Wherever There Is Light (23 page)

“I've had more openings than I can count,” he proclaimed. “They always fray my nerves like cheap shoelaces.”

Kendall would have concluded that Brig had dropped by out of concern if his face, with its lusty, diabolical glee, didn't remind her of a satyr in a Rubens painting. All Brig was missing was the pointy ears, and Kendall wished that Mr. Ciccolini were downstairs, but her landlord spent every Friday at his social club in Little Italy.

“Where's Christina?” she asked.

“Christina's reconstituting herself as a Harpy. Yesterday, I had paintings for her to critique, but she had to go to Bergdorf's and buy a chiffon monstrosity suitable for burying a debutante. Christina's so enthral-l-l-l-ed about your opening, you'd believe it was hers.”

“Without her, I wouldn't be—”

“Poppycock. You're an artist, like me, and an artist—even those who struggle for attention, El Greco, van Gogh, Gauguin—will ultimately attract the deserved adulation. Christina is not an artist. She doesn't deserve the artist's reward.”

“Brig, it was thoughtful of you to stop by. But I have things to do.”

“The most reliable place to prepare for an opening is over there.”

He nodded at the bed, and Kendall replied, “I'm not sleepy.”

Brig chuckled, which Kendall judged to be a positive sign, until he grabbed the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “I like you.”

She canted her head away from the stink of the gin. “I like you, Brig, but your wife's my closest friend. I couldn't do that to her.”

“I need new ground to explore.”

Acting as if this were a joke, Kendall said, “Move to Brooklyn.”

Brig latched his arms around her.

“Let me go!” She attempted to wriggle free. He was too close for her to knee him in the crotch. His arms tightened. He was a strong son of a bitch. “Julian'll be here any minute.”

His chortling had more derision in it than mirth. “That gangster crap they gossip about at Chumley's? Dime-novel nonsense.”

His reply enlightened Kendall: a man could be an illustrious artist and an unregenerate idiot. If Julian walked in, Brig was cooked.

He lapped her neck. Kendall wanted to vomit.

Think, girl, think . . .

He tugged up her corduroy skirt.

“Brig, Brig, do you want to force me or—”

“Or?”

Clutching the lapels of his denim jacket and shuffling backward, Kendall said, “Or give it to me good. In bed.”

His expression was skeptical, though he allowed Kendall to tow him along until her back was against the bedstead.

“Lie down,” she said.

He wouldn't release her. “You'll run.”

“For a second, Brig. Let me go for a second.”

His grip loosened, and Kendall shed her sweatshirt and bra, tossing them behind her.

“Where am I going to run now, Brig?”

One of his arms, as deliberately as a snake uncoiling toward prey, honed in on her, and when his clammy fingers clamped onto her breast, Kendall almost screamed as if fangs had pierced her flesh. His other arm uncoiled, and Kendall, gritting her teeth, pressed a palm against the bulge in his dungarees. “Brig, lie down and take off those pants.”

He stretched out on the crocheted bedspread with its pattern of seashells. Kendall slid her hand into the drawer of the maple bedside table.

Brig said impatiently, “What're you doing?”

“A rubber, Brig. You don't want a baby, do you?”

He answered her with a lecherous smile, which persisted until Kendall pulled a .32-caliber Beretta from the drawer and leveled it at his chest.

“You'd shoot me?” Brig asked, and had the gall to sound as if that possibility hurt his feelings.

“You don't go, we'll find out.” Julian hadn't given Kendall any trouble about moving to Greenwich Village except for this pistol. Julian had taught her to use the Beretta on some farmland he owned in Orchard Hill and insisted that she store it by her bed.

Brig strode through the apartment, Kendall remaining far enough away from him so he couldn't spin around and grab her. In the doorway, though, he turned. “You're despicable. Your petty triumph has poisoned my wife, and you've repaid me—your teacher—with nothing.”

Kendall cocked the pistol. “I could put you out of your misery.”

Brig preferred to leave. Kendall had been calm throughout the ordeal, but after dead-bolting her door, she began to shake. She couldn't tell Julian about Brig: he'd kill him. She was confident that Brig wouldn't say anything to Christina, so she wouldn't lose her friend. Kendall checked her wristwatch. Julian said he'd be back by four and it was quarter of. Julian was never late. Kendall was still shaking when she got into the shower.

W
hen Kendall and Julian arrived, Léo was standing with another couple before the wall where Kendall's photographs were arrayed on white mats and framed in black steel.

Helping Kendall off with her coat, Julian said, “Go on, I'll catch up.”

As Kendall walked over, she heard the woman, as petite as a hummingbird, say, “Absolutely stunning.”

“Here's the photographer,” Léo said. “Kendall Wakefield, this is Ada and Aaron Robbins.”

“Delighted,” Kendall said, her voice reserved and professional, but she was churning with excitement. The Robbins Press was among the most prestigious publishers in New York and had discovered many of the writers in the vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance.

Ada said, “I've bought your
Little Girl and the Rainbow
. To hang over my desk in the office. I was once that little girl. So many of us were, weren't we?”

“I was,” Kendall replied. “Might still be.”

Aaron, who was no taller than his wife and appeared to comb his hair by sticking his finger in an electric socket, was paging through the catalog. “Listen to this, Ada: ‘I came to Harlem a stranger and saw my own double life reflected in its dark faces—the life I live each day and the other life I let no one see. I never understood how two lives could belong to one person, but they can, and I'm certain of it now because I saw them both in Harlem.' ”

Ada said, “So Miss Wakefield can write
and
take pictures.”

Aaron said, “Two dozen more.”

“Approximately,” Ada said.

Ada saw Kendall give Léo a puzzled look. “Pardon us,” she said. “My husband and I are debating the additional photographs you'd have to take for a book. That is, if you're interested.”

Kendall restrained a desire to jump up and cheer. “Interested. And flattered.”

“We should discuss it at lunch. Léo, you will join us?”

“Certainly.”

“We have to get home to the children,” Ada said to Kendall. “Enjoy your show.”

When they were gone, Kendall said, “A book? Was she serious?”

“
Très sérieuse
,” Léo said. “We'll talk about it tomorrow. Here come the people.”

As waiters circulated with trays of canapés and flutes of champagne, Kendall spoke to art critics, reporters, and Léo's regular clientele, who swirled around her in somber wool and rustling silk, appraising her signed, original photographs for their aesthetic appeal and the price they could potentially fetch in the future. After an hour, Kendall broke free to introduce Julian to Léo, and to hug and kiss Fiona, Eddie, and Abe.

“You having fun,
ziskeit
?” Abe asked.

“Trying to.”
Ziskeit
, which meant sweetness, was the first Yiddish word that Kendall had learned, and it was Abe who had taught it to her. He was so courtly and kind that Kendall couldn't believe the terrible stories about him in the papers.

Julian accompanied Abe, Fiona, and Eddie as they looked at the photos. Kendall scanned the gallery for Christina and Brig. She didn't spot them and started to worry that Brig had done something crazy when he'd gone home.

Léo appeared at her side. “
Ma chère
, we've already sold eleven. I should've priced them at five hundred.”

Kendall let it sink in. Subtracting his commission, she had earned nineteen hundred and eighty dollars—enough to support herself for nine months. “It's more than I could've dreamed. I'm very grateful.”

Léo shrugged, still disappointed with himself. “We'll recover it on the book.”

A blast of cold air blew into the gallery as Simon entered with a woman on his arm. One of the waiters took his hat and coat and his companion's white fur jacket, and Simon, in black pinstriped gabardine, glanced at Kendall as if they'd bumped into each other by accident. Kendall's initial reaction to Simon's presence was dread. If Simon met Julian, he could bring up the time they'd been spending together, and Julian wouldn't appreciate her not telling him about it. Her second reaction was stronger—jealousy at the sight of Simon with a woman who bore a passing resemblance to the young Billie Holiday with that gardenia pinned in her upswept hair, chandelier earrings, and orange-red lipstick.

“Mr. Sapir,” the woman said. “I'm Maxine Thorn. From the
Amsterdam News
. I received your press release, and we spoke on the phone.” The
Amsterdam News
, based in Harlem, was the most influential Negro newspaper in the country.

“How good of you to join us,” Léo replied.

“This is Simon Foxe. A columnist with the
Pittsburgh Courier
. He and Miss Wakefield are both graduates of Lovewood College.”

Simon winked at Kendall and shook hands with Léo. Kendall felt as if she were in a sappy romantic comedy. Maxine was giving her the once-over, her lips stuck somewhere between a smile and a sneer. Kendall thought that Maxine, with the plunging neckline of her sequined dress, might as well put her titties up on a billboard, and seeing that ebony cleavage, Kendall could picture the randy doings in Simon's hotel room.

Maxine said, “Simon would like to write a column on the exhibit, and the
Amsterdam News
will reprint it.”

“Excellent,” Léo said. “Come, Mr. Foxe, let me explain why these photographs caught my attention.”

When they were gone, Maxine said, “Girl, you a credit to your race. It's inspiring that every now and again the master be lettin' some high-yellow poon into his house.”

Kendall was appalled by Maxine's vulgarity. Her inclination was to pretend that she hadn't heard her, a response to crudeness that had been ingrained in her by Garland, who had enforced etiquette as if it determined whether the Lord sent you north or south on Judgment Day. Yet on this evening, as Kendall became who she had longed to be, she felt that no-damn-body—least of all some hussy who got herself confused with Lady Day—was entitled to speak to her with such venom.

“In college,” Kendall said, “Simon always had some girl he was fucking. Y'all know how a man ain't nothing but a dog needing to bury his bone. I wouldn't be that girl for him, but I reckon there's lots of girls up here who would.”

Maxine gaped at Kendall, her mouth forming an O, and if she did snap back, Kendall didn't hear it because she was off to confront a potential disaster: Léo and Simon were talking to Julian. As Kendall reached his side, Julian said to her, “Your college friend, the guy who built the darkroom, right?”

His tone was even, which unnerved Kendall, because Julian was masterful at keeping his feelings to himself and because she felt dishonest hiding Simon from him.

“Right,” Kendall said. “Simon Foxe.”

Léo was contemplating the trio as if they were subjects in one of Kendall's double exposures, a complicated narrative hidden in the solid and wisplike figures.

Fiona came over as the gallery began to empty out. “Eddie, Abe, and I are hungry. We'll meet you two at Peter's Backyard?”

Julian said, “I'll get the coats.”

Kendall smiled at him. “Be there in a minute.”

Maxine, frowning, was now standing next to Simon. Kendall ignored both of them and asked Léo if she could use his phone.

“In the sitting room.”

Kendall dialed Christina, but no one answered. She hung up and dialed again, pressing the receiver to her ear and listening to Christina's phone as it rang and rang.

M
onday morning, after not hearing from Christina all weekend, Kendall headed to her house on Bedford Street. No one answered the doorbell, and the blinds were drawn. Christina had an ailing, octogenarian father in Boston, but even if an emergency had summoned her to see him, she was a stickler about appointments, and Kendall was convinced she'd have heard from Christina if her absence at the exhibit wasn't connected to the unpleasantness with Brig. Kendall went around the corner to Commerce to check the courtyard. During the winter, Christina enjoyed sitting on the redwood settee while an apple-wood fire blazed in an ashcan. She wasn't there, and the gate was padlocked.

Kendall caught a subway uptown. On Saturday, she'd gone to the gallery, and Léo had urged her to take more double exposures in Harlem. He had spoken to the reviewers from the
Times
and
Herald Tribune
, and their enthusiastic opinions of her work would be on the newsstands Friday morning—fortuitous timing because Ada Robbins had been in touch and had invited them to lunch on the same day.

So Kendall revived her summer routine, scouting Harlem for photographs and eating at Crossroad Bar-B-Q. On Tuesday, when Mama B brought her a wedge of sweet potato pie, she said, “That Simon been asking after you. I told him you'd be here noon on Thursday.”

“I'll be here Wednesday too.”

“Girl shouldn't be in that big a rush,” Mama B said, chuckling.

On Thursday, Simon was at the table by the jukebox. He said, “I apologize, Kenni-Ann, okay? I wanted to see your exhibit, and the
Amsterdam News
is reprinting my column.”