Skyscape (44 page)

Margaret could not actually see this, but heard about it on KCBS. What she did see was halted traffic, everywhere. According to “Traffic and Weather Together” all the approaches to the bridge were blocked and the Bay Bridge was suffering, too, three stalls and something jackknifed.

It was late afternoon and Curtis's show was set to open in exactly one hour. Margaret was stuck in traffic, burning out the clutch, probably, although Curtis had said they would buy a new car.

This was an important afternoon, and it was going all wrong. Something electrical had blown up on Taylor Street, a transformer, according to the radio. Nobody was hurt but the possible long-term health effects from PCPs meant that authorities were cautious. Workers painting lines on Van Ness had encountered an elderly driver, and white paint had spread across two lanes. A former president was giving a speech at the Commonwealth Club.

A dog barked at Margaret, hanging out a car window. It was a collie with small, alert, uncomprehending eyes, yapping at Margaret until she asked it very gently to please be quiet. The dog looked ashamed, and tucked back into its car.

But she wasn't late.

Margaret reached the gallery. There was already a crowd on Sutter Street, hired security directing traffic, setting up barriers, smiling at Margaret as she passed them. Someone said, “That's her!” This happened all the time, lately. Strangers smiled and said hello.

Margaret ran into Renata San Pablo in the elevator.

Margaret told Renata how wonderful it was to see her.

It had been Renata's contention that Margaret, in her anguish, had committed a crime, burning a work of singular importance. Strangely, this simply added to the luster of this particular show. Margaret had, in the public eye, taken on the aura of both savior and destroyer, and people seemed to regard her with a mix of affection and awe.

“Curtis is so gorgeous!” said Renata. “It's bliss to look at him!”

What could Margaret think of saying but, “Thank you”?

“You
will
make Curtis sell them, won't you? When he feels ready to, of course.”

“Curtis is happy to show these drawings. But he doesn't want to let them go.”

“But isn't that
wrong
, Margaret? Isn't that
selfish?
You know it is.”

The elevator opened, but neither Renata nor Margaret made a move to leave it. “They belong to Curtis,” said Margaret.

“But they should belong to all of us,” said Renata.

Curtis was smiling, and gave Margaret a huge hug, picking her up off the carpet as he did so.

It made Margaret self-conscious, still, to see so many drawings of her own naked body. She lifted her hand to touch an earring, as though the feel of the lapis lazuli wing would reassure her that it was all right to be nude, and in such abandon, before strangers.

Loretta Lee had turned the drawings over to Curtis and Margaret that day as they awaited the arrival of the sheriff's department. She had told the artist that Patterson had found them in the living room of the house in Marin, the morning after the shooting, but then, in private with Margaret, Loretta Lee confessed that she herself had found them in the foyer of the house, and taken good care of them, following Patterson's advice once he learned of the existence of “all those cute little Margaret behinds.”

Bruno was there. Margaret had not spoken to him for many months, not since he visited the hospital in Palm Springs just before Curtis was released. Even then, her smile had been strained, her words few. She had trouble forgiving him.

Andy was taking pictures, favoring those shots which had Curtis and Bruno together, but there still were no members of the public, only what Curtis called “the chosen few and their fleas.”

“He was probably committing suicide,” said Renata to a small gathering of her hand-chosen. “By disappearing way off where he knew everyone would have to come out and find him.” People were surprised that Patterson was dead, although not saddened. His vanishing act had been intriguing. His mere remains lacked any further magic.

There was a photograph of a body in magazines and newspapers. The image had been shocking, days ago, but it was accepted now. The body was sunbaked, the eyes closed, the posture like that of a man meditating. The surrounding terrain was scattered stone, gravel as lifeless as the Martian surface.

Some people claimed that this corpse was not Red Patterson, in fact, but someone else. The medical examiner, however, was definite. It was Red Patterson, and he had suffered a stab wound to the chest. That he had survived long enough to find his way that far out in the desert, so far from his aircraft, was something of a miracle.

Public response to Patterson's death had been tempered by Bruno Kraft's comments in several interviews. Just as no jury would convict Margaret, Bruno said, no art lover could ultimately blame her. But how much of the painting would have been completed, Bruno wondered, if Margaret had stayed in San Francisco? How much had Margaret's visit to Owl Springs forced Patterson's hand?

“We're about to let in the people,” said Renata San Pablo.

“Don't,” said Bruno. “Let's just stay here together for a moment.”

“People,” said Renata, as she might have said
pustules
, “get irritated if they have to wait.”

Curtis put his arm around Margaret, for strength, although whether to take it or give it was not clear.

“I stand corrected. We certainly don't want to keep people waiting, do we?” said Bruno.

The place was, suddenly, crowded and happy.

Margaret remembered how she had felt, while this drawing was being sketched onto the paper, how the sun had felt, and how they had made love. Curtis was here at her side now, and yet she wondered what had happened to her, how she had been so lucky to see her image re-created on a sheet of paper.

“Now you are immortal,” said Bruno, indicating the drawings around them.

When she closed her eyes she could still see desert, the rise and fall, the eternal stone. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to tell Bruno something he might not understand. When Curtis drew these pictures, she would have said, he loved her, as he did now, his hand in hers.

Renata was describing the relatively poor quality of Patterson's collection, which she would personally not even consider buying. “That means she's fallen in love with it,” said Curtis.

“You don't like it here, do you?” asked Margaret.

“All these people—” He shrugged.

Margaret knew. The avalanche that sweeps the world each day leaves survivors. It leaves them with something else, not their past, and no promise of a future. People have the brief circle of daylight, and they have each other.

Margaret and Curtis left when no one could see, their escape momentarily blocked by the arrival of video equipment and two local television celebrities. Margaret pulled him along by one hand. They took the stairs, leaped three steps at a time, and were out in the street, out in the traffic.

They strolled up Sutter Street, passing their reflections in the shop windows, their images elongated, shortened, or trembling as a truck rumbled behind them in the street.

“Bruno was going to show his new video,” said Curtis. “The one Renata commissioned, the one all about the ‘Margaret Series.'”

“We can go back, if you want,” she said teasingly.

“Do you think they've noticed we're gone?” he asked.

“By now.”

“Do you think they'll send someone after us?”

She laughed. “Of course.”

“We'd better run,” said Curtis.

They stayed where they were. Curtis ran a finger along her lips, like a man drawing lips onto a canvas. That is how it felt, as though his touch created not simply her response, but her body, his whisper loud in her ear as he put his arms around her, people parting around them on the sidewalk, not seeing them, or seeing them and passing by, a world in a hurry to get home.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my father, Robert Cadnum, for the abundance of aviation lore he shared with me throughout the writing of this novel, and I would like to thank him, too, for his enduring enthusiasm for books.

I would like to thank the kind people at KTVU, Oakland, for their cheer and advice.

This novel is dedicated to the memory of Craig Hoffman, a man whose love of life was a force of nature.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1994 by Michael Cadnum

Cover design by Kat JK Lee; photograph courtesy of the author

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2362-7

Distributed in 2015 by Open Road Distribution

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New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com