Circles of Confusion (26 page)

Then there was the whir of the blow dryer, as calming as a white noise machine, and the touch of Susie's fingers as she scrunched Claire's hair with one hand and wielded the dryer with the other. Finally, everything ceased. When Claire opened her eyes, Susie handed her the mirror with a shy, satisfied smile.

Claire's mouth fell open. Her now-black hair sprang up in a little cap of curls, providing a dramatic contrast to the pallor of her skin and her large blue eyes.

"You look a little like Winona Ryder," J. B. said. It was the first time he had opened his mouth in over an hour.

"Only older," Susie added.

Claire reflexively pressed her hps together. Then Susie caught her eye and she realized her sister was teasing. All three of them began to laugh, the kind of laughter fueled by exhaustion.

"Suze, this is really great." Claire tried and failed to remember the last time she had praised her sister.

"Thanks." Her sister met her eyes, then looked down at the floor.

"All I really need now is a shower. And maybe show me where you keep those extra clothes. I've been in these for the last twenty- four hours."

***

Suzie made up a bed for her on the couch while Claire took a shower. She stayed under the spray for a long time, trying to wash her mind blank, but it was too crowded with questions. Who had turned her hotel room upside down and then her house? Who were the good guys and who were the bad guys? Had Troy been lying to her when he insisted the painting was a fake? Was Dante coming to Portland because he wanted to help her or because he wanted another chance to get the painting? Were either of them working with Paul Roberts? And if he wasn't a police detective, then who was he?

When Claire pulled back the shower curtain, there was a split second when the sight of a dark-haired stranger caused her throat to close in unthinking terror. She pulled on the nightgown Susie had left on the counter, reaching back reflexively to lift the weight of her hair from the collar. Her hands met only air.

When she opened the bathroom door, the rest of the house was dark except for a small table lamp beside the worn maroon couch, now made up with a pillow and blanket. Claire turned off the lamp, then tried to arrange herself comfortably. The couch was just short enough that when she lay on her back she could not stretch out full length unless she bent her knees and rested her feet on the armrest. In vain, Claire tried to relax. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Concentrated on moving her belly button with each breath. Tensed various parts of her body and then released the tension. Nothing worked. She was too conscious of her various organs working to keep her alive, her heart pushing blood back and forth, her lungs sucking in air whether she thought about them or not. She bunched the pillow in half and rolled from her back to her side, pulling up her legs to get them to fit. The pillow smelled like dust. Something poked her in the back and she reached behind the cushions and pulled out a Matchbox car that shone silver in the moonlight. With a sigh, she sat up, turned on the light, and rummaged around in her backpack until she found Aunt Cady's diary.

***

August 2, 1945

I went to the doctor today. A German doctor, since an Army doctor would give me an honorable discharge and no assistance, the opposite of what I need. It was a woman doctor, eine Arztin, a word Al Patten taught me when he recommended her, and an even rarer sight here than at home. She practices in a semi-gutted room. The missing windowpanes have been replaced with X ray negatives of human chests. Lying on her chipped white-painted metal table, I focused on those cages of bones holding shadowed hearts and tried to think about anything else but what was happening.

I probably know less than two dozen words of German, but "baby" sounds much the same in both languages.

***

August 8,1945

An hour ago, I told Rudy I couldn't see him anymore. His face went as still as a stone. I was sobbing, but he said nothing. Then I saw his face begin to crack a little bit, a muscle flickering in the outside corner of his left eye. At first I thought he might cry, but then I realized how angry he was.

Later—we heard about the bomb tonight. This might well mean the end of the war. Maybe that would be the best for me, to go home, to forget about things.

There were no more entries, only blank pages filigreed with mold. Claire had read at random through the diary, but now when she paged back she could find nothing that revealed how her great- aunt had come to have what might be a 350-year-old beauty in a suitcase. It wasn't hard to guess, though. Rudy must have given her to Cady as a little token of his affection, a painting so small it could be taken from the hoard he guarded with no one the wiser. He wasn't the kind of man to worry about who might have owned it before. He had cushioned it with whatever wastepaper came to hand—and in Germany after the war, what was less valuable than Nazi literature? And he could have thrown in a few things he thought might be valuable again one day. That would explain the death's-head ring.

***

Claire turned off the light again and closed her eyes. When she finally slept, her dreams made little sense, just fragments of memories playing in her head. She saw her dead neighbor, Sonia, raise her hand in greeting as they drove past each other in their matching cars. Charlie's face, drained of color, while she talked about what her family had owned "before." Green-eyed Troy, his voice an intimate whisper just inches from her ear, as Manhattan glided by the limousine's window like an underwater dream. She saw Dante turn his heavy white mug to rest the warmth against his cheek. The flat- faced man who had nearly knocked her down as he ran from her hotel. And finally Claire dreamed of Paul Roberts, with his eyes the color of washed quarters.

Again she felt the gun bite into her temple. In her dream, just as she had in real life, she closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, she saw that the woman in the painting had joined them, only grown to life-size. In her cornflower-colored dress and jacket of pale lemon, she stood in the corner of Claire's living room the same way she did in the painting, a piece of paper held tightly in her hands. The woman watched Claire and Paul with the same eternally enigmatic gaze, her full lips parted. And Claire realized that to the painted woman the onlookers who had gaped at her for three centuries were not even as real as dreams, that only the letter she held had meaning. That even if Paul Roberts were to kill Claire right now in front of her watching eyes, she would then turn back to those words on paper, because only her world was the real one.

And then in Claire's dream Aunt Cady appeared behind Paul Roberts, not as an old woman but instead the age she had been when she wrote the diary. A khaki cap rested on her French-braided hair, and her shoulders were square in her uniform. She reached out to take Paul Roberts's chin in her hand. Reluctantly, he turned, releasing Claire, and the two looked into each other's eyes for a long time without moving. In her dream, Claire turned to run out of the room, past the painted woman, who still stood watching. Paul Roberts turned back, his eyes now two round silver mirrors. Claire was just on the verge of understanding it all when she woke up.

The rest of the house was already awake. Claire looked at her watch. Six a.m., which meant she had had a little over two hours of sleep. She swung her feet to the floor. From the couch, she had a clear view of the dining room and kitchen. Eric sat in his high chair, eyes half closed, sucking dreamily on a bottle. J. B. looked up from the paper and nodded at Claire. Susie stood at the sink, running water into a teakettle. When she saw that Claire was awake, she set down the kettle and walked into the living room.

Eric's eyes went wide when he saw his mother walk past in her heavy purple terrycloth bathrobe. He pulled the bottle from his mouth and crowed, "Barney! Barney!"

Susie flushed and sat down on the arm of the couch. "J. B. started calling me that as a joke, but now I think Eric thinks I really am Barney. He just loves that stupid show. And since Mom has cable, he watches it three times a day. Have you seen it?"

Claire shook her head without speaking, still trying to adjust to the real world as opposed to the dream one.

"Barney's this big purple thing that's supposed to look like a dinosaur. But he's shaped more like a really fat woman with saddlebags. And the kids on the show are just like a McDonald's commercial—one black, one white, one Hispanic. Even one handicapped one, only of course he's just as cute as a little bug. It's all so sweet it's really sickening. The only good thing is that I hear by the time they turn three, kids hate Barney." Susie picked up Claire's blanket and began to fold it. "How does an Eggo waffle sound?"

As she ate, Claire's thoughts came back again and again to her dream. One face kept returning to her. Not Charlie's nor even the painted woman's, but the flat, acne-scarred face. The face, she realized now, of Troy's chauffeur. What had his name been? John? Had he been the man who had run from her hotel as she returned from breakfast? She remembered how he had kept his eyes averted from her even as she fell to one knee. John could have heard Troy mention fantastic sums of money when he talked about the painting. But did Troy know that his driver indulged in a little freelance breaking and entering on the side? Or maybe he did more for Troy than drive him places? Could that be the reason Troy had taken her out to breakfast—so that John would have a chance to steal the painting?

Still not knowing what to think, Claire said her goodbyes twenty minutes later. She hugged her sister for the first time since they were kids. Eric was next, and it felt like something in her chest was tearing when she felt his little arms slip around her neck. Then J. B. gave her a hug that lifted her feet from the floor.

Afterward, he pressed the keys to a twenty-year-old yellow Datsun B-210 into her hand.

OWTAHR

The thing about the B-210 was that in addition to the holes in the floorboard and the exposed springs in the upholstery, it had a stick shift. Claire had driven a stick only once before, a quick turn in a friend's car around a shopping center parking lot, and that had been on a day when she wasn't exhausted. Now she couldn't seem to get her left foot and right hand to do the correct thing at the same time. The car popped and jerked down the street. At least at 6:25 in the morning, the roads were mostly empty.

After a dozen blocks, she dared to use her shifting hand to turn on the radio. It seemed to capture only one station, KXL, and that faintly. KXL divided its offerings between easily digested snippets of "drive-time" news sandwiched between conservative talk shows. It was hard to imagine J. B. listening to Rush Limbaugh rant on about liberal wackos, but then again, Claire would never have guessed that he could cook an omelet or prove to be just what she needed.

As the car climbed the overpass that led to 1-84, Claire felt a gust of wind slap the car. A minute later, KXL's traffic and weather report told her why.

"The time is six twenty-eight, twenty-eight past six. Traffic is still

moving well on the inbound freeways. The weather might be another matter. We're expecting heavy winds today, peaking sometime in the next thirty-six hours. We're already hearing reports from the Aloha area of gusts up to forty miles an hour. Coming up next we have the national news, but immediately afterward we'll have more on the weather."

Claire snapped off the radio. Right now, it was hard to believe there were actually people who thought that the worst thing that could happen to them was bad weather.

It wasn't until she standing at the building's entrance that Claire realized she still didn't have her ID badge. And the same guard—she remembered his name was Bruce—still sat behind the security desk, just as he had the night before. Only now he had his head propped up on two fists and the vacant gaze of the half-asleep.

Claire took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the lobby.

"Morning, ma'am."

Bruce clearly didn't recognize her new look. Good. Maybe that meant she could fool the bad guys, too. "Bruce, can I ask you a big favor? I forgot my card again this morning. I need to get to thirteen. I came in early to catch up on some work."

"And you are?" His hair was cut so short she could see the pink shine of his scalp.

"Don't you remember me from last night? Claire Montrose? You let me up on thirteen?" Surprising them both, Claire let her sweater fall open to reveal Susie's old jeans (which were nearly too small for Claire despite Susie's comment that these were her "fat" clothes), and a T-shirt that depicted a leaping, spangled salmon under the legend There's no nookie like Chinoohe. The salmon was distorted from being stretched across Claire's larger breasts.

The security guard's eyes grew wide. "Damn. Sorry I didn't recognize you, but you don't look anything like you did last night. Did you have a makeover or something?"

"Or something," Claire agreed. "So—do you think you could let me up on thirteen again? I promise I'll bring my card tomorrow. It's just that I stayed, um, someplace unexpected last night." She dropped her chin and looked at him through her lashes. "Can you zap me up?"

Looking slightly dazed, Bruce agreed that would be no problem.

AXNU8D+

The elevator seemed to take forever to reach the thirteenth floor. Impatient, Claire willed it to move faster, anxious to have the painting back in her possession. What had seemed like such a good idea last night now seemed stupid. Who knew when the next workman would come along to fix the wiring, phone lines or air conditioning? Besides, whoever had torn apart first her hotel room and then her house could be counted on to make the next logical move and search her workplace. And if Claire could manage to outwit Bruce twice, then an experienced criminal wouldn't have any problem.