Restoration (20 page)

After the ambulance took him away everyone went back inside—everyone but myself and one other, as it happened. I hadn’t noticed her until now. It was Busty Dusty, or was the name Dusty Busty? She
was leaning back against the front of the building with her arms crossed at her chest, and quietly weeping into a twisted rope of tissue. There was a large stain, shaped like a cloud, on her fancy cocktail dress. She was smoking a cigarette. “Miss?” I said, daring to step up close. “Miss, do you know what happened to him? Any idea what’s wrong with him?”

When she looked at me her eyes seemed unable to focus. Each was smudged with mascara. “It’s the pitcher,” she said.

“The pitcher?”

“The Levette. That one by Levette. I stayed over last night and caught him crying in the bathroom at four o’clock this morning—he was sitting on the commode crying. Later I got him to eat some breakfast, but he threw that up on the way here.” She looked down at her soiled dress. “If he dies,” she continued, “it will be from want. All the man has got, and I’m telling you it will be from want.”

“Do you need a ride somewhere? To the hospital, maybe?”

She shook her head. “I still have his car. He wouldn’t stop vomiting and we were running late and so he made me drive. I let him out in front and went to park, and when I got here he was… well, you saw it.”

The straps holding up the top of her dress had slipped over her shoulders, and her chest was almost completely exposed. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “I’d go in and bid for him,” she said, “but they wouldn’t give me a number. Not looking like this they wouldn’t.” She glanced down again at her stained dress.

I left her and returned to the gallery. There were even more people now than before, and a low buzz was coming up from the floor. As I pushed forward, squeezing past the crowd, I finally was able to catch Patrick’s attention. I couldn’t hear him, but clearly his lips said, “Where is he?”

I shook my head and shot a thumb at the door. He shrugged and made a gesture with his hands. “Sick,” I said. “Smallwood is
sick.”

I had to say it a few times before Patrick understood, and then he left his chair and came running toward me down the center aisle. He
fell against me with almost as much force as Smallwood had, and while I calmly explained the situation I thought he, too, would pass out in my arms. I finished and pushed him toward the front of the room, and he staggered to his place like a drunk on a day-long binge, bumping against those auction-goers who occupied aisle seats. Rhys and Elsa helped him to his chair, and then to the sound of his moans the sale
of Beloved Dorothy
commenced.

A couple of porters were holding the painting up high for inspection, turning it from side to side for all to see. From what I could tell, half a dozen bidders in the gallery and several on the phones were pursuing it. As usual, the auctioneer handled the charge with aplomb, deftly pushing the money higher even as numbered cards beat against the air and shouts of “Bid!” and “Here, man!” filled the room. All told it lasted three minutes, and then
Dorothy
was gone.

“Going once, going twice…
SOLD
for four hundred and ten thousand dollars to Jessica Wiley’s phone bid.”

At the sound of the hammer smashing down, I began to applaud and so did others in the room. Levette Asmore had shattered the auction record for a painting produced by a southern artist, outdistancing the previous mark by $100,000. In celebration Patrick stood and threw his arms up over his head, and both Elsa and Rhys wrapped him up with hugs and kisses. He had all of five seconds to enjoy the spotlight, when the next item, an old map, came up on the block.

I walked outside and waited for them on the sidewalk, momentarily forgetting that it was the sale of
Dorothy
, and not my being in Rhys’s presence again, that made the occasion a significant one. Patrick was first through the door, stumbling past the gauntlet of admirers who slapped his back and grabbed and shook his hand. He embraced me while several onlookers whistled and cheered. “You did it, Hurricane. You did it, man.”

“It must’ve been Smallwood on the phone, huh, Jack?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” I said.

“Me neither.”

“I can just see it,” I went on. “They’re driving him to the hospital, medics are thumping his chest with those electric paddles, they’re sticking him with needles and he calls in the winning bid on his cell phone.”

Rhys was a few minutes behind Patrick and Elsa. “The phone bidder was somebody in town,” she announced.

“Smallwood?”

“No, it wasn’t Smallwood. I just talked to Lucinda. She says it was someone else. Some guy who asked to remain anonymous. She’s disappointed. They all are.”

“But it went for nearly half a million dollars,” Elsa said.

“That’s true,” Rhys replied. “The damn thing is she thinks it might’ve fetched twice that had Smallwood been in the action. I’m sorry, Patrick.”

“Can we go back inside and do the auction over again?” he said.

Rhys placed her hand on his face. “The sale’s done, baby, it’s final.”

“What are you thinking?” Elsa said. “That they’re going to get all the bidders back in the gallery and on the phone and make sure Tommy Smallwood participates this time?”

Patrick looked at her. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

“We’re leaving now,” Elsa announced. “Rhys, thank you for the lift this morning. We’ll call first thing on Monday. Jack, always nice to see you again.”

They left in a cab. Past the car’s rear windows Patrick looked as if he were joining a funeral procession, so dark and troubled was his expression. They turned the corner and disappeared. “He should be thrilled,” I said. “God knows I would be.”

“He’ll buy a house and a car and then what?” Rhys said. “He already has a nice home and a car that runs and takes him where he needs to go. He’ll never throw better dinner parties than the ones he’s already given. And he’ll have Elsa’s love whether he’s rich or poor. There’s no doubt the financial security will make things better for him, but it’s only for the short term. It won’t be long—a year or two,
maybe—when Patrick wakes up and everything will be as it was before
Beloved Dorothy
came into his life.”

“What’s your point, Rhys?”

“He should’ve kept the painting. I’d take an Asmore over a new house and a new car any day. The world is full of houses and cars, Jack. It is not full of Asmores.”

Now that the sale was done, culminating the day’s offerings of important southern paintings, a steady stream of people began to leave the building. Rhys took me by the arm and pulled me aside. “I’m glad you’re finished with your magazine story,” she said. She looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear. “Maybe we can go get the mural now.”

“Did you just say ‘we,’ Rhys?”

Her answer was the last one I expected. “I need you, Jack.”

She drove me to the little pizza place across the street from Wheeler, and we sat at a table by the window in front and ordered beer and a large pepperoni, each of us throwing occasional glances at the school. That such a place held a forgotten masterpiece, an Asmore, would never let me look at another derelict building without wondering what kind of treasure was inside waiting to be found.

“How’d your story come out?” she said.

“Awful. It’s an awful piece of crap, definitely not worthy of publication, and nowhere near deserving the money they’re paying me.”

“What did your editor say about it?”

“He loved it.”

She laughed. “You sound like I once did about my painting, back when I honestly believed I was destined to be an artist. I was so self-critical that I couldn’t stand to let anyone see my work. Before my first college exhibition I got so stressed I hyperventilated. I suppose it explains why some artists become painting restorers. They can’t bear the new, especially their own. I have to admit, watching
Dorothy
being auctioned off today was a thrill for me. Even though Joe Butler did
the retouch, I connected so personally with the painting that it might’ve been my own. Sometimes saving something is a more valuable contribution than making something.”

“May I quote you on that?”

“Yes, you may,” she said. “I might even have to quote me on that one day.”

As we ate, Rhys debriefed me on her activities of the last few weeks. For the most part, she said, Gail Wheeler’s situation remained unchanged, except for her decision to retain an attorney, the daughter of her late husband’s sister. Alice O’Neil was fresh out of the Tulane University Law School, and while she had seemed capable enough to Mrs. Wheeler her professional experience was limited to representing former sorority sisters who hired her to write threatening letters to their landlords in apartment rental disputes. Apparently landlords quaked in fear upon receiving letters on stationery with a lawyer’s letterhead. According to Mrs. Wheeler, Alice hadn’t been admitted to the bar yet, having failed the exam on her one and only attempt.

“I’m trying to reserve judgment, but it isn’t easy,” Rhys said. “The one good thing I can say about the girl is that she’s sensitive to her aunt’s financial situation. The retainer, by the way, came to a handshake over cups of frozen yogurt at the mall.”

“The mall?”

“They like to hit the sales. It’s what they do.”

Rhys’s most recent meeting with Mrs. Wheeler had come a few days earlier at the school, and they’d shared another afternoon of soap operas and QVC, the home-shopping channel to which the old woman professed to be addicted. While Mrs. Wheeler recalled the details of every rhinestone bracelet sold on air in the last month, her recollection of the post office mural was vague. Her face went blank when Rhys asked if it was true about the painting. “What painting?” said Gail Wheeler.

“Didn’t Mr. Cherry tell me something about a mural? I’m sure he did.”

“Oh, that thing,” said the old woman, when it registered. “Too bad they had to go and ruin it, huh? I’m sure the students would’ve liked having a painted picture to look at between botching hairdos.”

“She’s starting to wear on me a little,” Rhys said now. “I mean, she’s what you might call uncouth. And now that she’s comfortable with me her language has become rather salty. She swears like a linebacker, Jack.”

“And laughs like a seal,” I added.

“The other day she asked me if I was dating anyone. I told her I wasn’t, and she said she didn’t know how I could stand not getting any. Can you believe that?”

“No, I can’t,” I answered, although the truth was I’d often wondered the same thing myself.

We paid the bill and she drove me to the parking lot where I’d left my car. She pulled up in the slot next to mine and killed the engine and squeezed into the space between her seat and the door. “Jack,” she said, “I want you to be there when we take the mural out. I want you to help us.” She was staring at me, making sure I saw the resolve in her eyes. “Are you with us or not?”

“Who’s us?” I said.

“Joe Butler and me. Who else did you think?”

“Oh, God, not that dude.” I feigned a cold shiver.

“You’ll like him once you get to know him. He might look a little scary but he’s a good man, and he’s good at what he does. He’s the best painter and materials man I’ve ever seen work. Believe me, we’ll need him once we start pulling that canvas off the wall. Later in the studio the rest of the staff will help do the actual work on the painting but I’ve decided to leave them in the dark about its origin.”

“Won’t they know what it is?”

“How could they? Oh, they might recognize the hand of Levette Asmore, but they won’t care where it comes from. We’ve restored several murals at the Guild—both from private homes and public buildings
—and if any of them does bother to ask I’ll say it belongs to a client who has a big house in town.”

“Have you finished making the replacement mural yet?”

“Been finished. It’s ready to go.”

“How’d you pull that off?”

“Easy. I went to the school and took some chips off the wall for paint samples. I also shot some reference photos of the original mural, as it looks today. I’d fired off about two dozen frames when Mr. Cherry walked up and asked what I was doing. I told him I liked the quality of the light in the room. I said I was taking some art pictures of how the light looked streaming from the windows. He told me the most beautiful thing. He said, ‘Yes, it does look churchly, doesn’t it?’”