She was still sitting hunched over her notebook when her breakfast arrived. Half an hour later, Reception called to say her car was waiting to take her to the airport.
Sonja lay back in the luxurious, king-sized bed, her breakfast tray beside her. She had arranged a hair-dressing appointment, manicure and massage in the hotel, leaving plenty of time to prepare for the flight, and was looking forward to being back in Europe again. She always looked on the Old World, where she had grown up, as home. Harry was dead, Raymond was dead, and she had vowed that the years of pain and obsession would be buried with them. She would choose the right man now where she had chosen the wrong one before, would choose a real life now over a living death. There was just one final statement she had to make.
Arthur, smart in a navy suit with broad pinstripes, walked in from the dining area with an armful of newspapers. ‘Vallance got good coverage – they’re using photographs of him from back in the fifties. There’s the New York Times, LA Times, Variety . . .’ He had not questioned Sonja any further about Vallance’s death, fearful of disturbing the fragile equilibrium of her mood.
Sonja read the articles, then turned to the arts page in the LA Times. She glanced over at Arthur. ‘You read this?’ Arthur sat on the edge of the bed and Sonja went on, ‘It’s about the fiasco in Spain at the Prado – they fired some art historian who wrongly hailed some painting found in the archives as an undiscovered Goya. It was already registered as a Mariano Salvador Maella.’
Arthur picked up a piece of toast and bit into the crust. ‘He was one of Goya’s contemporaries, lesser known, but how the hell they could confuse his work with Goya’s is beyond me.’
Sonja continued to read, then looked over at him again. ‘They only had a preliminary sketch listed as Maella and registered in their records.’
‘Typical,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But these national art galleries have so many political strings attached and are run by assholes.’
‘It says that they should have bought Goya’s Marianito?
‘Better still, they should have snapped up Condesa de Chinchon – it’s recognized as his best work. That’s in private hands, though.’
‘Is it?’ Sonja peered at the paper. ‘They say they don’t have the funds to do renovations so that they can show one of the finest art collections in the world. It’s bursting at the seams with nine out of ten of its treasures buried in vaults for lack of space . . .’ She smiled at him. ‘Would you like to be let loose in there?’ He wandered to the window without replying. ‘Could you do a Goya?’ she asked, turning to the fashion page.
‘No. I can’t do anyone that good – every brushstroke is a signature. The stuff Harry had wasn’t in the same class.’
She lowered the paper. ‘Are you all right? Not nervous about the deal, are you?’ He kept his back to her, so she crossed to him. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
He tried to move away, but she caught his arm. ‘Tell me what it is.’
‘It’s nothing, sweetheart. Now, if you’re going to get your hair done, I should—’
‘I don’t need to. I can stay with you.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Not that you need any primping – I love you any way you look.’
She reached up and touched his cheek. ‘Thank you, but it gives me confidence to look good. You know how I hate standing up on platforms, let alone giving speeches. Though this will be the last one.’
‘Sonja, don’t talk that way. You’ll work again if you want to. Just give it time.’
‘I’ve given all the time I intend to give to my work in this lifetime,’ Sonja said, a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘That’s over now. Harry killed something deep inside me, and it just won’t come alive again.’
She was about to say more, but Arthur swore, almost frightening her. The tension he had been suppressing since he walked into the room now rushed to the surface in a torrent of words. ‘He’s dead, Sonja, for God’s sake – the man is dead. You make everything I am, everything we are, second best, second rate. Whenever you bring up that son-of-a-bitch – and you do, at every opportunity—’
‘I certainly don’t,’ Sonja said, needled. ‘I don’t know what more I could have done to put him out of my life. It was just that PI asking questions about him stirred up the memories again.’
‘Really? Well, I’m sick of hearing his name, and I’ve been patient, but I don’t know how much longer I can go on living with just the leftovers. I don’t want to hear about him any more. Whatever he did, whatever happened between you, is in the past, and if you want to keep it in the present, then I’m past, Sonja, because I can’t take it. I never wanted to get involved in this paintings scam, I did it for you. I—’
‘It’s going to make you very rich,’ Sonja snapped.
Arthur moved quickly across the room and grabbed her. ‘You don’t hear me, Sonja. Believe me, I know how much we’ll be worth. We’ve had to wait for it long enough, but without you, and I mean all of you, it won’t mean anything. All I want is some kind of assurance that he’s not going to dominate your life from his fucking grave. I don’t understand how you can keep on and on about him, keep loving such a cheap bastard.’
‘You think I still love him?’
‘It’s obvious. You can’t stop talking about the man! You go on and on about him to anyone who’ll listen, even to a woman digging around for stuff that could put us in jail. If that’s not love, then . . .’ He raised his hands in a helpless gesture.
Sonja put her arms around him. ‘I don’t love him, you big fool.’
He had to prise her away from him, wanting to look into her green-grey eyes see if she was lying. They were steady, and she didn’t flinch from his gaze.
‘I hated him, and I have hated with such intensity I have hardly been alive. He betrayed and destroyed everything I valued, he made everything I was meaningless. He threw all I had done for him back in my face, mangled all the love and care I gave him. It was as if he held me in his bare hands and kept wringing me like a rag, until—’
Arthur interrupted, his voice soft, ‘I’ve heard this before, Sonja. I’m not listening to you, but you should listen to me. I don’t want his leftovers, I need more – and if you can’t be free of him, then, for my own sanity, I have to be free of you.’
The phone rang and Arthur snatched it up, exchanged a couple of curt words with the caller, then said Sonja would be right down. ‘The hair salon – you’re late.’
He made as if to leave, but she held out her arms to him in entreaty. This time he did not, as he always did, cradle her to him and say it was all right.
‘I’ll be ready in a couple of hours,’ she said, letting her arms fall back by her sides. ‘I’ll never mention his name again.’
He wanted to smack her, shake her, throw her across the bed. He said, ‘Not enough – that’s not enough. I don’t give a shit if you talk about him, that’s not what I’ve been trying to get across to you and you know it. Whether it’s love or hate is immaterial. I’m just sick and tired of him being between us. When he was alive it was bad enough, but now he’s dead . . . I sometimes wish to Christ I’d pulled the trigger.’
She gave a strange, sad smile. ‘No, you didn’t, but I did.’
He felt as if he’d been punched. He swallowed hard. ‘Go and have your hair done.’
‘I love you,’ she said softly.
Arthur halted in his tracks. ‘Say that again.’
She was smiling again now, but a different smile of fun and pleasure. ‘I love you.’ She laughed.
‘No, what you said before that. After I said I wished I’d pulled the trigger. Repeat what you said.’
‘I said I wished I did.’
‘No, you didn’t. You said, “I did.”’
‘Artistic licence – I needed an exit line.’
‘No, your exit line was after you said you loved me. So-was it a joke?’
She closed her eyes. It was not that she was afraid to look at him, she
was afraid she might lose him, that as soon as she had decided wholeheartedly to commit herself to him, he would be the one to back away. Suddenly she knew that that was more than she could bear.
‘Of course it was a joke,’ she said. ‘I mean, if you wanted to pull the trigger, do you think I didn’t?’
‘Open your eyes,’ he said, bending closer, and she did as he asked.
‘Give me the exit line, only this time look at me.’
‘I love you,’ she said softly.
‘You got me,’ he said, his voice gruff. He had waited a long time to hear her say it, and mean it.
Lorraine ate her plastic lunch on the nine thirty flight out of Newark, eager to get the interview with Nick Nathan over and done with, and hoping the journey wouldn’t be a waste of time. She landed in Albuquerque just after lunch and stepped out into the surprisingly pleasant dry air of a high altitude and to the limitless New Mexico sky: even in fall it was like walking on the bottom of an ocean of blue, which made even the mountains surrounding the desert city seem only knee-high. She carried her jacket over her arm, her briefcase in one hand and made her way through the terminal to the travel agent’s. She picked up a rental car, a Buick, then, armed with road maps, pulled out of town into the landscape of grey rock, desert pine and juniper to look for signs for the 1-25 to Santa Fe.
As she joined the Interstate, Lorraine noticed on the map that its first thirty miles followed the course of the Rio Grande, and she could not resist turning off the highway for a few minutes to look at the great canyon, plunging down hundreds of feet to a truly breathtaking depth. Its sheer scale produced an overwhelming sense of the measureless, almost the eternal, and Lorraine understood now why so many artists and writers had chosen to make New Mexico their home. Still, she allowed herself only a couple of minutes’ delay – one middle-aged painter was all the scenery she had come to see.
Sonja came back from the beauty salon feeling glossy, gleaming and beautiful from top to toe, and she knew that part of the feeling of newness and freshness had nothing to do with the beauty treatments or the new hairdo: she felt that she and Arthur had turned the corner at last. It had been her fault, she knew, that it had taken so long, but she would make it up to him now.
When she got back Arthur was not in the suite, but there was plenty of time to dress, and she decided to wear a tailored navy suit with a crisp white shirt, dark navy stockings and matching navy court shoes. She had a Valentino navy and white check trench-style coat that she would slip around her shoulders. She had made up carefully and slightly more heavily than usual, glossing her lips in a deep pink shade she had bought downstairs to match her expertly lacquered nails, and she smiled in the mirror at her new manicure. It had been months, years, since she had taken such care of her hands, but she could have inch-long talons covered in scarlet glitter now if she wished. It had been months, too, since she had bothered to accentuate her eyes, her most striking feature, with shadow and mascara and the fine tracing of dark liner on the lids, which extended their length. When she had finished she studied her reflection carefully – a new woman, she thought, or, rather, a transformed one, risen from the ashes of the old.
She checked her soft leather document case for her passport and tickets, then snapped it shut and cast an eye over the rest of the luggage, which she had lined up by the main door of the suite. She checked that Arthur’s cases were packed and ready, then searched the room to make sure nothing had been left behind. The limo would be arriving any minute, and she wondered where Arthur had got to. She hated last-minute scrambles to get to airports.
The phone rang – Reception, as she had expected, to say that their car was waiting. She told them to send up a porter for the luggage, and to take the other items the concierge was holding for her to the car. When the porter arrived with the trolley and loaded the luggage, there was still no sign of Arthur and Sonja sat at the writing desk drumming her fingers.
She didn’t hear him come in, but she turned as she heard his voice. He counted the luggage, and then, as Sonja had done, reminded the porter not to forget the other things with the concierge. ‘They know, I told them,’ she said, then gasped. Arthur was wearing a white shirt with a Russian collar and a dark grey pinstriped suit. His hair had been trimmed and he was sporting a pair of round Armani sunglasses with steel frames. ‘My, my, you’ve been shopping,’ she said, smiling, and he posed with one hand on his hip.
‘What do you think? It’s too straight?’
‘You look fabulous – turn around.’ He did so, and Sonja clapped. ‘You look so good – I really like it. My God, new shoes as well.’
Arthur looked down and removed his shades. ‘Yeah, got everything from the same place, and I had a haircut and a shave at the barber’s in the hotel, and . . .’ He dug in his pocket and produced a small leather box, which he tossed to her. Then he looked closely at her, and took in her appearance with surprise: it had been months since he had seen her looking so elegant, so feminine, and he was almost unnerved by it. ‘You look very grown-up,’ he said, walking round her.
‘I’ve had all these things for ages,’ she said. ‘Just never got around to wearing them.’ She opened the box and gasped – it contained a solitaire diamond ring. She snapped it shut as the porter wheeled out their luggage. ‘Are you crazy? I thought we’d agreed to be careful until . . . afterwards. How much did this cost?’
He pointed to the box. ‘That was a legitimate hole in my legitimate earnings. Now open it again. You’re supposed to look at me, all dewy-eyed, then I put it on your finger.’
‘What?’
‘Jesus Christ, it’s an engagement ring – didn’t you look at it properly?’
Sonja opened the box again and started to laugh gently. ‘Engagement? Aren’t we a bit old for that kind of—’
Arthur took the box from her and removed the ring. He hurled the box across the room. ‘Now, gimme your hand and let me do this properly.’
The ring was a little too large for her finger, but it didn’t matter – it made Sonja feel happy and warm. Arm in arm, they went to the elevators, where the porter was waiting.
Sonja twisted the ring round and round her finger, then she held up her hand to look at the stone. Arthur laughed as she examined it closely, and by the time the elevator stopped on the ground floor they were both laughing: the jewel was a fake, but an exceptionally good one. Sonja kept turning it on her finger as she watched the luggage being loaded into the trunk of the limo. Arthur’s ‘wardrobe’ of paintings had been sent ahead on an earlier flight so that the canvases would be stretched, framed and ready for collection on their arrival in Germany, as had the new piece of work Sonja proposed to exhibit for the first time in Berlin. While she was receiving her award, Arthur would be delivering his own exhibition to the small independent gallery in Rreuzberg – a cover for negotiating the sale of a second collection, accumulated over years and valued at twenty million dollars, with the list of private buyers he and Sonja had carefully selected.
After leaving the Rio Grande flood plain, Lorraine drove through a switchback of gently rolling hills before she reached the lower slopes of La Bajaba, and began the ascent of the notoriously steep mountain. At last she reached the plateau and the centuries-old settlement of Santa Fe came into view, surrounded by the same backdrop of mountain landscape against the huge, azure sky. She drove into town, chose a small motel near the downtown area almost at random and booked a room in which to change and make phone calls.
She rang Nick Nathan’s number. A woman answered and was at first wary, asking how Lorraine had got their number. She told her that Raymond Vallance had suggested she call: she was opening a gallery and needed to find work by unknown artists. Vallance had recommended Nick. The woman kept her waiting for some time before she returned to give the address and a time at which it would be convenient to call. Lorraine had two hours to kill, so she decided to check up on some of the local galleries and enquire whether any of Nathan’s work was on sale.
&nbs
p; Lorraine walked past a number of galleries in the Plaza and the surrounding streets, and even without specialist knowledge of art she could tell that some of the works displayed were as sophisticated as anything she had seen in LA. It was clear that the old town was an art snob’s heaven. Everywhere, too, was the beautiful American-Indian jewellery, glowing rows of semi-precious stones surrounded by silver settings, whose traditional designs Lorraine recognized as the height of current fashion. She studied piece after piece in turquoise, lapis, amethyst, citrine, rose quartz, freshwater pearls and a dozen other stones, whose names she didn’t know, before eventually buying a serpentine ring for Rosie, some lapis cuff-links for Rooney, and an elaborate necklace of five inlaid hearts suspended from a beaded choker, all in precious minerals and stones, for herself. She savoured, too, the opportunity to look for a gift for Jake. It had been so long since she had had someone special to shop for that the time flew past. Then she saw two heavy silver cuff bracelets, set with bars of turquoise and speckled leopard-skin jasper. She went into the shop and bought them both. When the assistant remarked on how beautiful they looked on her wrist, she spoke without thinking. ‘They’re for my daughters.’
As she waited for the bracelets to be wrapped, she repeated, ‘They’re for my daughters,’ in her mind. She knew that what Jake had said, and Rosie had repeated to her, meant yet another step towards her future.
When she returned to the car, she checked the map, then began to concentrate on how she would question Nathan, and, most important of all, what she needed to get out of the interview.
The narrow alleyway ran between two four-storey houses with shop fronts, situated in the most rundown part of town. She headed down the alley past boxes of old garbage from both of the shops, and found a peeling door marked 48. As it was ajar, Lorraine pushed it open.
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