He is so much not what I’ve been picturing as Rita’s boyfriend that I’m struck dumb. I guess Rob is, too. And George takes a minute to get enough wind to greet us. “Well, hi there. Wow.”
Well, hey, wow.
He greets my dad with enthusiasm. And Daddy says, “Yes, of course, young man. You’re an old friend; I’d know you anywhere.”
We follow him up a steep staircase. Early San Francisco builders economized by making staircases too narrow and too abrupt.
At the top of the stairs George’s apartment is a long hallway with rooms branching off. There are lots of rooms; this was once a spacious house. Someone has painted the front space, which maybe used to be the parlor, black, but George doesn’t take us in there; he leads us into another room with lipstick-pink curtains.
“Welcome to my humble abode.” I guess he’s trying to be funny.
We sit on furniture that looks like the stuff Rob and I had in Santa Cruz. Goodwill or left-in-the-street, primarily tapestried, shiny, and gray. Cats have been sharpening their claws on the chair arms; that’s a big feature of this kind of furniture.
“Well,” we say, and “Hi,” and once again, “Wow.” George gazes at us anxiously. He is hollow-chested, which shows up painfully with the kind of undershirt he’s wearing. He has a long, sincere, worried face and circles under his eyes.
“I guess it’s hard to believe,” he says.
Rob and I nod.
“I mean, when you called. Of course I already knew. Hey, it was really nice of you to do that.”
Rob nods again. “Glad to.”
“I mean, Rita was special. Know what I mean?”
Et cetera. We do this, him emoting and us agreeing, and my dad saying things like, “I think I understand the system behind that sculpture there” (a mobile made out of plastic strips) for about five minutes. I listen and try hard to get a picture of how this weedy little man fit into Rita’s life, but I don’t succeed. George is sweet, tentative, insecure. He’s about thirty-five years old. About five years younger than Rita. Maybe she liked younger men? No soap. Marcus wasn’t younger and neither is Scott. Maybe she liked losers? That certainly doesn’t work, not with those two as evidence. Even this guy, with his ropy chest and anxious eyes, isn’t exactly a loser. He’s just hopeful and sad-looking, and maybe the sadness is for her.
He says he is writing a novel.
I revise my analysis. You can’t tell with writers. Rita would have thought writers were in a special category. I can hear her saying something about how if you’re really creative who measures your machos.
Although that lady really liked macho a lot, I think.
The novel, George says, is about a wolverine. His eyes get a little life in them. He says, “Hey,
great
of you to ask.”
Wolverine
. I struggle with this; it’s strange and uncomfortable but it might be interesting. The wolverine is not the central character, exactly, George elucidates, it’s the alter ego for the guy who is the central character.
Rita liked the novel. She also made fun of it. “That lady had a true critic’s eye. She could do anything. She was so goddamn talented.” George appears to choke up.
Rob says we are interested in Rita and what she was like, but we’re especially interested in her death; who might have killed her. We think her death is related to a death at the museum, but maybe not. We’d like to know what enemies she had.
George appears amazed. “Rita didn’t have enemies. She was all light and bright and sparkling.”
We are silent for a minute, digesting this. Do you remember the Japanese movie where you get four different views of a crime?
I finally say, “But she was excitable, don’t you think?”
George agrees, “Hey, absolutely; a basic part of her charm.”
“Do you think,” Rob gently suggests, “that could have been misinterpreted?”
“No way.” George is steadfast. “Everybody could see. Right off.”
Rob and I spend about five minutes saying, “Well, but . . .” and “Don’t you think maybe . . .” and “Did you notice that . . .” with almost no effect.
George remembers a Rita who was sunny and responsive. “Yeah, awfully energetic,” he finally concedes. “I guess it’s possible that someone or other . . .”
He’s not saying that someone or other killed her for being too energetic. No, no, he thinks it was a plot of some kind.
George looks like a guy who might believe in Martian invasions or worldwide schemes to redress the wrongs of the Boer Wars. He doesn’t say anything like this, though; he begins to act distressed and puts one hand in front of his eyes. “God, was I ever lucky. Of course it couldn’t last.”
I decide to be ashamed of myself.
My father tells George that he should not have been up on the ladder so long. “The bat droppings. They’re piled in drifts on the floor and they rise and affect your balance.”
“Rita was really fond of you,” George tells my father.
We take a few minutes off to lean back and stare out George’s window, which holds a view of a eucalyptus tree.
When George takes his hand away from his eyes, he agrees that anybody can get mad about anything. He’s read about that happening. But he doesn’t remember anybody ever calling Rita up, middle-of-the-night, threatening. Yeah, he’s heard of that; he just doesn’t remember it with her.
Sure, he’ll give us a list of people that possibly could have, maybe. Sure.
People maybe from archaeology.
But he really thinks it had to be something in this last week. It all ties up, doesn’t it? “Listen. She was a child of light. Everybody loved her.”
I say, “Right. Yes, we, too, think it was something that happened recently. In the museum. For her to be shot near there. Was she in touch with you while she was there?”
George says, “Oh, sure. All the time.”
“Did she have . . .” I pause and rephrase. “Was she feeling bad part of that time?”
“She was. And she mentioned Rob here. She said he helped her.”
There’s a pause while Rob and I wait for elaboration.
“She never let feeling bad affect other people.”
Do I want to leave behind me a lover who’s as blind to my faults as George is? I guess not. I certainly haven’t taken any steps in that direction.
What did she say about her adventures with us?
George agrees the adventures were interesting. “She was with great people.” He interrupts himself to ask if we’d like a beer. A lemon Crystal Geyser? “Hey, sorry not to have offered sooner, kind of upsetting, you know?”
We follow him down a long gray hall and into a minute kitchen that looks out onto a sea of wooden back porches. I resist thinking about a fire in this area. The whole neighborhood would go up like a pile of Presto logs.
George has one of those refrigerators where, when you open the door, everything falls out on the kitchen floor. “Well, hey, I guess there was one thing,” he says. “Well, two things. Or maybe three. First of all the sheriff.” He tries unsuccessfully to open a Crystal Geyser with his thumbs and ends up handing it to Rob. “That’s an enemy to almost anybody, that sheriff, but you know about him, you know all about that.
“The rest aren’t enemies.” He finds only two other bottles of Crystal Geyser, which go to me and my dad. He takes a beer for himself and sits us at a wobbly oblong table, bathed in light reflected off the other back porches. “Kind of nice here, right?”
We agree, yes, nice.
“Well, it was things that happened there at your place. Not the big things, but the little ones. Of course, all of it was real dramatic. Out of synch. It all sounded like it belonged in my novel. Not in real life. Y’know?”
Yes, we say. We know.
“First of all, the guy that died twice. Marcus. He did that?”
This, of course, is hard to explain. It takes us a while.
“Well, she knew him. Real well. You knew?”
We agree, yes, right.
“She knew everybody there. Except, of course, you.” He squints in my direction. “This Marcus was her lover. Sounds like a real interesting guy.”
Rob and I are silent. I put my energy into not blinking.
“And Scott and she were lovers, too. She was real good about that. About keeping on being friends. She liked Marcus and she liked Scott.”
I say, “Oh.” What was it Rita called Scott? Studly?
Scott was hit hard by her death, though.
“She talked about both of them.”
I look at George, who gets an A-plus at the moment for coolth. Can he possibly be as okay with all this as he seems? The only sign of stress is that his beer is going down fast.
He revolves the glass. “Had a lot of stuff to say about them.” He takes a big final swig and puts the empty glass down.
“Hey, don’t stop,” I tell him. “It’s nice sitting here. Kind of . . .” What phrase would George like? “Bonding.” I get up to find him another beer.
He agrees, “Bonding.
“I’ve never been the kind to be jealous,” he picks up. “And one of the great things about Rita was her frankness. Y’know?
“She could talk about those past relationships. That was so cool. Made me feel I was with her then.”
This is beginning to be creepy, but I nod agreement. I want to keep George talking.
“This Marcus—she said he was a dynamite moneymaker when he felt like it.
“She made a lot of money one month in that place. Thebes. Just on his recommendations. ‘Big wads of profit,’ she said. ‘Along with all the digging and identifying and bonking.’
“ ‘Wow,’ is how she put it.” George looks nostalgic.
I want to say, “It can’t be that okay with you.” But I just repeat, “Wow.”
“I guess he was some over the top sometimes,” George reflects. “Like with drugs.”
We’re silent, letting the word
drugs
hang around.
“Marcus was an artist, sort of?” I suggest. “Sculpture, maybe?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess. Like collecting Japanese tin toys and something or other with steel welding. And painting.”
“Did he make movies?”
“Hey, come to think of it . . . Rita said something . . . I guess this guy could do anything.
“A good archaeologist, too. Though Scott was the one there. Scott and your dad.
“She
revered
your dad.”
We’re back to the different versions of reality.
And Scott? What else about him?
“Oh. Like I say, she was friends with them both.” George swigs his beer and lets a troubled frown dent his high pale forehead. “Well, a couple of times she seemed almost, you know, cross?” He stares, troubled, at the sun and shadows on the neighboring back porches. He doesn’t want to admit any small negative emotions into his Rita-memories. “Something or other about Scott and a lady named Danielle.”
I pounce. “
Danielle
. Tell me. What about her?”
“Rita had a picture of her.”
This is a stopper. It takes me a minute to get hold of it. “A picture. My God. Why?”
“Well, it was kind of odd. Because this Danielle was the only person Rita ever spoke real harshly of.”
I’ll bet she did. The Danielle that stole both her boyfriends. I can imagine Rita’s comment: “Card-carrying bitch.” And that’s the expurgated version.
“George, I’d love to see that picture.”
“She threw it away. It was a big picture.” George makes squaring-off motions. So Rita had a studio picture of Danielle. I do not get it.
“What did Danielle look like?” I ask. “Was she pretty? Tall? Skinny? Oval face?”
George is completely stymied. “Lots of hair,” he finally volunteers. “Oh, and Rita felt something about that picture, know what I mean?”
George, a novelist is supposed to notice detail; nobody ever told you that, huh?
Silence descends on our back porch. George drinks beer and broods. My father begins softly, “She was lying on a long white table . . .” Rob smiles at a blue jay on the porch rail.
George adds, “It was a nice picture. A nude study.”
Oh, for God’s sake.
That even wakes Rob up. He turns to me, and for the first time in a while he tries to share a moment.
George misinterprets our reactions. “Hey, I don’t feel anything about that. I mean, the naked body is beautiful. A temple.”
I let this percolate for a while. “But why did she
have
the picture?
“Other than for an art object,” I add quickly, forestalling whatever pious remark George is hibernating. “Was it for some personal reason?”
George says oh, and uh. I can tell that he does have an idea. “Well,” he admits finally. “I guess she had some kind of a plan.
“Because when she threw it out, she looked at it for a minute and said, ‘You know, Jidge’—she called me that sometimes—‘you think about doing something mean and after a while you get bored with it. That ever happen to you?’
“And then she chucked it in the recycle bin.”
George won’t respond to my further proddings about motives and plans. He doesn’t like talking about this; it shows a possible flaw in his ephemeral Rita.
But Rita did have a plan, which I am interpreting as follows: Danielle is an archaeologist. She has a job at the Luxor Museum. The Luxor Museum, Arab-managed, would hate a nude picture of a female staff member.
After a minute, George finds a way to change the subject. “Well, yeah,” he volunteers. “I thought of something. Almost a threat; maybe it figures. Nothing about an enemy, but, well, she telephoned, I guess the night before . . . no, two nights before . . .” He has to pause; this gets to him; he’s choking up again.
I look at Rob, who is back to admiring the blue jay, his face smooth. He looks like the nice American boy he is. My father has arrived at, “Let her go, God bless her.”
“And she said, ‘There’s something that bothers me. Something not great, Jidge. I guess I was real dumb. I don’t always get it.’ She used to say that about herself: ‘I’m real fast with archaeology. Not other stuff.’