Catalogue Raisonne (33 page)

Tequila: you went with it. It was fine.

Crash
. Thuds and screams. Angela tilted the bottle above my face. Some of it splashed into my mouth, bringing my head up in a laughing cough, and some of ran down my cheeks and onto the floor. She tipped some at her own face, drizzling down her throat under her collar.

Crash!
Loud, with a splintery reverberation. A man's screams detaching from the general mayhem and barrage. “Fuck!” I thought I heard. A roar from close by.

“Wait!” I told Angela. She continued what she was doing. I pushed her off me.

I took a couple of steps toward the crashing sounds, far enough to confirm that they were coming from our door, then stepped back into the living room to grab the half-empty tequila bottle. Capped and carried it at my side. Angela shot me a strange sharp look from the floor – it looked like disgust more than fear – but followed me down the hall.

The pounding on the door was frantic. As we approached it, the sounds of the fireworks behind us disappeared.
Bang! Bang! Thud, thud. Crash!
A heavy fist and forearm and maybe shoulder against the door. Like a maddened bull trying to smash its way out of a stall. The only saving grace of the din was that it masked any noise
we
might make. Still, I turned to Angela and held my finger to my lips. That
scornful look, again. Only a little tempered by fear. Tequila bravado. It was dangerous.

“It's
on
, fucker!” the yelling resumed. “I know you're in there!” Then a forearm smash, maybe a shoulder thrown against the door, shaking it in its frame. It wouldn't hold. “I've been waiting all day long. It's
on
!”

Part of me – not a small, but a very controllable part – wanted to fling open the door and try my luck with the tequila bottle. Rick's momentum might topple him, give me one shot at least.

LET . . . ME . . . IN!” Each crashing blow rocked the door in its frame.

Turning to Angela, I mimed that she should tell him I was out. This was difficult to communicate with just hand gestures. After pointing at myself and waving my hands – which just made it seem that I was panicking – I found the correct sequence. Five gestures: point at Angela, a bird-beak sign of talking with my right hand, jerk my thumb at the door, point at myself, wash-out sign – hands crossing and uncrossing, cancellation. She nodded.

The pounding on the door was continuous now, roundhouse blows by a boxer throwing wildly with both hands. Angela opened her mouth to speak and I made a wait sign. It was hard to wait. You wanted to counter the barrage with your own screeching, noise to noise.

Finally there was a moment, Rick resting or taking a step back. Hoarse, ragged breathing from the other side of the door. I pointed at Angela.

“He's not here!” she yelled.

“Bitch!” Rick shouted. It was strange to hear him panting from behind a thin slab of wood. Just the one slim panel making all the difference.
There
and
here.
My eyes fixated on the brown paint and brass hinges as if they were the outward signs of an immense mystery, the everyday unfathomable.

“Paul's not here!”

“You fucking bitch . . . where is he?”

“He's over at Claudia's.”

I jerked my head around and stared at her. Outside there was another wheezing pause, and then a last smash at the door before his
boots thundered down the stairs, sounding like twin bags of cement dropping on every step. It seemed to me the whole house shook.

Angela was backing away, and I realized I'd taken a step towards her with my hand raised. “Why'd you say her?” I'd got the hand down, but had also taken another step.

“Well you usually are, aren't you?”

That stopped me. It wasn't true, not really. But then it was, too. Ramon? Peter? Or just the near-infallible telepathy that tells you when someone is slipping away, and sometimes even the direction of the slide.
It's dangerous to underestimate people.

“How did you . . . ?”

But it was a mystery that could, would have to, wait. No time for it now.

“Where're your art supplies?” I said.

“Huh?”

I don't know why I asked. She used them right in front of me all the time, and besides, there was no place to hide anything in the four small rooms. I went to the coffee can on the living-room desk and got her x-acto knife, the heavy one she used for canvas and linoleum.

“Paul, no. Paul. Let's talk. Don't go out that door,” I heard vaguely from behind me, my hearing fogged by adrenaline and fear. Later I would think of it as an odd choice of words, meaningful on many levels, but at the time it was only another version of “Stop.”

The one thing I couldn't do.

Pictures flooded my mind as I ran to Claudia's. The day, which had begun at a buzz, then slowed to a thoughtless crawl, had switched over again into manic mode. Time enough to run past houses and still catch, in my peripheral vision, the coloured flares and bursts and wheelings. Hear the booms and screamers. More than ever like an artillery barrage. D-Day. Armageddon. Terrible . . . beautiful. Time to imagine what he was doing to her. What he would do to me if I couldn't do something to him first. The only picture that was unclear, that wouldn't come into focus properly, was the last.

“Claudia!” I banged on her door.

No answer.

“Claudia!” I banged like Rick had banged, willing the knuckles through the wood. The blade was extended from its handle, up at chest level.
Across the face, quick and hard.
I chanted it to myself like a mantra. There would be just the one chance.

“Paul?”

She opened the door a crack, then flung it wide. A glance to see she was all right, just breathing heavily, then my eyes flicked over her shoulder. “Where is he?”

“At Neale's apartment. I think.”

“Neale's?”

“I told him Neale has the Klee.”

I stared at her. When? I thought. And why? But the more immediate question: Can I trust you?

“You had to tell him to get rid of him,” I said hopefully.

She shot me a strange look – part her usual sneer, part wince. “I told him the truth,” she said. “The first and the last of it anyway. I left out some middle bits.”

Her eyes were wide, her skin gone past its normal pale to paper white. “Did he hurt you?” I asked.

“Rick?” She seemed surprised by the question, which might have been
my
biggest surprise so far in a night filled with them. “Rick wouldn't hurt me.”

Add it to the list of mysteries there was no time for.

“Come on,” I said.

We ran side by side down Hunter Street. Claudia ahead at first, skimming on those long skinny legs, but then flagging fast, me taking her by the hand and pulling her by the end of the first block. Image of the Red Queen dragging Alice through the air, the little feet dangling.
Run as fast as you can to stay in one place. To get someplace, run twice as fast.

It was only two long blocks, and then a little way up Bay, but it was all over before we got there.

We slowed to a walk as we approached, getting our breathing back closer to normal. But not my heart, and I'm sure not Claudia's. A knot of onlookers had already gathered on the sidewalk, pressing inward at the edge of the lawn of the Bay 200 building. A policeman stood with his arms stretched out, marking the limit of their advance. He allowed them to lean forward, though, craning to see around and over his arms. At each bang from the fireworks behind, some of the heads swivelled around, then back, then, in some cases, around again, as if torn between a certain spectacle and a potential one. But there was really nothing to see. The two police cars were parked hood to hood at the top of the curved driveway, angled to make a V-shape like a Japanese screen, shielding the small area of pavement before the entrance. Two other policemen stood behind the screen, heads down.

Claudia and I left the sidewalk at the same instant, walking on a diagonal directly across the lawn towards the red tail lights of one cruiser. “Hey!” came the voice behind us. We walked faster. We'd see what we could, while we could. But it wasn't much. Blood, mainly. A bright oily splatter, taking on lurid neon hues from the cruisers' red tail and roof lights. Still, somehow – it may have been only what I expected to see – the splayed body parts I caught gave an impression of length, of attenuated reaching. Something glittery in the light, too. Glasses? But shattered length, definitely. Not the crumpled block that was the only other possibility.

Giacometti, not Brancusi, I thought, and cursed myself for it.
Galleria
. Or just the mind recoiling from what the eyes forced upon it.

“Hey!” We turned away, reluctantly and gratefully. “What is that?”

I stared down at where the cop was pointing. The x-acto blade still out and clutched in my hand.

“We were doing some artwork. We heard the sirens.”

The cop shook his head wearily. A rough shift, getting worse. “Is this your business?”

“No.”

“So walk away.”

Strange to do that, walk away, and hear the ambulance siren behind and see the giant chrysanthemum blooms in the sky up ahead. The night shuddering. The display was reaching its climax. The city had promised a full forty-five-minute show this year. That meant everything had happened in less than an hour. Einstein's universe: frozen massively before the big bang, exploding outward at the speed of light.

We walked side by side, not looking at each other, not saying a word.

Back at the apartment on Park Street we found Claudia's door ajar. Pale splintered wood beside the doorknob and on the inner edge of the jamb. Two doors down on the other side, a pair of fearful eyes over a chain in a doorslit.

Claudia walked right in, but slowly. I felt for the knife in my pocket, but on instinct left it there. Something – some crisis gauge – told me that the spasm was past; my part in it anyway.

Rick was in the bedroom, sitting slumped on the edge of the bed. Like the sleepy man I'd seen eight days before. He held the painting between his knees, dangling it from one huge hand. He might only have been taking a breather, a pause, but he looked done in. Claudia sat down next to him and put a thin arm almost across his back. She murmured something to him, her lips close to his ear. It was hard to watch.

“The fucking guy,” Rick was mumbling. “Give me the fucking painting, I go. He goes, No. Holds on to it and fucking glares at me. Like he's going to fight me for it.” The words, muttered quickly, sounded strangely heavy and singular in my ears. Like sobs almost, each one coated with shock and disbelief, rolled in hot wet air from the lungs. “He backs on to his fucking balcony. All I want to do is grab the fucking thing and run. But he hangs on. One little push in his chest . . . and he's gone. Fucking over.”