Dead Boyfriends (19 page)

“I told you I clean up real good,” she said.

“Yes, you do. But I meant the silk screen.” I pointed at the wolf-woman.

She slugged my arm playfully. “So where are you going to take me?”

“Do you like the blues? Big Walter Smith and the Groove Merchants are playing at a barbecue joint in Uptown. Otherwise . . .”

“That sounds like fun.”

“Good.” I continued to study the silk print.

“You really like this piece of junk?” Benny said.

“Yes. I like it very much.”

“Why?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe because it asks questions that demand answers. Who's the hunter, who's the prey? It tells a story—I just haven't worked it out.”

“The story could be different for everyone who looks at it,” Benny said.

“Isn't that the definition of art? That it affects us all differently depending on what each of us brings to it?”

Benny shrugged. “What about the rest of the show?”

“That depends. Do you know these people?”

“Most of them.”

“Then I think it's all just swell.”

“I think it's mostly self-indulgent bullshit.”

Something in my expression must have convinced her that I was surprised by her announcement.

“I'm a skeptic.” Benny was speaking quietly so no one else could hear. “I'm skeptical about the place of visual art in society. Such a very small segment of the population will actually see it, and not necessarily the people I care about. It's a very insular world, the art world. All of the art in this show—it's for the artists. We love it, only I'm not sure what everyone else gets out of it.

“Personally, I don't want to have my stuff shown only in museums and galleries to this tiny group of people. I'd rather do stuff for people like me, people who have real lives, if you know what I mean. I want to do stuff for people who might pay two hundred bucks for a piece and take it home and get some pleasure out of owning it.”

“Do you have something in the show?”

Benny pointed at the silk screens hanging from the ceiling.

“How is that possible?” I asked.

“Someone has to do it.”

“No, I mean—this is wonderful, Benny.”

“Thank you.”

“It really is.”

“Thank you.”

“But isn't this for students?”

“Yes, part of their MFA thesis.”

“At the risk of being insulting, you're what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine? How can you be a student?”

“I'm thirty-five, and I do not find you insulting in the least.”

Which means she could have voted in
four
presidential elections,
my inner voice told me.

“It's a three-or four-year program, and
yes,
most of the students are much younger,” Benny said. “As for me—I took a few years off after I got my BA and then took the course part-time.”

“While working in the sewers of Minneapolis,” I said.

“Inspiration is where you find it.”

“What are you gong to do now that you have your MFA?”

“Rent out a studio with a couple of friends. Buy an intaglio press—that's what I used to create the prints. Make art. Sell it.”

“Are you going to quit your day job?”

“Eventually, if I can make enough money. Most people who get an MFA want to teach, or at least they want to make a steady living while they pursue their art. Some start applying for grants and support themselves that way, but you need to be a real go-getter to do that. I'm lucky because I work in the sewer.”

Now there's eight words I never thought I'd hear,
I told myself.

Benny nudged me along to another exhibit. This one featured two identical steel tracks that were twisted into an upward spiral not unlike a staircase. The steps consisted of thirty six-by-four-inch silk prints hung from the tracks by thread, starting with an image of a small child at the top and an old man at the bottom. In between there was a variety of images, some violent, some benign, some familiar, and some incomprehensible to me. The card on the wall read
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN, B. ROSAS.

“I have a question,” I told Benny.

“What?”

“Shouldn't the child be at the bottom and the adult at the top?”

“The stairway to heaven doesn't go up,” Benny said. “It goes down. As a baby, as a child, we are as close to heaven as we're likely to get. We slide away because of the choices we make during our lives.”

“That's a cynical attitude.”

“The images—Catholicism and religion run through the piece because that's a part of how I was raised. But mostly the images are about me and how things were passed down to me—values, ideas, possessions like my grandmother's brooch—and how all that influenced my life.”

Based on the images, I decided Benny must have had an interesting thirty-five years. I was about to ask her about them when her hand tightened on my arm.

“Oops,” she said.

“What is it?”

“My boyfriend.”

A man, I placed him at midthirties, was waving as he plowed through the crowd. I assumed he was waving at Benny, but he was looking at me when he reached us. From his expression, he wasn't thrilled to see me. Benny maneuvered so that she was standing between us.

“Benita,” he said.

She placed a hand solidly against his chest, stopping him. “Lorenzo,” she said.

“Benita,” he repeated. “May I speak with you for a moment?”

“No.” Benita added a head shake to her words. “No, not now. We can talk some other time.”

“Please.”

Lorenzo reached out his hand, but I intercepted it before it could fall on Benny's arm.

He looked at me with surprise that turned quickly to anger.

“I was speaking to Benita, not you,” he said.

“Like the lady said, some other time.” I told him. At the same instant my inner voice asked,
When did you become Daniel the architect?

From the expression on his face, I was convinced that Lorenzo was preparing to attack me. I took a step backward. His hands came up. I put myself into a balanced fighting stance. Lorenzo could see Benny standing next to me, though, and she must have passed a message because the fight quickly went out of him. He lowered his hands.

“Good-bye, Lorenzo,” Benny said.

She tugged at my elbow, and I followed her through the crowd and out the door.

We stepped out of the Regis Center into suffocating heat—I was beginning to think that was the only kind there was—and began walking along the cobblestones of Twenty-first Avenue south toward Riverside. That was another thing. When did the University of Minnesota start paving its streets with cobblestones? It was something to think about the next time the regents pled poverty before the Minnesota state legislature, which only happens every two years.

I removed my sports jacket and carried it by the collar in my left hand. Benny walked with her hands behind her back and her head down.

I spoke first. “Back inside, with Lorenzo . . .”

“I'm sorry about that,” Benita said.

“I noticed you called him your boyfriend. Not
ex
-boyfriend.”

“He loves me,” she said.

“You are lovable,” I told her, trying to keep it light. “But that's not what I'm asking.”

“I've known him for so long. We . . . He . . . Us . . .” She couldn't get the words out.

Behind us, footsteps echoed on the cobblestones.

“Benita.” Lorenzo was shouting. “Benita, Benita.”

I turned toward him, positioning myself between him and Benny.

He came at us in a hurry.

Benita called his name.

“Benita, please,” he said.

“Whoa, pal,” I said. I let my jacket fall to the ground.

“Leave us alone,” Lorenzo shouted.

I didn't move.

When he got in close he threw a long, slow roundhouse right at my head—easily one of the most incompetent punches I had ever seen. I slapped it away and followed with a short right jab to his chin, putting my weight behind it. Lorenzo went down as if he had been hit with a surface-to-air missile, and in that instant I realized his punch wasn't incompetent at all. Lorenzo knew exactly what he was doing. I realized it because of the way Benny shouted his name and pushed past me.

“Lorenzo, Lorenzo,” she chanted. There was no anger in her voice. Only concern. She knelt at his side on the concrete sidewalk. “Are you all right?”

She tried to caress his face, but Lorenzo pushed her hands away. She tried again. This time he let her succeed.

“I'm sorry,” Lorenzo said.

“No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Benita said.

Somehow Lorenzo's head ended up in Benny's lap, and she stroked his hair.

Damn,
my inner voice chided me.
If only you had let Daniel the architect punch you out.

“Forgive me,” said Lorenzo.

“Forgive me,” said Benny.

“Forget this,” said I.

Benny glanced up at me.

“I'm guessing our date is over,” I said as I retrieved my jacket.

“I'm sorry, McKenzie,” she said.

Everyone's sorry. Everyone's looking for forgiveness.

I didn't have anything to say, so I didn't say anything.

 

If I had been paying attention, I might have seen him, but I was upset as I made my way west to where I'd parked my car next to the trash bins
outside the North County Co-op Grocery. First Nina, and now Benny, with Shelby Dunston giving advice to the lovelorn from the sidelines. “It shouldn't be this damn confusing,” I said to no one in particular. Still, it all seemed to prove a theory that I had been advancing for years now. When it comes to love and romance, none of us ever really leaves high school.

I had unlocked the Audi with the key-chain remote, opened the passenger door, and draped my jacket over the seat when he hit me hard in the kidney. The pain rippled through my body and I nearly lost my legs. I had to grip the top of the door to keep from falling. He hit me again—and again—before moving to my head. I pivoted toward him, tried to get my hands up to fend off his blows. It was only a gesture, a suggestion that I knew how to defend myself. I don't think he noticed.

He was six inches taller than I was and at least fifty pounds heavier. His long hair and full mustache were jet black, and his features were Hispanic. The expression on his face told me only that it took some effort to beat me up, but nothing he couldn't handle.

He put a hard fist into my solar plexus and my legs melted beneath me. I slid into a sitting position, my back against the rocker panel, my legs drawn up to my chest. He hit me twice more with his fists and then a couple of times with the car door.

Is this about Benny?
my inner voice wondered, but only briefly. I was losing focus fast. Two stinging slaps on both cheeks brought me back.

“I told the lawyer and now I'm telling you.” His voice was calm but demanding. “You ain't helping that bitch Merodie Davies no more.”

Merodie? Who's. . . Oh, her.

“Do you understand?”

Understand?

“Nod your head if you understand.”

I nodded.

“Don't make me tell you again.”

I might have nodded some more—I don't remember. I don't remember
seeing him leave, either. Or if he had any parting words.
See you later, alligator. After a while, crocodile.
He was there and then he wasn't there. Maybe he left an instant ago. Maybe an hour. It was hard to tell. Possibly I had lost consciousness and that's why I had no sense of time. Yet if I was unconscious, why was I singing “What a Wonderful World”? Wait, that was Louis Armstrong. Jeezus, my head hurt.

It was growing increasingly difficult to see, and for a panicked moment I thought there was something wrong with my eyes, but it was only the gathering dusk. I wanted to stand and knew it was going to hurt, so I took my time getting ready for it. I unfolded my body and, using the car door, lifted myself high enough to fall onto my car seat. A tsunami of nausea told me that I had made an unwise decision. I hugged my knees until the convulsions subsided, proud that I kept the contents of my stomach to myself. Minutes passed, and the bright red light behind my eyes faded to a dull amber. I made a slow and careful inventory of body parts. Everything seemed to work more or less as designed, although if I were a used car, they'd have me in the “best offer” lot.

The loud chiming in my ears became the tinkle of a dinner bell. I could hear my own thoughts again.

He wasn't so tough,
I told myself as I gingerly fingered my jaw, satisfied that it was still in one piece.
Bobby Dunston's girls can hit harder.

Yeah, right. What was all that about, anyway?

Merodie. Someone wants you to lay off Merodie.

Merodie?

The man said, “I told the lawyer and now. . .”

“G. K.!”

The notebook I was using for the Merodie Davies investigation was in my glove compartment. Pressed between the pages was the business card Genevieve Bonalay had given me. I dialed the home phone number she had written on the back. After four rings a voice mail message kicked in.

“Dammit.”

I hopped out of the passenger seat and jogged around the Audi to the driver's side without thinking about the pain that squeezed my head and body. I slipped behind the wheel and started up the engine. The address G. K. had scrawled below the phone number placed her residence on Xerxes Avenue North in the Cleveland neighborhood. That was on the far west side of Minneapolis. I estimated it would take me at least twenty minutes to reach it, assuming I obeyed the prevailing traffic laws, which, of course, I didn't.

 

Twice more I called G. K., and twice the phone was answered by voice mail. By the time I came to a skidding halt at her address on Xerxes sixteen minutes later, I was anticipating the worst. The two Minneapolis police cruisers parked out front of G. K.'s house confirmed my suspicions.