think about it. It looks like this, doesn’t it? And he lived out here. She revered him. Maybe she met him and he gave it to her. Or she bought it from him, way back when. When did he die?”
“She would have been too young, I think,” I said. “And if she’d met him for a split second, or even attended the same party as him, believe me, we would have heard about it.”
Peck was nodding her head. “Literally. She would’ve taken out an ad. She adored him. Almost as much as she loved Fitzgerald.”
“And if it was a Jackson Pollock, even a bad one, wouldn’t it be worth a lot, millions of dollars?” I said, looking to Miles for confirmation.
He nodded. “He never sold a painting for more than eight thousand dollars when he was alive. But now? Well, they’re hard to get.”
“She wouldn’t just leave something like that hanging there with no indication of what it was,” I said. “And only a vaguely worded suggestion in her will.”
Peck was still nodding in agreement. “Unless . . . this is the thing of utmost value she wanted us to find.”
“You think your aunt left you a Jackson Pollock and didn’t tell you?” Miles said in surprise. “And then it was stolen?”
“Possibly by the butler,” Peck cried out, with an appreciative laugh for the increasingly zany nature of the tale. “The butler did it! Or it really was a ghost. Or, how about this? The butler is the ghost. Fool’s House is haunted, you know.” She pointed at Miles. “I came here today believing you had stolen this painting off our wall. But now I realize he took it. And then led me, led us, my sister and me, to believe it was you. That’s crazy.”
He grinned at her before offering his arm again. “You’re crazy,” he said as they moved ahead of me, arm in arm. “Shall we continue the tour? We can chase down your Pollock later.”
He sounded doubtful that the painting in question could turn out to be a Jackson Pollock. I too had my doubts, but Peck and Miles had moved on to the hall and I followed them, keeping my thoughts to myself.
“I’m pretty pissed off at that foot fetishist in the costume, trying to lay the blame on me,” Miles was saying to Peck. “I’m going to go after his ass.”
“Tough guy,” Peck cooed at him. She’d dropped the disdain
ful air and was now openly flirtatious. “Aren’t you going to show us your bedroom?”
I was about to suggest that I wanted to see the garden and would meet them outside when Miles turned to me. “Come on, Stella. First the bedrooms, then the indoor pool.”
The master bedroom was predictably and absurdly huge, decorated like a fantasy version of an old men’s club, all mahogany trim and green felt with a “manly” brown rug and heavy drapes. The bed was so far from the television he’d need binoculars to watch it. And the fireplace was big enough that he could roast a goat over the gas flames if he wanted to.
Miles picked up a remote control. “Check this out.” He directed it at the electronic shades and pressed a few buttons, but nothing happened. Then he pointed it at the fireplace with its elaborately carved mantel. “Where the hell’s the music?” he wanted to know, jabbing at other buttons on the remote control in his hand. He kept trying to get the fire to start, directing the remote at the fireplace with increasing vigor. The fire sparked but wouldn’t light, no matter how many times he tried. And then it still wouldn’t light, but it wouldn’t stop sparking either. All of a sudden the shades went down, but just as quickly they sprang back up, and kept up that rhythm, moving fiercely up and down on the windows with a loud electronic moan. He must have found the radio button when he was trying to make the shades stop jumping and the fake fire stop sparking but instead of music a sports radio station broadcasting what sounded like a baseball game came on at full blast. It was very Meat Loaf and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” the announcers describing a play at home plate.
All Peck and I could do was watch as he jabbed the remote into the air. “I. Hate. This. Fucking. System.”
I tried to excuse myself to leave them alone in the bedroom. “I’ll just go back downstairs and—” but Peck wouldn’t hear of it and Miles was sufficiently cowed by his equipment malfunction to scoot us out of the bedroom as quickly as possible.
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