Skyscape (27 page)

The commercials were over, and the guests were enjoying a joke Marvin had made. Margaret could barely sit still. Everyone on the show was long-winded, with the grinning carelessness Margaret associated with sportscasters when the local teams were doing well.

Andrea and Webber had fresh drinks, the dish of salted nuts was nudged in Margaret's direction again, and once again declined.

With every minute Margaret felt more desperate, more depressed. The show was going to be over soon.

And then, when there was no time left on the show at all, when it was time for the credits and the name of the airline that had provided travel arrangements, Red Patterson appeared.

His image on the screen caused tremendous applause, more than the normal studio-prompted celebration. This applause erupted into cheers, and the camera scanning the audience joggled a little, everyone surprised at the excitement.

So when Red Patterson began to speak the first few words were lost. “Really enjoying the quiet out here,” said Red Patterson. “And Curtis Newns—thriving. Absolutely thriving.”

He looked relaxed, surrounded by aloe plants and the fronds of various palms. The sunlight might have been supplemented by artificial light, because where Patterson was sitting looked like some shady refuge from the heat. Margaret felt hope die, felt herself understand what she was looking at.

This tape might have been made weeks ago. It was plain that the questions being asked by Marvin were not being uttered before this particular live audience. Patterson thanked Marvin, wished him luck.

Over supper, a complex taco salad, Webber said, “You want to think about this, though.”

Margaret dabbed guacamole from the corner of her mouth. She had not been paying attention.

“Good money after bad,” said Webber. “We have to have realistic hopes.”

She pieced together what he had been saying. I don't even know you, Margaret wanted to say. How can you possibly give me advice? Her mother had put him up to it. Maybe it was a way of courting her mother—showing how well he could advise her adult daughter. Her mother may have even scripted the advice, although her mother's style was not usually this ordinary.

“Webber's wife was mentally ill,” said her mother. “So I thought you would listen.”

“I'm sorry,” said Margaret.

“Sometimes we have to let go,” said Webber.

“Let go and do what?” asked Margaret.

Webber took his time in answering, a man who would rather discuss the bond market or his most recent vacation. “There's the temptation of denial. To tell ourselves that everything will really be all right, or that everything's our fault.”

Was this man being wise, Margaret wondered, or simply intruding his opinions where they were not wanted? He had friendly eyes. He broke off a tortilla chip and fished the fragment out of the sour cream. Despite her resentment, she knew his statement might be the result of suffering. “You'll forgive my asking—what happened to your wife?”

“She's still living,” said Webber. Observing the question in Margaret's eyes, he added, “We're divorced. She lives in San Jose, in a residential care center.”

“What do you like about Curtis's art?” asked Margaret.

“Its vitality.” Webber leaned on the table, elbows on the cloth the way her mother had always scolded her for doing as a girl. “Although, to be frank, it always seemed a little hectic for my tastes, a little strange.”

Her mother had an air of cheerful indifference to the weight of the subjects at hand. It was like her mother, thought Margaret, to turn to a man as a mouthpiece. This near-stranger was speaking as an ambassador from mother to daughter, in the presence of both of them. Margaret felt sharp resentment: this was how her father had been used, smiling his hesitant smile, saying what the daughter knew were her mother's words.

“Do you play chess?” asked Margaret.

Webber understood the question, and knew it was more than casual. “Not very well.”

“I never learned at all. I knew I would never be that good at it.” She meant
that
good—as good as her father.

“Webber is buying a radio station.”

“Television isn't enough?” asked Margaret.

“He has to invest the money, he says, or lose it.” Her mother smiled at Webber.

“It's only money,” said Webber. He was hesitating, ready to say something but holding back.

“Not many men wear emeralds,” said Margaret.

He looked at the ring, gazing into the stone for a moment. “It belonged to my mother. I had it reset, and I wear it for—well, for peace of mind, I guess.” He smiled, but Margaret could see sadness in his eyes just then.

“His father manufactured shatter-proof glass,” said Andrea.

Something about this statement made Webber narrow his eyes and study the guacamole.

“Webber has something to tell you,” said Andrea.

“I'm going to offer you a position,” said Webber.

Margaret used a napkin to remove the few grains of salt on her fingertips.

“We are starting to originate some programming,” he continued. “Some pretty good stuff. But we need someone with ability and a name to.…” He made a show of choosing an especially large tortilla chip. He gestured with it, pointing at her when he said, “Oversee things.”

“He's planning programs for children,” said her mother, in a tone of delighted wonderment.

“And he wants me,” said Margaret, letting her voice stay flat.

Webber took in air through his teeth, making a short, tense whistling sound. “As program director. You'd have virtual control.”

“You mean—if I abandon Curtis.”

Webber had the grace to pause for a moment. “Money is not an issue.”

Andrea looked on, smiling with half-closed eyes. She did not mind what Margaret had mistaken as Webber's flirtatious manners. Webber was a man used to being liked, and Andrea approved.

“I like you,” said Margaret.

Webber looked on, cautious and relaxed at the same time, a man at ease with good and with evil because his encounters with both had been so brief. He did drop his gaze for an instant.

“Or, I did. I thought you were kind,” said Margaret, disliking the way her voice broke.

“You have a future,” said her mother.

Margaret took a long time in the bathroom, admiring the large porcelain mallard in the corner. The artist had known exactly how a large male duck would look if an uncaring god had transformed it into shiny, glazed clay.

“I learned something from my father,” she said, standing on the front lawn, taking Webber's hand.

Webber knew he was supposed to ask, and he did.

“I learned never to play a game I thought I couldn't win.”

The drive home was over a hundred miles, and she kept the needle well over the speed limit most of the way back.

Entering the penthouse she snapped on one light, just enough to see the telephone.

Margaret called Bruno's number in Rome. An intelligent-sounding young man answered, and she could hear the phone rustle into place somewhere thousands of miles away and the male voice call Bruno's name with a careless, upward lilt.

It was good to hear his voice.

“I've been worried, too,” said Bruno.

29

At dawn and at dusk you could hear swallows, the squeals of birds like wood screws. When you looked up, little black knives were busy, carving the outline of an invisible city.

Bruno did not like worry. He saw it as one of life's minor illnesses, best defeated with medicine or, better yet, a brisk self-enforced change of attitude.

First there was the call from Renata San Pablo. “How is your darling Curtis really, Bruno?”

There was the pleasing thought that Bruno was secure in Italy, far from this woman. Bruno smiled into the sleek telephone, a compact, lunar-pale instrument, the color of several of his favorite suits. “It's so good to hear from you, Renata,” said Bruno, and it was almost true.

“People are expecting something wonderful,” said Renata. Then, in a tone that might have been sincere, “How long does something like that usually take?”

Then there was the call from Margaret, the poor girl sounding quite upset by something she had or had not seen on television.

“Don't worry,” he said. “It's in my hands.”

If only I believed it myself, he thought.

Living in Rome had taught him that work did not matter, knowledge did not matter, being brave or wise did not matter. Even faith—and sincerity, that virtue Americans so admired—did not matter much. What mattered was knowing what to do, and when. Afternoons were for rest, mornings for decision, evenings for friends, for love.

There was a brief screening process, each voice a little less unhelpful, until by the fourth voice he was speaking to someone who knew who he was.

It was that simple, after a delay making himself known: of course, Dr. Kraft, we will be pleased and honored. Dr. Patterson has so been looking forward to someday—

Doctor
Kraft something of a mistake, although there were one or two honorary excuses for styling himself so. Academic flourishes of that sort seemed fatuous to Bruno. At the same time, Bruno was happy enough to avoid talking to the famous psychiatrist.

Isn't it funny, he told himself. I'm a little afraid of the man.

There was some weight to the man's reputation, and it was best to avoid a confrontation, Bruno thought, until Bruno was sure of his own forces.

Bruno spoke at last to a sultry female voice, and when he said that he had doubts, that he really did have to see with his own, et cetera, there was no trouble at all arranging a meeting, a quick hello in the desert. It would be an honor, said the woman, who identified herself as Loretta Lee Arno, a name Andy would later claim to recall from a soap opera, something about Hollywood and incest.

Then there was a call back to Margaret, all balm and reassurance. Yes, I will definitely make sure that Curtis is quite well, said Bruno.

“I'm so worried,” she said. She sounded close.

“Let's not be overly concerned,” he said, allowing himself to preen for a moment. “I did make a very modest threat. I told Loretta Lee Arno that unless I was convinced that a new Curtis Newns was in progress, I would be forced to go public with my doubts.”

Bruno packed his bag. It did not take long.

Was Andy's excitement authentic? “How wonderful to be able to meet Red Patterson!”

“It's actually not Patterson I'm interested in seeing.”

“I know, you want to make sure Curtis Newns isn't a raving lunatic.”

“I don't really care what sort of lunatic, raving or not, Curtis has become,” said Bruno. “As long as he's been busy.” This accompanied by a zip of the shaving kit, which was itself thrust into the large bag. The piece of supple leather luggage was technically too big to be classified as carryon, but Bruno allowed himself this modest liberty to avoid having to claim baggage, and no steward had ever complained.

“I wish I could go.”

“You love it here. You're just glad to be getting rid of me again,” said Bruno.

Andy was helping, putting the strap of the bag over his shoulder, slouching along with it, lumbering down the stairs. “I think you're the one eager to go away.”

“‘Eager' isn't the word.”

“You're going to decide you have to drop by La Jolla to get drunk with some old friend or other,” said Andy. He had been raised in New Jersey and had a mixture of faith in, and contempt for, the glamour spots of Southern California.

“I haven't been drunk in years,” said Bruno. “I never liked it. You close your eyes and the earth swings out from under you, like a trap door.”

“You'll want to see that hideous actor you have a crush on,” said Andy.

“Water under the bridge.”

“I was going to start working on you today.”

This particular reminder pained Bruno. They were outside, now, making their way up the narrow street, pausing to let a motorcycle putter past. Andy had promised to create a series of portraits of Bruno, for which a new cape had been purchased, and a remarkable dark felt hat, and various locales searched for and discovered, including a corner in Trastevere where a particularly large white cat held court, drowsing on the hoods of cars. The series of photographs was going to evolve into a
Bruno Kraft's Rome
.

It was a minor miracle, in this city of great miracles, that Andy was still here. He did turn out to have a sincere cigarette habit now, and swore that he used to smoke all the time as a teenager. He had surrendered the habit, only to return to it now that his teenage years were so distant that any remembrance of them was a pleasure in itself. He had even developed a morning cough, and the smoker's habit of hunting up an ashtray upon entering a room. Although he was in his early thirties, Andy still might pass as a young man.

Don't go, Bruno told himself. Stay here.

The shade was cool, the sun heavy on Via Dell' Orso, and Bruno continued to let Andy carry the bag, as though this might be the last favor Bruno would ever accept from his friend. Andy would be left to his own devices, and Andy was, like the figure in an old song, an unconstant lover. Bruno could not have described how he knew—he knew.

Rome was abuzz with potential lovers. Bruno himself had been attracted to the occasional debonair native or sunburned tourist, and if his own lust had been less dissipated by Andy's attentions, Bruno might have fallen to unfaithfulness. Of course, so many of the really attractive young were crippled by a combination of ignorance and arrogance. Just the other afternoon, there was a striking individual in Tazza d'Oro where Bruno had stopped for a coffee. But a quick chat had revealed a fondness for pop musicals, dead actresses, and the fact that the last book the youth had read had been forced upon him as a junior in high school, “that novel with the retarded person who lives in the South.”