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I was there in a second to snatch it away. “That’s not an ashtray,” I splurted.
“Hey…it’s full of ashes.” He must have realized what it was because he banged his hand against his forehead.
“A friend of yours?”
I nodded, hugging the urn.
“Really sorry. And you are?” He squashed the R like a true North American. His accent had temporarily lost all its Britishness.
“Lucy Madison. Assistant manager here.”
“How’re ya doing. Sorry about your friend.”
“Me, too.”
And then I did the unthinkable. I gave in to grief in front of my idol. Tears rollicked down my face. Paul Bleeker took my elbow and guided me into the washrooms. He parked me near the ladies’ mirror then went into a cubicle and came back with a huge wad of toilet paper. It was cheap, scratchy toilet paper. Nadine liked to cut corners with those little things.
He handed it to me and I mopped my face. Kindness always makes it worse for me and my tears turned to those jerky hiccuppy sobs.
I felt an arm pull me into a leather-clad shoulder and a hand stroked my hair.
When I’d calmed down a little, I said, “Actually, it was my grandfather.” I stared at the urn.
Paul Bleeker just nodded as if he understood absolutely everything, everything from my feelings of loss to super-strings theory…and then a strange light came into his eyes. You have to be careful when famous artists get strange lights in their eyes and you happen to be holding a dead person’s ashes in your hands. For one thing, the famous person usually has enough money to finance his eerier inspirations.
I pulled back a little. Paul had already changed tack though. He took my chin in his hands and began turning my head from side to side. “Have you ever modeled?” he asked.
“For an artist?”
“No, for a mechanic. Well? Have you?”
“Informally.” I recalled an old boyfriend from university days who had once used me as a model. His basement suite had been glacial, its decor, early dirty gym sock, late pizza box and cigarette butt in beer bottle. He fancied himself to be the next Francis Bacon. When he finally let me glimpse his work, I looked like a fat mutant baby after a nuclear meltdown.
“Only head modeling,” I said primly. The world was not going to get the chance to laugh at any of my naked body parts even if the artist was as famous as Paul Bleeker.
“Pity,” he said. “You have a somewhat classical look.”
If he had gone on to say “Rubenesque” I would have been forced to deck him. But he said, “Give me your phone number anyway. You never know when I might need a head.” It was a ploy, of course, but I quickly rattled off my number and the gallery’s e-mail address. I could hear the natives getting restless beyond the bathrooms, and the irritated staccato of Nadine’s size ten Ferragamo heels clacking toward us. Paul Bleeker scribbled fast in his little black book and pocketed it as Nadine came through the doorway.
She just avoided snarling at me. “Lucy, you better get out there and start cleaning up. It’s a hell of a mess.” She turned to Paul and said so sweetly it made my teeth hurt, “Umberto’s all right for you?” He nodded, then shrugged at me, a poor helpless creature caught up in the tide of his adoring fans.
They were all gone by the time I came out of the bathroom. I put Billie Holiday on the CD player and cleaned up. It was nearly eleven when I trudged back out into the cold. I was freezing by the time I got on the bus. As it jostled through the slushy dark streets, I pictured the lucky group, stuffing themselves at Umberto’s Ristorante, funghi porcini, risotto di mare, tiramisù. Nadine taking second and third helpings.
Then I thought about what I would do if Paul Bleeker actually phoned me. Would I dare to tell him that I was a sometimes painter?
Would we be able to talk about…art? It’s a word I usually have to whisper because it’s all become so tricky.
When I first started making big paintings, I figured that with people hanging animal carcasses in galleries or cutting off their own body parts, bleeding to death and calling it artistic expression, I had a lot of leeway. My work is ultra-conservative in comparison to just about everybody else’s. I like decorative, and I like functional. I like something I can hang on my own wall. And for that I usually get into trouble. I was harassed at university for the “prettiness” of some of my paintings. But I couldn’t help it. I had started depicting my night dreams, in a kind of quasi-naïf, colorful, surreal way. They were so much more vivid and promising than anything that was happening in my waking life. They were full of wild things and creatures: tigers, snakes, bluebirds; orchids, roses, turquoise oceans and murky-green ponds. Sky jokingly christened my work “Frida Kahlo without the mustache.” In my night dreams, I once wore a shawl of white silk embroidered with brightly colored vines, birds and flowers, over a gorgeous tight-fitting red silk dress with matching shoes. Of course, my nighttime body is beautiful. But I think that’s good, don’t you? It means that whatever I really look like in the daytime or consciously think of myself, my deepest, barest mind thinks I’m okay.
At class exhibitions, my work was always put in the out-of-the-way poorly lit back rooms. It didn’t bother me. Somebody always found their way back there. And I don’t know why, but when the exhibitions were dismounted, pieces of mine always went missing. I don’t want to use the word stolen. I prefer to call it art appreciation.
If there’s one thing you have to do in your art, it’s be true to yourself. And you can take that further, into your life. It’s the same. You’re filling up your personal canvas, adding the daily strokes. You want it to be good and right, you don’t want to have to take the white and cover it all up quickly before anybody sees the amateur mess you’ve made. But messes do get made.
I stepped off the bus and gingerly walked the last frozen block. When I got home, I called out the Viking’s name. There was no answer, so I relaxed. There was a letter for me on the hall table. I realized it wasn’t a bill, and suddenly my heart was pounding. I tore it open and unfolded the one page. The signature at the bottom was such an unexpected surprise that my hands started to tremble.
The letter read:
Sorry Lucy Honey. I had to do it this way. No half measures for us, right? I won’t go into the gory details. It was one of the members of that nasty big C family and the future didn’t look too rosy. I could just about feel one good ride left in me so I took it. Must have done it if you’re reading this letter.
One last very important thing. I beg you to go and see Connie. I’m begging you on bended knee Lucy honey. When you talk to her you’ll know why. She can be a little stubborn, so if she tries to slam the door in your face or anything like that, you jam your foot in there. Don’t go away till she talks to you. Tell her I sent you.
I’m signing off now. You’re a great kid and I love ya.
Jeremy
The tears were rolling again but this time I just let them come. I went to the fridge looking for some wine to cry into, but there was none left. However, there was a half bottle of some strange Swedish liqueur that Anna called Glug. So I glugged and cried until I was too exhausted to think anymore.
The next morning I put on my power suit in an attempt to dress up for business and hide my hangover. Knee-length, gray wool, very stern. But with just a hint of lace peeping from under the jacket. Just in case Paul Bleeker happened to come in, he was going to see what a no-nonsense woman I was, and not the wet-faced ninny of the day before.
I had my own set of keys and was the first to open up the gallery each morning. This suited me fine. It meant that the dragon lady could simmer in her lair a little longer before fuming into action. She needed a lot of time to put on her makeup and, oh yes…consume a couple of breakfasts.
It was just after nine-thirty. I sat at my desk in the Rogues’ Gallery and yawned. I took small sips from my caffe latte forcing myself to make it last. I checked my e-mail. The usual load of forwarded jokes were there from Sky. When the postman came, I tried flirting with him but he didn’t even flinch. If he thought I was cute, he wasn’t letting on. I was definitely out of practice.
I yawned some more and opened the envelopes addressed to the gallery. There were a lot of bills, from transporters, caterers, insurance companies and a cheque from a customer. Surprisingly, we were selling pieces that season. Nadine had taken a big risk on exhibiting all those phalluses, but she’d succeeded. The platoon of pizzles actually had buyers.
After four months, though, the subjects were getting to me. I hadn’t seen a live one in ages. Another month of staring at them, and they would have started talking to me, their little singsong voices taunting me, “We’re having more fun than you-oo, nah nah nah nee nah nah.”
I stifled another yawn and let my mind slide into reveries about Paul Bleeker. Then I remembered Jeremy’s letter.
“Damn.” I said it loud enough that my voice ricocheted through the empty gallery. Connie. There was no avoiding her. If Jeremy said I had to go and see her, then I had to go and see her. But the thought of it was like a freezing-cold bath. It was like Sunday night when you had school the next day and hadn’t done your homework. As the prospect of visiting Connie loomed over me like a big black cloud, disaster struck.
3
Disaster, dressed in a Superman costume, lolloped, cape a-flutter, past the huge plate-glass window of the gallery and vanished from view. I ducked down behind my desk and peeped out from under it. The superhero stepped back into view, examined his reflection, flexed his limp biceps in a superhero-like way, and whizzed out of sight.
It was happening again. Just like a really bad déjà vu. And once more, it wasn’t happening in Cedar Narrows, where the damage could be contained, but in downtown Vancouver, where the repercussions could travel a lot farther.
I immediately called my mother.
“He’s here,” I wailed. “I thought you said he was in Hawaii.”
“He’s…? Oh. Well, he was in Hawaii for a while. And he’s there, is he? I see. Well.” My mother’s voice was so calm I wanted to scream.
“Well?” I whined.
“Don’t be melodramatic.”
“Numbers. I need the phone numbers, Mom. The Vancouver ones. Mine are all at home. Quickly.”
“Calm down,” said my mother.
“I am calm. Under the circumstances.”
My mother hummed under her breath as she searched. Her casualness unnerved me. “Yes, here they are. But I don’t know how useful they’re going to be. They’re a couple of years old.”
“Just give them to me. Quickly.”
“Don’t be rude, Lucille.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it. This whole business affects me that way.”
I could hear my mother sigh just before she began to read off the numbers. I scrawled them down and hung up.
I tried the first number on the list and got an answering machine. With panic in my voice, I left a very long message and hung up to wait. I was too edgy to do anything practical, so I got out a flannel rag and began to dust. Moving nervously around the empty gallery, I buffed frames, glass cases, pieces on pedestals, in short, the entire phalanx of phalluses. As I was rubbing away at an all-too-lifelike marble sculpture of one, a voice from behind me made me leap out of my skin.
“You do that with a practiced hand.”
“Paul…”
“In the flesh,” he grinned. He was looking very sharp in black jeans, black sweater, black leather jacket.
Oh God, I thought, don’t let Dirk come back this way dressed as Superman, not while he’s here.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“You can come and have a drink with me sometime.”
My heart did a double-flip. I didn’t want to seem too eager. “Just let me check my agenda,” I said, very smoothly. I didn’t have an agenda. I didn’t need one. My life wasn’t so hectic that I needed to write things down to remember them. I found an old address book in the bottom of my purse and flicked through it with an efficient air.
He said, “How about tonight? The Rain Room? Eight o’clock?”
For years I’d dreamt of someone asking me out to the Rain Room. No one ever had. Unfortunately, I had to take care of Dirk first and that could take time. “I can’t tonight. How about tomorrow. We’ll have to make it nine. I have another engagement tonight.”
“Fine. Tomorrow, then.” Tomorrow was Wednesday and I was free. He grinned again and was gone.
I sank into my chair. It had all happened so fast. I had a date for a drink, a real drink with the real Paul Bleeker. My next thought was, I have nothing to wear. My mental shopping spree was interrupted by the phone.
“Lucy Madison, please,” said a man’s voice. It was a deep voice, frayed with exhaustion.
“Speaking.”
“Sam Trelawny here. You left a message on my answering machine?”
“Hello, Mr. Trelawny. You must be new.”
“Why do you say that?” Sam Trelawny sounded harassed.
“Because I know everybody else. Or at least I used to.”
“I was transferred from North Van into the downtown area a few months ago.”
I said, “I’ll have to fill you in, I guess.”
“I have Dirk’s file in front of me.”
“He’s been away.”
“So I gather from the paperwork,” he said.
“Yeah. He was in Hawaii for a while.”
“Uh-huh? For how long?”
“About a year.”
“How did he manage that?”
I said, “I gather a lot of people there are in the same boat. Long-term tourists without green cards.”
“I see.”
“He was in California for a while before that.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah. He was hanging around on a street corner and some Moonies picked him up. They drove him back to their plantation or their ashram or whatever they call it. I guess after one evening with him, they didn’t want him anymore. They delivered him back to the street corner as quickly as possible. He got a free meal out of it, though. I imagine that was his idea all along. He can manage on shoestrings and earwax if he’s forced to.”
I heard a guffaw at the other end of the line, then silence.
“Are you still there, Mr. Trelawny?”
“Yeah. Some papers fell on the floor. Too smart for his own good, right?”
“That’s more or less the way it is. Are you going to see him?”
“It’s unfortunate, but there’s not a lot we can do at the moment, Miss Madison. You probably know how it goes. We have to wait for something to happen.”
“Just before he went to California, he started wearing a Burmese Wot on his head, this kind of colorful knit hat with a little peak, fluorescent colors actually. He took a suite at the Hotel Vancouver and enticed a seagull into the room. He said he was teaching it to walk in a straight line. He said he was sure the seagull was capable of learning but lazy and not committed to the goal. Needless to say, Dirk left without paying his bill.”
“And this was before he went to California and then Hawaii?”
“Just before. He must have skipped town the same day. Payday. You know, the government check?”
“Do I ever. It’s always a busy week.”
“Mr. Trelawny?”
“Yes, Miss Madison…I’m assuming it’s Miss?”
