Skyscape (24 page)

“Right here in the taxi. You wish I were dead.”

Bruno made himself sound coy. “Not exactly.”

“I did the worst thing I could have done. I let some of Curtis's art get away.”

“The drawings were lovely,” said Bruno. And, he did not add, worth an incredible amount of money. “I should have taken them away with me. Stolen them out from under you. So it's my fault, too, you see.”

“I'm too tired to lie, Bruno. And I'm so happy that Curtis is officially Out of Danger—” She said the words with a certain snap, so that they appeared as on a sign, in capitals. “You pretend to be above things like anger, but I'm not fooled.”

“I wouldn't dream of deceiving you.”

“You weren't just joking about stealing the drawings, were you? You would steal them, and get away with it.” She surprised herself. The combination of exhaustion and joy made her feel cunningly lucid. She could go without sleep forever. It gave her an advantage over Bruno. It was a strange feeling, and a powerful one. “You would be delighted if I vanished and you could have Curtis all to yourself.”

“You'll feel better after a little sleep.”

“So will you. Let's have our talk now, Bruno.”

Honesty was a poor foundation on which to build a friendship, Bruno had found. A cheerful pretense was so much more reliable. He was about to say something to that effect, but he saw the look in Margaret's eye and silenced himself.

Loss came in all sizes, thought Bruno, and all shapes. How did a decent person like Margaret get so tangled up in the machinery of life?

Margaret knew that she should eat something, but she could not.

The waiter brought a plate of hash brown potatoes and two sunnyside-up eggs. Bruno did not begin eating for a moment. He took a taste of his coffee.

“If Patterson can help him—” She opened a hand, and let it fall to the table, a woman surrendering to the inevitable. “It hurts me. But I love Curtis.”

“Let's stop pretending to be nice, for a moment. I think Patterson is a dangerous man.”

She said, “People believe in him.”

“Do you?”

“You're afraid that you'll lose control over Curtis yourself,” said Margaret. “His next painting will be thanks to Red Patterson.”

“At least we're being cynical now. That's an improvement. And it agrees with you—you get the sweetest blush in your cheeks when you look at me that way. But it's not just that. Let's pretend for a moment that it's all right if Curtis doesn't paint anymore, if that's what's best for his mental health. After all, the world still has prints of
Skyscape
, if not the original.”

“Is that what you really think?”

“I'm glad that you're suspicious, Margaret. I have to tell you something very frank. I want you and Curtis to be happy. But I can't afford to sacrifice for his mental health, or your happiness.”

“His happiness doesn't matter.”

“You really should have something to eat,” said Bruno.

“You don't care what Curtis does, as long as he makes art again, preferably soon.”

“Of course I care.” Bruno broke the yolks carefully with his fork, one after another. “You and I could fight Patterson together, if we decided to. But let's try to be realistic. It's unpleasant, I know. But let's force ourselves. It may be necessary for us to let Curtis go with Red Patterson.”

“Necessary,” she said, making the word sound nasty.

His voice was a purr. “It's something you already know. You and I both need Curtis to go out into the desert with this wonderful doctor. I need Curtis to paint, and so do you. After all, it doesn't make your marriage look like a success the way things stand now.”

“Why do I like you, Bruno? You go out of your way to be unpleasant.”

“Have you ever met Red Patterson?” asked Bruno.

“No.”

“You're going to let Curtis go off into the desert with a man you don't even know, aren't you?”

“He's the sort of person you feel that you know, you see him so often.” She said this like someone trying to convince herself, and almost succeeding.

“Were you upset when Curtis was on the show?” Bruno asked, “or had you expected it?”

She did not answer him directly. “Red Patterson must have thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Do you think it was?”

“I've never seen Curtis as happy as he was at the end of the show, when they were arm-in-arm and all the credits went racing past, so fast you couldn't really read them.”

“We both need to take a risk or two. I want a new painting. I want a new masterpiece,” said Bruno, correcting himself by emphasizing the last word.

It took an effort for her not to cry. “I know he'll come back to me.”

He gave her a thoughtful smile. “You don't know how tired you are, Margaret.” Bruno recognized this sort of fatigue. It was like a drug, liberating as it consumed.

Margaret gazed at the surface of her coffee. It was furred lightly with vapor that did not rise, pooling there on the surface. “I wish I had known Curtis a long time ago. I wish I could somehow magically join him in some wonderful period of his life. Like the months he spent in Hawaii. He talks about it sometimes. I wish I could be there with him.”

Bruno had always assumed that Margaret felt that Curtis the artist was more important than Curtis the man. Now he saw something he should have anticipated more fully, but had not. Margaret wanted to hear about the days when Curtis had finished with school, and with a few early sales in his checking account, was able to enjoy the green hillsides of the Big Island. She wanted to hear about Curtis relaxed, untroubled. She wanted to hear about Curtis being happy.

Margaret was earnest, vulnerable. For a moment Bruno missed the friendly insincerity of Renata San Pablo. “Hilo's a beautiful town,” said Bruno. Actually, he had passed through it once and found it squat, dull. “It rains a lot, so it's very lush.”

“I can imagine it,” said Margaret.

Bruno was always forgetting how much people could love each other. He could almost resent her freedom to consider nothing, for the moment, but the thought of Curtis sketching a hibiscus. “I didn't visit Hilo when Curtis was there,” Bruno said. “I was living in London in those days. Besides, I prefer the Kona side of the island.” Bruno had the impression that Curtis had bought a motorcycle, drank a good deal of beer, and had been glad to leave Hawaii after a month. Curtis had done very little work there.

You can trust nothing, Bruno wanted to tell her. Faith was composed almost entirely of self-deception. “Let's imagine the future,” he said. “Let's imagine that things work out the way people believe they will. Let's imagine you and Curtis together again, and a wonderful painting drying in the desert air.”

“I want to believe it,” said Margaret.

“But you don't.”

“I don't think I do.”

The potatoes were delicious. Crisp, just the right amount of salt. He could feel her doubt, and her weariness.

Bruno reached across the table and patted her hand. She liked that, found it reassuring.

26

Curtis was awake. Margaret did not need any sign. She could tell—he was a presence in the room.

His eyes were alight, and when she spoke he turned his head to see her, moving it in little jerks until his eyes were on hers. It was like early, stop-motion animation, weeks of effort condensed into a single movement. She was about to tell Curtis to lie still and not try to do anything.

“Don't touch him,” boomed a male nurse in a slightly foreign accent. “You can see but you cannot touch.”

“You break it, it's yours,” said another nurse. Everyone was in high spirits.

“I made it,” said Curtis.

It was like a badly dubbed film. His lips moved. Then, quietly, there was his voice.

It was hard to speak—she felt such happiness. She wanted so badly to touch him, to take him in her arms. The bustling in and out of nurses and orderlies were all a part of what was, in her eyes, a general celebration. “I'm so happy,” she said. The words were so puny.

His voice was a cough. “I bet everything's mashed. Arms, legs, butt.”

“Not everything. I saw a chart. Your private parts are in pretty good shape.”

“The crowd goes wild,” said Curtis, imitating a sports announcer, and coming out with what sounded like a radio so far away she almost could not hear it.

She kept her tone bantering, offhand, but she could not keep her voice from trembling. “I think one of your finger bones is still intact, too.”

Curtis parted his lips in a silent laugh. “I was run over, right?”

He sounded proud of it. “They found you on the center divide,” she said.

“Lying down? Standing up? What was I doing?”

Dr. Beal had said that Red Patterson did not want anything upsetting his patient, including Mrs. Newns. She kept her tone light, with difficulty. “I get the impression you were more or less not doing anything.”

Medical personnel ran in, ran out. How could they have a moment together in a place like this? She told herself not to cry. Whatever happened, she had to keep his morale high. It was easy enough, really. She was happy.

“I know the pain is bad,” she said.

He managed a smile. “Not when I'm looking at you,” he croaked. “All that talk about how terrible pain is. It's completely exaggerated. Pain is not so bad, when you really start feeling it.”

“Maybe you're just tough.”

“I always wondered what it was like to almost die,” he said. Then he swallowed and said, “Red Patterson was in here.” It was hard for him to talk further, his voice dwindling.

Margaret had heard all about it. The man had come up the back elevator, normally reserved for “freight”—bodies descending en route to the mortuaries. “He wore a cowboy hat and a big long coat,” the nurse had said, “so nobody would recognize him, but you could tell in a second who it was.”

Normal speech was not possible. Every phrase had to be translated from feeling, into words, then into a simplified, hospital-appropriate English. She said, “I saw it on the news again. Red Patterson's still going to help you.”

Margaret was surprised to see Curtis's tears.

“I love you, Curtis,” she said.

He lifted a finger as though to say: of course you do. You can't help it.

“You want to go,” said Margaret. She was not asking—she was prompting him. “Don't you. You want to stay out there in the desert for awhile.” Because my love isn't enough.

But he had closed his eyes.

Margaret was ready. She was perfectly ready, wearing a pleated skirt, and that blouse Curtis had bought her, the one with what looked like starbursts all over it. She figured she needed something with a lot of color to get Red Patterson's attention.

She had not expected to be nervous, not
this
nervous. She found herself wishing she had brought Bruno along for the companionship. She felt like someone in a fairy tale, farm girl off to visit the king. Or even worse—the giant.

There were still police vehicles on the street, supervising the steady traffic that snaked past, tourists gawking, childishly gaping. People with cameras were courteous to each other, discussing the best angle, getting snaps of the house where Red Patterson was almost killed.

Because public impression had become confused. Patterson was okay, but he was not okay enough. Patterson had taken on the mantle of a man who had survived assassination. It was not mere attempted murder. Patterson was a Caesar who had taken the dagger's thrust and lived.

Even outside the house she could feel the tension. The San Francisco afternoon was chilly, fluffy clouds rolling in from the ocean. Cops sat in unmarked cars, watching. It wasn't just her—everybody there was nervous, all the security people tight-lipped. A woman examined Margaret's driver's license. A man found her name on a clipboard. Another man spoke her name into a transmitter,
Margaret Darcy Newns
, and she felt herself enter the giant's hall, where the shadows were cold.

She was led into a side room where a man waved a security wand over her, the sort of device used at airports when your change purse sets off an alarm. The room was bare, except for a roll of black cable on the floor and a video camera, recording her image.

A woman introduced herself as Loretta Lee Arno, and led her into an office. “All this security is a big pain in the butt.”

“I wonder how Dr. Patterson is feeling,” said Margaret.

“Nothing really bothers Red,” said Loretta Lee. But then her tone became more truthful. “It was a hard experience for such a sensitive man to go through. And he can hardly wait to get out of here.”

“Out to the desert, you mean?”

This question did not seem to merit an answer.

Loretta Lee sat on the front edge of a desk. Margaret sat in front of her, on the edge of a chair, wishing that she had remained standing. “I run things,” said Loretta Lee. “If it gets done, I do it.”

Loretta Lee looked hard, beautiful but tough to shake. She looked at Margaret and did not look away. It was a staring contest for a moment. “Red needs Curtis,” said Loretta Lee.

“Curtis and I are grateful.”

“You're here to say no, aren't you.”

Margaret felt surprise. “Can I say no?” she said, too eagerly. “Or is it too late?”

There was sadness for an instant in Loretta Lee's eyes. “The world has to have Red Patterson back again. Working with Curtis Newns is what Red Patterson needs.”

“I think it's a matter of trust,” said Margaret. She hated herself for softening the statement with
I think
.

“If I thought Red Patterson was doing harm, to anyone, I would feel responsible. And I wouldn't let him do it. I'd stop him.”

It was a staring contest again, but for some reason Margaret felt that she was winning. Something passed between the two women. Loretta Lee's look softened. “You're not just trusting Dr. Patterson. You're trusting me.”