Good Morning, Darkness

by Ruth Francisco

  Some of it he could remember. Audrey was grinding millet on a rock in a dusty desert village in Africa. Laura kneeled beside her, rolling an oblong stone over the grain, back and forth, her braid swishing like the tail of a contented cow. Both were wrapped in bright red cloth with gold flecks. They chatted and laughed and seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. When Reggie approached them, Laura stood up. “You found me,” she said. “I’ve been waiting.” She motioned him to follow her. She led him over rippling hills of hot sand, and as she walked, the red cloth unraveled from her body, and he walked over it like a red carpet. At the edge of a beautiful blue lake, she stood naked. She turned to him; her breasts, small and round, her stomach dipping between her hip bones, swelling slightly above her pubic hair. She walked to him and unbuttoned his shirt, kissing his chest, slipping her hands under his shirt and pushing it aside like she was brushing off a snowy windshield to peek within. Her long hair caressed his body, warming him like the winter sun, filling the air with her almond scent. She peeled off all his clothes and led him into the lake. Underwater, they swam past pink scaffolds of coral and tropical fish. He was amazed he could breathe, and she said, “Of course you can breathe underwater.” As they swam, she slipped her hand around his penis and slid it inside of her, and then they were on the deck of a sailboat making love, the hot sun pouring down over them, and he never felt so pure in his life, the white sailboat, the blue water, and Laura’s red lips.

  He woke to the sun pouring through the windows. Last night he’d been too tired to pull the curtains; it felt wonderful to bake under the sheets. As Laura’s image faded, a feeling, more than a thought flowed through his body: I’ll find you, Laura. He was fully aroused and rubbed his hand over his penis; he groaned softly, then scrambled out of bed.

  His arrested arousal propelled him through coffee and a shortened jujitsu routine. He showered and dressed quickly. As he shot out of the house to West Hollywood, he wondered why he didn’t feel guilty for his fantasy. But he didn’t. He felt great.

  Farmers Market was bustling with shoppers and tourists—mostly beefy white midwesterners with cameras around their necks. Older European immigrants chatted with their favorite vendors, stopping for a particular sausage or jam they could only get there. Reggie pushed his way through the crowd to a stand covered in a red-and-white-striped awning called Hot, Hot, Hot. For sale were hundreds of small bottles with vibrant red and yellow labels depicting dancing devils, flames, and hot peppers with pitchforks grinning malevolently. The sauces were rated on a scale of one to four for hotness. He smiled, planning how he’d box them up and send them to Washington. He bought a half-dozen bottles rated four, a hot mustard, and a jumbo bottle of Audrey’s staple, Ring of Fire. It was so hot that his fingers stung from the residue on the outside of the bottle.

  He locked his treasures in his trunk, then drove down Fairfax to a small jewelry store between a Jewish delicatessen and an Indian restaurant.

  In contrast to the dirt and grime of the street, the store was immaculate. A tall man in his mid-fifties raised his head. A loupe protruded from his left eye; when he focused on Reggie, it dropped neatly into his hand.

  “Good morning. I’m Reggie Brooks, from Pacific Division. I called about an hour ago. Are you Mr. Feinstein?”

  “Of course.” The man said this without expression, without inflection. “You mentioned a ring?”

  “Yes.” Reggie pulled the evidence bag from his pocket, shook the ring into his hand, and laid it on the counter. He glanced behind Feinstein, noticing a dozen antique clocks that said exactly the same time, the second hands rotating in concert like the legs of synchronized swimmers.

  With the solemnity of a priest, Feinstein washed his hands at a small porcelain sink behind him. He then cleaned the diamond with a cloth dampened with ethyl alcohol. He worked efficiently, his movements measured as a metronome.

  Reggie listened to the faint ticking of the clocks and to the ambulance sirens arriving at the hospitals nearby.

  Feinstein took off his glasses, then placed the ring beneath a ten-power triplet loupe, which he had wiped with a lint-free cloth. As he worked, he sucked in air through his nose every twenty seconds or so, punctuating his thoughts. He switched on a fluorescent lamp and stood close to it as he looked through the loupe. He stepped back almost immediately, with a surprised expression.

  “What?” asked Reggie.

  Feinstein hesitated. “Let me look again.” He peered for a long minute. He then took the ring over to a microscope. His little gasping sounds took on the rhythm of a spouting dolphin. From under the counter, he pulled out something that looked like a Walkman with a pen attached.

  “What’s that?” asked Reggie.

  “This is a Gem pocket diamond tester,” Feinstein explained. “Since diamonds conduct heat better than imitations, this little machine tests for a stone’s thermal conductivity.” He ran the pen along a facet of the stone. The machine beeped three times. “Well, it’s real,” he said, grinning. “Both of them.”

  His exaggerated triumph puzzled Reggie. “What?”

  Feinstein shushed him, then placed the ring on what looked like a miniature set of white stairs. He set a master stone next to it for comparison. “See the color?”

  “No.”

  “Precisely. It colorless. A colorless, grade D.”

  “Grade D? Is that like failing?”

  “On the contrary. The GIA—that’s the Gemological Institute of America—has a grading system from D to Z-plus. Grade D is the highest grade.”

  “Is it valuable?”

  “Well, before I’d certify it, I’d want to run it by a spectroscope to see how it absorbs light. It’s possible someone’s come up with a substance that would fool the Gem pocket tester. I doubt it, but it’s possible.”

  “But you think it’s valuable.”

  “Let me put it this way: In this diamond, you have no cracks, no scratches, no blemishes, no crystals within the crystal, no inclusions—”

  “Inclusions?”

  “Internal irregularities. There are no grain lines, no laser drill holes, no clouding. Most diamonds have these little faults. It’s not really a bad thing. They make each diamond unique, and it helps identify a particular diamond.”

  “Like a fingerprint?”

  “Exactly. But this diamond is flawless, the highest grade of clarity for diamonds. In the GIA Clarity Grades, it’s an F1. They are extremely rare and extremely valuable. In fact, flawless diamonds are seldom used in jewelry, because any wear might make them lose their flawless status, which would decrease their value. Combine a two-carat flawless, a grade-D colorless, an excellent cut, and we’re looking at about seventy thousand dollars wholesale.”

  Reggie whistled and suddenly felt oddly nervous. “It doesn’t look like it’d be worth that much.”

  “If it were simply looks, people would buy cubic zirconia. They are more brilliant, more perfect, and, of course, far less expensive.”

  “You said something about both of them?”

  Feinstein grinned. “May I take the stone out of the setting?”

  “Sure, if you can put it back.”

  “That won’t be a problem.” Feinstein walked back into his office and brought back a canvas roll of small hand tools. He put the ring in a vice, then popped out the stone with a tool. He peered at the setting and let out a triumphant laugh. He showed the ring to Reggie.

  “You broke the diamond?” Reggie asked.

  “No, no, the jeweler set one diamond on top of the other. Incredibly clever—the way he lined up the facets, so you’d never know. Let me take a closer look.” Feinstein removed the second diamond—which was smaller and bluish—weighed it, then placed it under the microscope. He inhaled so loudly, so abruptly, that Reggie thought he might be choking. “It’s a flawless, a rare blue, a little over a carat. We’re talking between four and five hundred thousand dollars here.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Reggie. “The jeweler who made th
e ring was obviously trying to hide its worth. Why would he do that? Why would someone put so much money into a ring that looks so simple?”

  “To transport wealth from one country to another unnoticed. To customs agents or anyone else, it would look like a rather ordinary engagement ring.”

  “Can you tell where it was made?”

  “I can hazard a guess. The top stone has forty-nine facets, which places it as a European cut from the thirties or forties. Also the table—that’s the flat part on top—is large, perhaps sixty-five percent of the girdle diameter. A large table is preferred by Europeans. American tables are around fifty-three percent of the girdle diameter. The setting is platinum, which is more valuable than eighteen-karat gold. It’s a prong-set solitaire designed for two stones, hand-fabricated rather than cast or die-struck. The inside is well worn, but I bet you anything that if you use an infrared camera, you’ll find a faint outline of a jeweler’s mark. Maybe even an inscription. I would guess that it was made in Switzerland or Austria in the early forties. It may have been bought by a Jewish family fleeing Nazi Germany who wanted to carry their wealth easily and inconspicuously.”

  “A family heirloom?”

  “Possibly. It’s a remarkable ring. An inexperienced appraiser might even think it was a fake, because the gem is so perfect. He might even miss the second stone.”

  Reggie recalled that he once commented on Laura’s blue eyes and dark brown hair, and she said that both her parents were Black Irish. So it probably wasn’t an heirloom from her family. She was almost engaged to Scott Goodsell. But Goodsell wasn’t a Jewish name either. Perhaps the ring came from his mother’s side?

  Reggie realized he was getting ahead of himself. There was no proof the arms were Laura’s. “Anything else you can tell me?”

  Feinstein put the stones back in the setting. “Be careful with it. If you get even a scratch on either stone, you lower its value by tens of thousands of dollars.”

  Reggie asked for a written appraisal, which Feinstein said he would fax over to Reggie that afternoon. Reggie gave him Mike Morrison’s fax number, and Feinstein promised to send him a copy as well.

  Carrying around a ring worth half a million dollars made Reggie exceedingly uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure if it was fear of losing it or temptation that made him sweat, followed by guilt, because he was tempted. Wasn’t it only human to imagine, if only for a moment, possessing all that money, taking Audrey and the boys away from Los Angeles, maybe to Belize? Shame washed over him like a waterfall hidden beneath a jungle canopy.

  As he drove down Wilshire Boulevard, he wondered what might be etched inside the ring. As far as he knew, Parker Center was the only forensic lab in town with a camera that could do an infrared test, and he knew he couldn’t get access to it without going through official channels.

  Then he remembered an expert witness, Françoise Augier, hired by the district attorney for a case he’d worked on several years ago. She’d used an infrared camera to authenticate a painting by Dosso Dossi, stolen in transit to the Getty. Art thieves were getting as clever as bank robbers; valuables were most vulnerable in transit, and unfortunately, museums couldn’t hire an armored truck every time they wanted to borrow a painting.

  Françoise Augier’s shop, Dubois Gallery, sat between two antique stores near Robertson and Olympic. The decor of the shop was vaguely Victorian. Maroon oriental carpets, dark wood tables topped with slabs of white marble, two cloisonné vases, and a coffee table with a collection of Sotheby catalogs. The walls were covered in masterpieces Reggie recognized: Picasso, Cézanne, Degas, van Gogh, da Vinci. It took him a moment to realize they all had to be forgeries.

  Françoise Augier greeted Reggie warmly. Thin and brittle, in sensible shoes and a skirt that hung below her knees, she looked like a schoolmarm from the fifties. But she was the exact opposite of her appearance: warm and genuine, unlike other gallery owners on Melrose, where the general deportment was sarcastic elitism. Despite her age, which Reggie estimated to be near sixty, she had no wrinkles.

  After Reggie explained what he needed, it took her under fifteen minutes to set up a camera rigged to intense lights and magnification lenses. She shot ten photos to make sure she got the entire inner circumference of the ring. She told Reggie she’d get the photos developed that evening and have them ready the next day.

  Before he left, Reggie asked Françoise if she could find the gallery that handled the Belgian sculptor Jean Boulogne, or if she knew how to contact him in Europe. She said that would be simple. She’d let him know that afternoon.

  As Reggie stepped out of the gallery, a tall man dressed head to foot in black leather walked past, banging hard against Reggie’s shoulder. The man didn’t even glance back.

  Instinctively, Reggie put his hand in his pocket to see if the ring was still there. Of course it was, but as he made his way back to the car, he checked on it a half-dozen times. He knew his stomach wouldn’t settle down until he returned the ring to Mike Morrison later that afternoon.

  * * *

  Whoever invented liquid soap must have been gay.

  This is what Scott was thinking as he stood in the yellow-tiled shower at his gym, squirting handfuls of soap into his palm, then smearing it over his arms and thighs. He imagined a shower room of butt-naked men massaging their sperm over one another, then thought of the night when he was naked and got blood all over his arms and chest. He lifted his palm into the cascading water and imagined himself an Aztec priest standing high above a crowd, ripping out the heart of a young warrior whose spilled blood assured the fertility of the soil and swaying stalks of corn.

  Someone opened the door to the men’s locker-room; cool air rushed in. Despite the sting of hot water shooting down Scott’s back, a chill spread over his skin.

  He’d done nothing to feel guilty about. He chastised himself for his attacks of panic. He’d done what needed to be done—a sacrifice that assured the continuity of life—his life.

  He put his head under the spray and scrubbed his scalp vigorously. He should be celebrating—he’d closed his third sale this month, which made him Bay City’s number one Realtor. He ought to call someone up and go out for a nice dinner, but all he could think was that it wouldn’t be any fun, not without Laura. Then he realized: Today was the anniversary of when they first met. Funny he should remember it.

  They’d met in the produce section at Gelson’s. He saw her with a red plastic basket on her arm, looking at the stacks of avocados and tomatoes. It was the kind of grocery store where a clerk rearranged the fruits and vegetables as soon as you took one. Of course, you paid double for the privilege of seeing such perfect pyramids of produce, but no one seemed to mind. Laura stood there staring at the fruit. When she felt Scott watching her, she turned and looked at him. There was a flash of alarm in her eyes, then interest; she held his gaze until he felt he had to say something.

  “You can touch them, you know.”

  She smiled. “They’re beautiful,” she said.

  Scott was fascinated. Was she crazy? She didn’t look it. She was gorgeous. What kind of woman got mesmerized looking at fruits and vegetables? He had to find out.

  “You want an avocado?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He put his fingers around a dark green fruit in the middle of the stack. He glanced over at her, daring her to dare him. Her eyes—God, they were beautiful, cobalt blue—got big, and one corner of her mouth lifted. Slowly, he pulled out the avocado, holding out his other hand, like a magician casting a spell, to keep the pile from collapsing. He offered it to her and bowed.

  Then she laughed. It was like wind chimes—no, more beautiful than that: like the wind blowing through a cave, playing crystal stalactites.

  He glanced doubtfully at the avocados. “We better get out of here.” As he took her by the elbow and led her down the aisle, she picked the vegetables she needed. By the time they reached the checkout, she’d invited him to dinner.

  He probably should�
��ve wondered about her—a girl in L.A. inviting a man she’d just met into her home. But it didn’t feel weird at all. It felt magical.

  She’d made pasta for him with red chard, mushrooms, sausage, and pine nuts, something he’d never tasted before. She said she’d learned the dish in Tuscany. After that, she often made dinner for him. Sometimes, as he drove up to her house, he’d watch her through the kitchen window as she moved from sink to stove. He’d seen his mother cook, her head bobbing up and down from a recipe, talking nervously to herself like someone trying to read a tech manual and hook up a stereo system at the same time. But Laura looked like she was dancing. She looked like she was thinking about something completely different, her hands moving on their own, a small frown on her lips. When she plucked and cleaned the vegetables, it was as if she were touching his body; it sent shivers through him. He’d stand there watching her until he couldn’t take it anymore, then run up the stairs—his body shaking with desire—and pound on her door.

  God, his missed her.

  Scott wanted to celebrate with Laura, so that was what he’d do. He toweled off quickly, dressed, and left the gym. On his drive to the beach, he stopped for a six-pack of beer, then shot down the peninsula and parked in the alley.

  Laura’s window was dark. It was around ten-thirty p.m. He wondered if anyone had moved in yet; he hoped not. He didn’t think he could bear seeing someone else there. He snapped open the top on a can of beer, then rolled down the car windows. A light breeze blew in off the ocean. He heard the bougainvillea scratching against her window as it rocked in the wind. A crescent moon reflected in the glass. He could almost see her.