Skyscape (37 page)

The model looked up from the street, his expression one of earnest curiosity, wondering at Bruno's anger, or trying to guess what would fly out of the window next, and then the youth mounted one of the motorscooters, just out of sight. There was the cough of a starter, and then the brazen rattle of the Vespa as it caught, swung up the street, and was gone.

“You're overreacting, Bruno,” said Andy from the bedroom door.

Two shoppers paused in the street below to comment to each other on the sight of jockey shorts hurled in their general direction.

“You're embarrassing yourself,” said Andy.

Bruno stopped for a moment to relish his anger. “You have no business talking to me that way,” said Bruno very quietly.

“You're tired. You look awful.”

“Thank you, Andy,” said Bruno.

“We'll talk when you feel better.”

The calm of Andy's voice made Bruno furious. He threw an entire drawer, tugged from the frame of the dresser, onto the window sill. The small pink geranium there withstood a load of polo shirts.

Andy stood for a moment, saying nothing, challenging Bruno to offer an apology, an explanation.

“You have no idea,” said Andy.

There had always been something bright about Andy, but his enthusiasms had been those of the moment, humming a recent tune, repeating the latest Hollywood gossip. This empty quickness was interlaced with surprising moments of common sense, and it was this contradiction in Andy that sometimes made Bruno realize how little he knew about his friend and lover, and how little he had wanted to know. To know more was to care more, and it was always silently understood that Andy would be a part of Bruno's life a few weeks, a few months. And yet, they had already known each other the better part of a year.

Andy slipped downstairs like someone going out for a pack of cigarettes. Bruno followed him. Andy gathered up his camera, thrust it into the camera bag, and with an air of quiet decision ignored the sight of his clothes flung out upon the cobblestones and made his way, in no apparent hurry, down to the Via di Monte Brianzo, where he turned right, toward Via Condotti and the Spanish Steps, out of Bruno's life.

The phone was ringing.

It was an editor in London, a newspaper needing an update on their Curtis Newns' file obituary. “I know it's quite a bit to ask. The one we have now had him marrying Margaret Darcy, and all the interesting events since then aren't even mentioned.”

Bruno found his voice. “There have been some interesting changes—”

“We were thinking that what we will need is something more retrospective, something sweeping and summing-up, in the light of the loss of
Skyscape
, from the point of view of an authority like yourself.…”

“Naturally.”

“But then I was thinking that we should wait until the new painting is done.”

It sounded like a statement, but it wasn't.

“I'm sure that I can write something new,” said Bruno. “Or at least begin it. We'll have plenty of time to revise Curtis's obituary. He has years ahead of him.”

“We were thinking it might be best to have something early rather than later. I wasn't catching you at a bad time, just now?”

“No. Well, just got in. Traffic. Humid. Sticky, actually, and hot. But fine.”

The editor paused long enough to seem polite, and then continued, “And a paragraph or two on the importance of Red Patterson—”

“Of course.”

“Is the painting going to actually belong to Red Patterson?” asked the editor.

The question shocked Bruno. Bruno had assumed that a painting by Curtis Newns would belong to the world of art.

“As a gift,” said the editor, “from patient to doctor.”

“I think it's too early to speculate,” said Bruno.

“Some people will be thinking that you gave your opinion on the painting for a consideration, to raise its value.”

Bruno was speechless.

“Or in exchange for setting up a sale to a prearranged buyer,” said the editor breezily. “For a fee.”

I have never been, thought Bruno, quite cynical enough. God knows I've tried. But this editor was a far more accomplished cynic, and Bruno felt humbled. The truth sounded so supercilious he was almost embarrassed. “I gave my professional opinion for the sake of the painting, and for Curtis's sake—”

“And because you believe Red Patterson can do anything he wants to do,” said the editor, without, as far as Bruno could tell, the smallest trace of irony.

42

The phone rang again and it was Renata San Pablo.

“I want the painting,” she said.

Bruno explained to her that her galleries represented Curtis, and that naturally she would have a chance to handle the painting once it was a finished work, and not a mere sketch.

“I mean I want it personally—to own it.”

“A painting like that should be shared with the public, don't you think?”

“Is that what Red Patterson thinks?”

Bruno admitted that he was not entirely certain what Patterson thought about anything.

“He's going to put the painting on television and say that Curtis gave it to him,” said Renata. “I know what Patterson's all about.”

“There's a lot of work to be done,” said Bruno, “before we have what you and I would call a real work of art.”

“You compared it to
Skyscape
. You practically came right out and called it a masterpiece.”

“I was so happy,” said Bruno, “to see Curtis at least beginning something—”

Then, to keep Bruno off-balance, she changed the subject. She wanted Bruno to start to work on a video of Curtis, “Better than that ratty thing you did on Cézanne.”

“The video that won all those awards.”

“You sound funny, Bruno.”

Bruno protested. He felt wonderful, ready for anything.

“Honestly, Bruno, you can con just about everybody, but I know you. I want you to
work
on the Curtis Newns video, not just say what everybody can see with their own eyes. What sort of man
is
Curtis? Insight, Bruno, not talk. Tell us what it was that Patterson was able to do, how nothing worked except the Red Patterson touch.”

“What you want me to do is make a video about Red Patterson.”

“People want to know.”

He did not want to hear Renata's voice. He had a print of the original
Skyscape
in the apartment. He could illuminate it with the photographer's lamp Andy had left behind.

She was still talking, but he thanked Renata for calling and hung up.

He was gazing at the picture, the small universe that the youthful Curtis Newns had created.

Bruno had written that if da Vinci had taken a look at one of Turner's sea and sky panoramas, and decided to show the world how a master would handle the subject, the Renaissance genius would have painted something like
Skyscape
.

The phone was ringing again. Bruno let it ring, and when the answering machine kicked in, whoever it was hung up.

In the famous, now lost masterpiece, landscape was absent but implied, humanity invisible but alive in every signature of paint. This print was a scaled-down version of the original, but even so it had power.

There was something wrong with the work-in-progress at Owl Springs, something that Bruno had not sensed at first glance.

Bruno folded Andy's clothes, gathering them from the street. People passed by, quietly enjoying the sight.

Bruno folded the clothes tenderly. He remembered how his mother would squint into the wind as she hung out the wash, the quiet happiness of the chore tucking every small detail of the landscape into place. The clothespins had hung in a canvas bag, the green stripes of the bag faded, the weight of the pins satisfying to the hand.

I could call up Owl Springs now, and find out how things are going, talk to Margaret.

If I were Andy, thought Bruno, and I left the life of Bruno Kraft, and marched off into the streets of Rome, where would I go? They had met in the Borghese Gardens. Bruno had been out for a stroll on a Sunday afternoon, drinking a can of Coca-Cola through a thin straw and wishing so many of the white cement mock-classical busts were not damaged, noses and sometimes entire faces smashed. He had heard a voice say, “They do that sort of thing everywhere,” and there had stood Andy, lean, freckled, in the sort of shirt so many men were wearing just then, a sweatshirt with artfully tornoff sleeves.

Bruno called Owl Springs.

A voice answered on the second ring. It took patience, like playing a card game with a very young child, but at last Bruno got some information out of her. The Owl Springs phone was being answered in Burbank. There was no way of contacting Red Patterson “at this particular time, sir.”

“I was just there,” said Bruno, “visiting Dr. Patterson, and I think—”

“Mr. Kraft,” said the operator, breaking into just a little bit of personality. “I thought I recognized your voice. I have to tell you we've been given very definite instructions not to bother the Springs with any sort of call at all, although I can sure take a message and see that—”

That was not necessary, said Bruno.

Bruno didn't have to search. He
knew
where Andy was.

Andy was in Bruno's favorite spot, outside the Pantheon, ostentatiously brooding over a double espresso. He gave Bruno a look that Bruno recognized—Bruno's own bored stare.

Andy was pretty good at it.

“I'm sorry,” said Bruno.

Andy made one of Bruno's gestures: what use were apologies?

“You expected me to show up,” said Bruno.

“It's all so much trouble,” said Andy.

Bruno knew what he meant: people, relationships. It all took so much.

Andy gave Bruno a measuring look. “You're out of breath.”

“You're very important to me,” said Bruno.

Andy performed another Bruno gesture: maybe, maybe not.

“I'm changing. Places have always been more important to me than people,” said Bruno. “And paintings. You take a city and fill it with art, and I fall in love with it. Look at this place.” He indicated the huge, brooding building before them, the great Roman structure enduring, commanding, as though what people were amounted to nothing compared with what people created.

I'd spot a fake in an instant
.

Bruno had been deceived by no one, ever. Well, there was that time in Athens with that manuscript that was supposed to be one of the lost books of Plutarch, his life of Heracles. He had known at the time he was being reckless, so it didn't really count. The paper panned out, too, passed a cathode-ray test at the British Museum. The thing was papyrus, real Egyptian proto-paper. And the fragments of Latin? Well, he had taken a risk. He knew enough Latin to tell it was about the infant Heracles strangling the serpents, the snakes Hera sent to kill him in his crib. It was one of the basic problems of being a demi-god: you had to have an unusual birth, or a fantastic problem in early childhood. And as for the rest of us, the merely-human?

He got cheated. The paper was ancient dunnage, shipper's packing stolen along with some fragments of a Rhodian Hermes some decades ago, a long-filed and forgotten theft, until the wrinkled leaves showed up with ink that radiated the wrong spectrum under the guiding touch of a British Museum technician.

But he knew Curtis's brushstroke as he knew the handwriting of his own father. Bruno gazed at the Pantheon. “The paint was put on thin, and it was put on quickly,” Bruno said. “It was very dry.”

“So?”

“There was a smell of turpentine in the room, almost overpowering.”

“Maybe Curtis left the can open.”

“There were brushes soaking. Curtis was always very neat. His studios were always clean, paintings put away.”

“Maybe,” said Andy, “Red Patterson wanted you to think Curtis was working that very day.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Maybe something has happened to Curtis,” said Andy, as though it didn't matter much.

“It would be a disaster for Patterson.”

“Not really.”

“I thought you admired Patterson.”

“I
love
Red Patterson,” said Andy. “But you should watch more of his videos. He believes we can do anything we want if we really understand what we are. You can make money if you open your mind. You can walk away from drugs if you want to, or cigarettes, or compulsive gambling. You don't need years of psycho-babble. Things are really pretty simple. If your life is dark, turn on the light. Miracles happen. We can be anything we want.”

“But nobody really
believes
that.”

“All it takes is faith,” said Andy. “You just have to get out of the boat and walk across the water.”

“This is your philosophy, Andy? Or are you pretending to be obnoxious, just to make me suffer?”

“You're so dumb,” said Andy.

“Red Patterson would paint a fake Curtis Newns, and try to pass it off?”

“It wouldn't be a fake. Jesus, Bruno, you're really kind of a blockhead, you know that? It would be a new painting, a hybrid work of wonder.”

“‘Work of wonder'?”

Andy shrugged. “It's one of his phrases. Don't you know
anything
about Red Patterson?”

“You're describing a monster.”

“Famous people don't live in the same world as the rest of us,” said Andy. There was a yellow Bic lighter at Andy's elbow, and a pack of Marlboros. Andy picked up the lighter and put it in his pants pocket, shifting sideways in his seat.

“But he couldn't get away with it.”

“Sure he could. People would understand.”

Bruno ignored the waiter at his side. “The art world would be outraged.”

“But Patterson could care less about the art world. To him, whatever happens out there is just great, as long as he ends up with a painting. Don't you remember that time he had that actor, the one who was a bionic policeman in that movie, and the man had hysterical hoarseness?”