A Note from an Old Acquaintance

by Bill Walker

  “Sure thing, Mr. Ruby.”

  The driver climbed back into the Mercedes and sped off.

  “Thank you,” Joanna said. “Not many men would have done what you did.”

  “No? Well, I don’t think I could ever refuse you anything, Joanna,” he replied.

  She smiled, a warmth suffusing her body.

  “Where is he taking them? Is it a shelter?”

  Erik nodded. “The building was my first project. My father thought it would be a good way to get my feet wet. His foundation, which I also manage, provides their annual budget.”

  Joanna looked into his eyes. In them she saw something more than the powerbroker and the little boy, something that dwarfed them both.

  “I guess his heart was in the right place...like his son’s.”

  She slipped her arm through his and leaned against him. They began strolling back toward the 21 Club....

  A horn honked, breaking Joanna out of her thoughts. She swerved back into her lane and wiped away the tears in her eyes. Where had that special part of Erik gone? Had it slowly slipped away, yet another innocent victim of his unswerving ambition? Didn’t he see it was driving them apart? Surely that sweetness lay buried in him somewhere still? Surely it was worth rescuing?

  Her thoughts returned to Brian. No, she hadn’t told him the whole story because she sensed, no she knew, it would have discouraged him, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that, either.

  What on earth was she going to do?

  Flashing lights up ahead distracted her from her thoughts. The traffic around her began to slow. With a sinking feeling she realized there was an accident up ahead. A bad one.

  “Oh, no,” she mumbled, checking the clock. It was nearly 10:00. Time to call home. Joanna reached for the phone handset just as it rang, startling her. She snatched it up, pushed the SEND button and brought it to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, babe, it’s me.”

  “Hi, I was just reaching for the phone to call you. I’m on the Pike and it’s all backed up. Looks like an accident.”

  “I tried you at the studio half an hour ago. Where were you?”

  Joanna’s mind scrambled for something to say, anything that would make sense.

  “I finished early,” she replied. “So, I decided to get some coffee on Newbury Street and ran into an old friend.”

  “Oh? Anyone I know?”

  “No, just a classmate from Mass Art.” How she hated it when he started asking questions like these. He had no reason to be so possessive, that is, until now....

  “Ah, I see. So, what part of the Pike are you on?”

  “I just passed exit 19.”

  “And how backed up is it?”

  Joanna squinted through the windshield. “It’s got to be at least another mile before I get to the accident scene. The traffic’s just creeping along. They must have only one lane open.”

  Erik sighed. “All right, you won’t be home for at least forty-five minutes. I’ll be in my study, in any event.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Just the Wrightson building again. More revisions I need to go over. It never seems to end. I’ll see you when you get here. Love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said, pushing the END button.

  She replaced the phone onto its magnetic cradle, tears stinging her eyes again, her vision blurring. She’d lied about meeting Brian at Charley’s, but that wasn’t what was really bothering her. What had brought on her tears were those three little words she’d just spoken to her fiancé.

  I love you.

  She’d taken them for granted for so long; now they felt like lies, lies far worse than the one concerning her whereabouts.

  The only thing that made any sense was to break this thing with Brian off, now, before it went any further. But she didn’t know if she had the strength to do it. She certainly didn’t want to do it. Why couldn’t she have met Brian six years ago, instead of Erik, assuming her flighty twenty-year old brain would have recognized Brian for the treasure he was? She’d changed so much in all that time, and Erik hadn’t. And what an awful thought that was.

  Joanna reached for the tissue box in the glove compartment, the tears now flowing in earnest. She would meditate when she got home, that was the best thing. A quiet hour in front of Buddha would focus her mind and show her the true way of her heart. And whatever was revealed she would accept.

  Calmer now, she dabbed her eyes and focused her attention on the road ahead. Traffic seemed to be moving a little faster, edging closer to the cluster of road flares and the collage of flashing lights. It took another twenty minutes before she came abreast of the accident scene. There were three vehicles involved, one of them a van. All were twisted and torn nearly beyond recognition. Three ambulances were parked nearby, their rear doors open. She stared, horrified, at four still forms lying together on the asphalt covered by yellow tarpaulins, one of them much shorter than the others.

  A child.

  Joanna turned her face away, trying to erase the images from her mind, knowing it to be a futile gesture. What her mother had always said now seemed truer than ever: “Enjoy the time you have, Joanna. Life is too short to miss anything.”

  Once past the accident, she pressed the accelerator and sped away, her mind and heart in turmoil.

  She arrived home just past eleven, easing the Mercedes into the three-car garage between Erik’s Jaguar and his immaculate silver 1963 split-window Corvette. She punched the remote, lowering the garage door, locked the 500SL and walked through the side door into the kitchen. Soft indirect lighting gleamed off the granite counters. She placed her handbag on the countertop adjacent to the stainless steel Viking range, threw her coat over one of the chairs surrounding the steel and glass table in the breakfast nook, and headed into the main area of the house. She could tell the maids had been in today, as the usual daily clutter was missing.

  Their home, which Erik had christened Greycroft, was a six thousand square-foot modern Victorian occupying a three-acre lot two miles from Newton Center. Not content with the mundane, Erik had demolished the lot’s original structure—a forty-year-old colonial—hired the top residential architect and interior designer, telling each of them, “I want the new house to look as if it’s been here for a hundred years, but with all the modern conveniences.” The two men had outdone themselves, creating a showplace, every room an immaculate spread out of Architectural Digest. And while Joanna enjoyed the amenities, she often felt as if she were a guest in her own home.

  True to his word, she found Erik hunched over rolls of blueprints in his study, a four hundred square-foot mahogany-paneled expanse. He looked up when she entered the room.

  “Hi, sweetie,” he said, yawning. “This project’s a bear, let me tell you.”

  Joanna bent over him and kissed him on the cheek. “How bad is it?”

  Ruby leaned back in his chair, tossing a pencil onto the blueprints. She noticed a yellow legal pad covered with the scrawl of his notations. “Old Man Wrightson read me the riot act today, telling me to get my act together or he was taking his business elsewhere.” He shook his head, scowling. “I’m telling you, the man doesn’t want to spend the money it takes to do things right.”

  “Not everyone does, Honey. Not like you. And it is his money.”

  “Well, you’re right about that.” He gave her a penetrating look. “Anyway, how was your day?”

  She turned away from him. “It was okay. Lots of student meetings. And I’m really tired. I’m going to meditate for awhile.”

  Ruby nodded. “That’s fine, but before you do, I want you to look this over.”

  He reached under the rolls of blueprints and pulled out a piece of poster board. Pasted to it, along with the requisite crop marks, fold lines and notations to the printer, was the layout for the front and back of a tri-fold brochure.

  Joanna took it from him and stared at it. A moment passed before she realized what it was: the mailer Erik had
hired Nick to design for her first show. She had to admit that Nick had done his usual terrific job. On the front was a picture of one of her more dramatic sculptures, a lighted sphere with fiber optic appendages.

  The inside of the brochure was another matter. Nick had used a photo of her posing next to another one of her pieces. She was dressed in a black body suit and reclined on the floor, propped up on one elbow, with the other arm draped casually over a drawn-up knee. The photographer had captured her with what she now considered to be too much of a “come hither” look. Erik loved it, of course, had it blown up to nearly life size and hung in his office. At the top of the page was a headline reading:

  JOANNA RICHMAN: AN EXCITING NEW FACE!

  “Well, what do you think?” Ruby asked.

  “How could you?” she said, tossing the layout onto the desk. “How could you do this? I told you— I’m not the show! Did you hear anything I said? Do you even care how I feel?”

  He shot her an annoyed look. “Of course, I care.”

  “Then, why, Erik? Why are you using this—this cheesecake? It’s degrading.”

  Ruby stood up, a vein throbbing in his temple. “It’s not degrading. It’s a terrific picture of a beautiful woman who just happens to be you. Something you’ve never been comfortable with. And I wish to hell I knew the reason why!”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It sure as hell matters to me. I’m proud of you and I want to show you off.”

  “I don’t want to be shown off. I want my art to speak for itself.”

  “It will, Joanna, it will, but the public loves a pretty face to go with its entertainment. It’s just the way it is....”

  Shaking her head, she moved toward the door. “You really don’t understand, do you? My art’s not ‘entertainment.’ It’s a part of me.”

  She walked out, tears stinging her eyes once again, and ran up the stairs. Passing the master bedroom, she rushed to the end of the hall and entered her meditation room, slamming the door behind her. She left the light off and leaned back against the door, sobbing.

  How could he be so stubborn? Couldn’t he see what he was doing? Couldn’t he see that to market her work in that way only cheapened it...and her? Why did he always have to try and get his way? It was almost as if he didn’t care what she thought, that she was just another part of his business.

  Joanna pushed that thought from her mind, wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and stepped into the middle of the room, empty except for a large down pillow that sat facing a statue of the Buddha. She sat down on the pillow, placed herself in the lotus position and closed her eyes, letting the silence in the room calm her. She began her rhythmic breathing and called her mantra to mind.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Joanna, I’m sorry. Can we talk about this?”

  Joanna opened her eyes, knowing that any attempt to meditate now was pointless. She rose to her feet went to the door and opened it. Erik stood at the threshold, looking contrite.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m a schmuck, I know it. I thought I knew better. I don’t.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said.

  Ruby took her hand. “Forgive me?”

  Joanna nodded. “Yes.”

  Ruby took her in his arms and hugged her. “I’ll tell Nick to change it, take out the photo, put in some more of your work. That okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, hugging him back. She held onto him so he wouldn’t see the tears spring anew.

  What on earth was she going to do?

  11

  BRIAN AWOKE SATURDAY MORNING more rested, more alive than he’d felt in a long time. The sun sparkled through the bare-limbed trees outside his windows, dappling the carpet with a kaleidoscope of light and shadow, and somewhere on the floor above him he heard a woman laugh. He smiled. Someone was having a little early morning fun. A glance at the clock told him it was just past 7:00. Time to face the day.

  Rising, he threw on his robe, and went upstairs to retrieve his Boston Globe from the front stoop. He stood for a moment, struck by the beauty of the early morning light glinting off the windows of the ancient brownstones across the way. The air was warmer today, nearly in the forties, and birds twittered in the canopy of stately maples and lindens high overhead. It might not be spring yet, but the day seemed to hold the promise of something nearly as good.

  Back downstairs, Brian toasted a bagel, spread it with cream cheese, poured himself a tall mug of fresh coffee and sat at his breakfast table, leafing through the paper. The hard news was the usual panoply of horrors, sprinkled with liberal doses of moralizing. Putting the front section aside, he turned to Arts & Entertainment, checking to see who might be playing at the Paradise or any of the other clubs he liked to frequent.

  Nothing too interesting there, mostly a bunch of bands struggling through the last gasps of New Wave. And there wasn’t anything special in the Movies section, either.

  Turning the page, he read through the gallery listings, checking out the exhibitions.

  So, Weller, interested in art now, are you?

  “Can’t imagine why,” he said, taking a bite of his bagel, a big sloppy grin on his face.

  He did find a number of listings of galleries at the eastern end of Newbury Street announcing new exhibitions starting that day. One of them, The Holliston Gallery, was hosting a show for Alexander DeLarge, an artist of the Photo-realism School. These were painters whose skills were so exacting and so refined they could paint a still life or a portrait that looked as real as any photo. Brian had always had tremendous respect for those who could draw or paint, his own artistic skills limited to stick figures and crude disembodied faces. The examples of Photo-realist paintings he’d seen in the past had fascinated him no end. Critics hated them, however, accusing the artists of being little better than commercial hacks best suited for billboards and movie posters. Brian thought the critics were fools. Anyone with half a brain could splatter paint on a canvas and call it art. Hell, even J. Fred Muggs—a precocious chimpanzee famous for his antics on The Today Show in the 1950s—had sold finger paintings looking very much like the canvases Jackson Pollock had painted on some of his better days.

  On a whim, Brian decided to visit the gallery after putting in some time on the new book and a quick visit to the office, if for no other reason than to show his support for the artist.

  After cleaning up his breakfast dishes and showering, Brian brought out his Royal and got to work. The words came hard, though, his mind continually returning to Joanna’s comments about his stories. She was so dead-on right that he found his admiration for her growing by the moment. The problem was, he was about halfway through the latest book and was coming to the realization that it was pointless to continue working on it. It was more of the same stuff he’d been collecting rejection slips on for the past five years. And did he really want that to continue? Did he really want to put in the titanic effort it took to finish a book only to have it end up in his dresser drawer, collecting dust along with the others?

  He forced himself to re-read it from the beginning, resisting the urge to tweak it as he went along. Two hours later, after reaching the point where he’d left off, he realized the book was a failure. It had no heart. Sure, there was plenty of suspense and action, plenty of “red herrings,” but in the end he didn’t give a crap about what happened to anyone in the story. They were all interchangeable. Even his protagonist seemed bland and colorless to him now.

  You can do better than this, Weller.

  The problem was he didn’t know what the hell to do.

  It was just approaching noon, when he tossed the manuscript back in its box, threw on his leather jacket and walked to the office. He spent the next half an hour going over the books and checking supplies to see if they needed to order more videotape come Monday. Everything was in order, so he hit the street. He debated whether to stop for something to eat and decided against it. Time enough for food later.

  The Holliston Gall
ery occupied the basement level of a redbrick Queen Anne row house located between Clarendon and Dartmouth Streets, and he almost passed it by, nestled as it was between an Indian restaurant and a bohemian style coffee house. Going inside, he was struck by the tranquility of the interior. Walls were a stark white, as were the freestanding partitions stationed at strategic points. Soft track lighting overhead highlighted each of the paintings without overwhelming them. Immediately inside the door was a poster set up on an easel. It depicted an example of the artist’s work, the artist’s name and the dates of the exhibition.

  A slight woman in her fifties, with straight gray hair, approached him. “Welcome to Holliston Gallery. I’m Claire Holliston,” she said, smiling. “Can I help you with anything?”

  “Hi. I’m not sure, actually. I saw your notice in the paper this morning, and I thought I’d come by. I really love this style.”

  The woman’s smile widened and she leaned closer to Brian. “It really goes against the grain nowadays, and that’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing.”

  Brian chuckled, charmed by the woman’s warmth and candor. She pointed toward the rear of the gallery. “There are refreshments in the back, coffee and pastries, and the artist is ‘holding court.’ He’s a little full of himself, but he comes by it honestly.”

  Brian thanked the woman and began looking at the paintings. Every one was a dramatic tableau with chiaroscuro lighting, making the images look as if they were frame blow-ups from out of a motion picture. In fact, the artist had reinforced that impression by using the same Panavision-style wide-screen aspect ratio for most of the pieces on display. It was mesmerizing.

  He worked his way down one wall to the back where he spotted the artist conversing with two patrons. The table with the refreshments stood nearby. Brian nodded to the artist, who watched him grab a blueberry Danish and fill a disposable plastic mug with coffee, all without missing a beat of his pontification. And while Brian could admire the man’s facile way with pompous pronouncements, he only needed to hear a snippet of the conversation for him to agree with the gallery owner’s opinion. The man was full himself.