Lesson In Red

by Maria Hummel

  “He’ll resign in exchange for them keeping it quiet,” I predicted. “Erik will be expelled.” I paused, shifting my feet on the sandy pavement. “Except I’m still not letting this go, Ray. I’m not going to let her be buried twice.”

  “Good,” he said in an approving tone.

  “I’m going to have to quit the Rocque.”

  “Give it a week or two,” he advised. “Janis might change her mind and want to help you.”

  Ray’s body was tense beside mine. The streetlight sharpened the lines of his face, reminding me of the night in Wonder Valley.

  “What about you?” I said. “What do you think about what I saw in Nelson’s office?”

  “I think you shouldn’t have gone in there,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen Brenae on the wall.” I shuddered at the memory of the dim chamber and Brenae with her sexy, parted lips, her hopeful message. “And then the stalking petition. That was strange.”

  “Best not to dwell on it,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s not your fight. Likely Nelson led Brenae along and then dumped her like everyone else when she started to crack up.”

  “What about her footage of Nelson and your brother?”

  “What about it? Even if she knew who my brother was, she wouldn’t have connected his death with Nelson.” He sounded sure. “And even if she did, she wasn’t fool enough to pursue it. Brenae’s fight was with Hal. She thought he was blind, and she was going to make him see. Watch me. Remember?”

  “How could I forget?”

  Brenae hadn’t asked to hang in that dim shrine, hidden away, an artifact. She’d asked the world to see her.

  “You’re shaking.” As if by instinct, Ray put an arm around my shoulders.

  His touch jolted me. I wanted to lean into it. I wanted him to pull us tight together. “I’m mad,” I admitted. “I’m also glad you’re here.” I raised my face to his, meeting his eyes. A moment passed, during which neither of us moved, and I didn’t breathe.

  Ray sighed regretfully and pulled away. “I wouldn’t have missed you,” he said, and stood up, brushing his arms as if to remove the sensation of my skin against his. He took a step away from me, spun back. “How early do you get to LAX, when you fly?”

  “At least an hour. More since 9/11,” I said, also springing up. I refused to ask him now if he was returning to L.A. I took out my keys. “You should go.” I couldn’t have wished for a more banal parting, I added internally. “Have a safe trip.”

  Ray held out a hand to me and then let it drop, his expression cloudy. There was something else he needed to tell, or was hiding. I waited. He owed me the whole truth, and as the quiet dragged on and he didn’t leave, I hoped he might stay. But then a parking cop came up and told us we had to pay or move on, and the chance was lost. While the cop watched, we gave each other a businesslike hug good-bye and got in our separate cars and drove off. I told myself not to, but I looked back for Ray. The night had sealed his face away, and all I saw were two bright headlights falling behind me as the traffic thickened and the exits came.

  21

  THE NEXT MORNING, I IGNORED my phone’s silence and plunged into Rocque business, checking proofs, copyediting, attending a planning meeting. Janis was not there, but our director, Bas Terrant, shared the happy announcement that our curators’ efforts to bring a show of new Cuban artists had finally paid off. A familiar buzz filled the room as everyone chimed in with ideas—this was the Rocque at its best—and beyond us, the building seemed to expand with our plans, from the carpentry room to the galleries, to the office tower where we typed and talked. After a while, Bas cleared his throat, flashed a shiny, uncomfortable smile, and got to the bad news. Our latest box office numbers were still high, courtesy of the notoriety of Kim Lord’s murder, but not high enough to get the museum out of debt. We might have to face layoffs down the road. This year. A ten percent reduction in staff. No one looked surprised, but many looked frustrated and resistant, including our chief curator, Lynne Feldman. I cornered her afterward and relayed my pleasure at seeing her in Wonder Valley.

  “It was quite the weekend,” she said, tucking in her chair. “But Packing was the highlight.”

  I asked her to clarify what she’d said that night, about LAAC brushing Brenae under the rug, and what that might do to her legacy.

  “I don’t know if a twenty-two-year-old has a legacy,” said Lynne, frowning at my choice of words. “But I’m surprised by Hal’s response. When I contacted him about the work I’d heard Brenae had done at school, he said most of it was destroyed by her, and good riddance. He acted like she’d suddenly started making rubbish.”

  Today was the meeting between Hal and his bosses at LAAC. I wondered how he would talk to them about Brenae now. I bet he would be singing a different tune.

  Lynne gathered up her notes from the meeting with her red-painted nails. “Why the interest?”

  “Just a fan,” I said.

  “I’ve seen too many careers snuffed out too soon,” said Lynne. She looked at me soberly, and I knew we were both thinking of Kim Lord and the little office far below us where her body had been struck down. “I stay sane by focusing on the living. And this place.” She patted the plain, off-white wall of our conference room. “Well, maybe not this room,” she added. “It needs something, doesn’t it? It’s needed something for years . . .” She trailed off, but her valedictory tone was clear.

  “Do you think the Rocque will survive?” I said.

  “The more important question is: Will the art survive? And who will continue to shape its meaning?” said Lynne. She clasped her notes to her chest and swept past me, trailing the faint smell of bergamot. “Good to see you back. I can’t stand this crackpot place without a few sane people.”

  YEGINA’S BOYFRIEND, HIRO, CAME BY my office at the end of the day, his clothes rumpled, his eyes caved in by jet lag, and perhaps by tears. I motioned for him to sit down. His appearance worried me. With his broad shoulders and slow smile, Hiro was handsome in a warm, reassuring way. But today he exuded edginess and discontent.

  “Don’t tell her I was here,” he said. “But I just want to understand: Is it me? She would tell you if it was me, wouldn’t she?”

  “It’s not you,” I said. “It’s the timing. You rushed her.”

  How could I explain—if Yegina hadn’t already—all the ways she’d tried to keep her last marriage alive: therapists, retreats, partial separations, even an open relationship, and that her ex-husband had taken advantage of every one, and her bank account, until exhaustion had finally broken her.

  Hiro stood up and began flipping through a catalog of Warhol screen prints on my windowsill. “I thought she would be happy. Now that she’s not—I don’t know.”

  “Give her some space. Let her decide what her happiness is.”

  His hand on the open book, Hiro gazed out my window to the concert hall that was titanium-paneled now, almost finished. The sides gleamed, curving and whitening the sunlight. “What’s that movie where the guy decides to wait outside a girl’s window for a hundred days and if she doesn’t come out to him, he’s gone forever?” he said to the view. “And it rains on him and everything, and she doesn’t come out. She just watches him suffer. Finally, one night, he goes. I didn’t like him leaving. I always thought true love shouldn’t have a condition. One hundred days. What kind of love expires in one hundred days?” He paused for a long time, so long that I thought he was done speaking.

  “Maybe—”

  “Now I don’t know,” he finished. “Would she believe him if he didn’t show his limits? He would have no self-respect.”

  I knew the movie’s name. I remembered the scene where the dark-haired boy gave up and walked alone and heartbroken down the alley, the town’s fireworks exploding above him, and later when the girl in the pink coat came to him, solemn with her desire. But the name of the movie didn’t matter. What mattered was that my friend was falling for Hiro, and it frightened her. She was
afraid she’d mess up again.

  “I always liked that he left. He finally let her decide,” I said. “On her own.”

  Hiro looked down at the open catalog, the bright colors of the screen prints, studying them for another lengthy interval.

  “You liked that he left?” he said, shutting the book with a thump.

  “I liked that she went and found him,” I said. “Maybe let yourself be found.”

  Hiro nodded thoughtfully and turned from the window. “Have fun tonight. She really wants to be with you. She says you’re her wisest friend, even though you don’t think you are.”

  “Doubtful,” I said, smiling. “But it’s nice to be missed.”

  “Right,” Hiro said, slapping my doorjamb. “I’m going to try that.”

  LET YOURSELF BE FOUND.

  In the movie, the young woman goes in search of her admirer. She enters the projection room where he works, where he stands in blue-white light, feeding reels into the machine.

  He stares. She has found him, and this answers the question of his love. Yes. But for a few seconds, they stare, disbelieving. Then her hands flicker to his shoulders; his arms go around her; he lifts her, spins her, all the way to another room, for a kiss. On the projector behind them, the reel flutters to its end. Its soft whisper stops.

  Time stops for love.

  And yet. What if she had not come? What would that have done to him, and to her?

  Brenae was last seen entering her studio on Tuesday. As far as we knew, she had spent the entirety of Wednesday alone and killed herself before the next day dawned. What had she been waiting for, all that time? For someone to find her? If not Erik, then Layla or Zania, or Janis or Nelson or Hal, someone, anyone who had pretended to be her lover, her friend, her supporter? How long would she sit in that room, her body hollowing, becoming a lack of self, becoming no one?

  At the end of the day, I drove home, west into blinding sun, my eyes aching all the way into their sockets. I was seeing Brenae’s last full day not as a retreat from her world, but a test of it, hour after hour ticking by, the studio lightening and then darkening, the clatter and voices outside and the stillness and silence within. The replaceability of everything in the room, her art most of all. What was her art worth? What was her life worth?

  The gun waited for her choice.

  Watch me.

  BY THE TIME I TOOK the stairs to my apartment to change for my costume date with Yegina, I thought I had done an excellent job forcing the two cases and Ray from my mind. At least I did in five-minute bursts, and then the series of impressions would return: Erik and Brenae on the mattress; Layla sitting at the edge of the pool, legs submerged to her knees; Brenae and her gun on Nelson’s wall; Nelson and Calvin leaving the party; Ray holding the palmier cookie. It was evening and no call from Ray or Alicia or Janis. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but not this.

  I sat down at my laptop and scanned the local papers’ websites. Nothing about LAAC or Hal resigning. It was too soon.

  The sublet felt less like my home than ever. There was my heap of books and printouts on Françoise Gilot, and there was my little pile of dishes in the drain—one plate, one cup, one pan, a cluster of silverware. My sheets, my toothbrush, my dresses in the closet. Still, the rooms felt alien. I turned on the radio while I got dressed, listening to the report of the fire consuming the hills to the east of the city, and the sudden promise of rain. I drank a glass of wine. It tasted sour. I stared around at the dining room set, the rocket lamps. Nothing looked out of place, but everything seemed jarred and different. Something had happened to Ray. Or was happening.

  Frowning in the mirror, I donned the red wig, a cloak, and bright lipstick. I didn’t look like anything or anybody, and I would be going to a neighborhood where almost everyone had a flair for appearances. But I was tired of appearances tonight. I just wanted to be invisible.

  My intercom buzzed.

  “I’m Raggedy-Gon Jinn,” I said downstairs to Yegina’s look of wry shock, which was enhanced by her black lips and eyeliner, all black clothes, black gloves. “What are you, a goth?”

  “Goth Moth.” She gestured to gauzy pale green wings in her back seat.

  “Nice,” I said. “That’s effort.”

  “So tell me what’s happening with Hal Giroux,” she said.

  “I can’t,” I said. “But his days might be numbered.”

  A shadow crossed her face.

  “What?” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s about a new museum,” she said. “I’m being recruited.”

  THE TRAFFIC ON THE WAY to the bar was congested enough to review Yegina’s story twice, once for hopes and once for worries. We lurched to a stop seven or eight times behind the same white van, and each time I couldn’t help thinking that the motion of our car, in this line of cars, echoed my worries tonight, revving and slamming over and over, but never going anywhere.

  A few days ago, Yegina had gotten a call from Hal Giroux. He wanted to gauge her interest in applying to be the exhibitions manager for a new downtown museum. A museum bigger and newer than the Rocque, free to all visitors, eclipsing us in every way—programming, architecture, and events. She and Hal talked about the scope of the museum, its funding, potential architects. (“Vera Trudeau is one of the architects on his list. Can you imagine? So dreamy.”) Then Yegina asked about the fate of the Rocque under such a development, and Hal was evasive. “Institutions age,” he told her. “Some fade. New leadership can’t always save them.”

  “What should I do?” Yegina said. “I can’t betray Janis. I never liked Hal. Then again, he built LAAC. Can you imagine the city without it? He raised so many generations of talented students.”

  I could hear the real reason beneath Yegina’s indecision: if she passed up this chance, she might never get such a big break again.

  “Wait,” I suggested. “Don’t say no or yes. Yet.”

  “Ha. That strategy went over really well with Hiro.” Yegina sighed. “We’re on hiatus right now. Goth Moth is a free spirit.”

  “What does that mean?” I said. “Hooking up with other people?”

  Yegina answered by careening around a corner, narrowly missing three pedestrians and an entire strip mall.

  “I guess not,” I said, laughing.

  She glanced over, her thick makeup hollowing her eyes. I didn’t want to betray Hiro’s visit to my office, but the moment demanded something.

  “He cares about you so much,” I ventured. “He’s going to wait for you.”

  We were on Melrose now, with its glib store names and fetching, two-story buildings lined up as bright as magnets on a refrigerator.

  “Have your night out,” I added. “That’s what you wanted.”

  22

  YEGINA DONNED HER WINGS, AND I helped her tie the slippery sea-green ribbons. Before we even finished securing them, several people had passed on the crowded sidewalk and made appreciative comments. “Go, Luna,” said one.

  “Fairy freaking godmother,” said another, “grant my wish.”

  “Ready or not, here’s Goth Moth,” Yegina said, and I took a step back to regard her.

  In the twilight, under the shine of street lamps, she looked beautiful, more beautiful than I had ever seen her. The tight black costume and black makeup contrasted sharply with the wings that floated behind her, transparent, ethereal. Her black hair spilled; her high cheekbones angled up with the wings.

  “Is it crooked?” she said. “You’re frowning.”

  “It’s fantastic,” I said, unexpectedly breathless. Yegina’s costume wasn’t just a disguise; it was an oracle. And it was predicting that Yegina would rise, she’d fly, but she’d stay herself, too. “You look amazing.”

  You’re going to work for a major new museum, I thought. You’re going to marry Hiro. You’re going to have kids in a few years, and Hiro will cut back on his career so yours can flourish. You’ll become another wonder of this city, the daughter of an immigrant fleeing
war, reshaping your America. You might even finally start listening to decent music.

  “Thank you,” Yegina said, then added with a kind tone, “You sure you want to wear that cape? You could just go in the wig.”

  My phone rang. It was Alicia Ruiz.

  I held up a hand and turned from my friend. “Hello, Detective,” I said cautiously.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said. “I was wondering if you’d heard from Ray.”

  “Not since last night,” I said, my mouth going dry. “He was flying home.”

  “What time did you see him last?”

  “Around ten. Is he not in North Carolina?”

  “He told his family—and me—that he was taking a midnight red-eye last night. He never showed up.”

  “Maybe he had to do stand-by?”

  “Without his suitcase or wallet? I checked his apartment. I need to reach him. This afternoon, Erik Reidl confessed to his involvement in the death of Brenae Brasil.”

  “What?”

  Yegina saw my face and gave me a questioning look. I touched her arm and took a few steps away, cupping my ear.

  “My reaction, too,” said Alicia. “Apparently he described the scene pretty accurately. He said Brenae opened the safe where she kept her gun and asked him to take the weapon. Away from her. He refused. Then he panicked and left.”

  “So he didn’t shoot her.”

  “He claims he ‘murdered’ her by pressuring her. He’s full of himself. Anyway—” She stopped short, as if remembering our roles. “I wanted to get Ray’s interviews with Erik to the LASD to catch any discrepancies. Tell me if you hear from him.”

  “Wait,” I said, sensing Alicia was about to hang up. “Did you contact Janis?”

  “She hasn’t heard from him, either.”

  I swallowed. If Ray hadn’t contacted me, it meant he was distancing himself. But if he hadn’t contacted either of them, it meant something was wrong.