Solos (19 page)

She watches him walk away, handsome, heartbroken, but maybe distracted for a minute from his own troubles by the troubles of pathetic Emily Lime. Soon he will start wishing he could talk it over with Lamont, and all his own sorrows will come rushing back.

Still, Emily remembers, she got some good pictures. Brooklyn is a dismal place, full of loss and betrayal, but it's also beautiful.

She goes upstairs to Otto and Izzy, and considers calling Marcus to ask him if he's really planning to move away. But she's afraid she will cry again if he says yes, and the horror of that is too much for her. Unrequited love. Is the word
unrequited
ever used except in that Victorian phrase? Or
requited
, for that matter? What kind of word is that? She remembers Johnny Eames in
The Small House at Allington
—the April selection of the Trollope group—whose passionate love for Lily Dale is one of the most famous unrequited loves in literature. The last sight Trollope provides of poor Johnny is when he is sitting alone in the dining room of the Great Western Hotel in London, moping over a mutton chop. The image has always seemed sad to Emily—all of them in the group felt bad for Johnny, who is a serious, decent young man. But now, in spite of herself, it makes her laugh—a mutton chop, after all!

But she sobers immediately: Will Marcus even be at the next Trollope meeting?
Marcus
, she thinks.
Marcus Mead. Dr. Maus came. Mama's cured
.

She is sitting by the window watching the lights come on across the river and munching the last Mallomar—
dinner of Mallomars and tomato juice is pretty good
, she is telling herself—when the phone rings. It's Gene Rae to say there has been another rape, a middle-aged waitress at Kasia's was attacked in the doorway of an abandoned building on Franklin Street. Same guy, same hood, same mask, same knife, and she's going out to buy a gun.

14

Deified

Marcus waits until nearly noon before he lets himself into Emily's loft with his dog-walker's key. Otto comes running to greet him, and Marcus tussles with him for a few minutes, throwing the old red ball until he wonders, as he often does, if Otto really likes chasing it or if he keeps fetching it because he thinks Marcus likes to throw it. When they both get tired, Marcus perches gingerly in Emily's yellow rocker and contemplates what he is about to do. So far he has only committed one crime—entering her apartment illegally—and it's a crime he could probably justify with some lame excuse if she walked in on him.
I had an uncontrollable urge to visit Otto
. Emily would probably fall for that one, though no one else on earth would.

But he is about to commit a much greater, utterly unjustifiable crime, and his only excuse is that it could save her life. And telling Emily Lime that her ex-husband, who happens to be his father, wants her dead is not something Marcus ever hopes to face. Half an hour of blatant snooping is infinitely preferable. Somewhere in her apartment there must be something that will shed light on what his father wants. Two things that Hart said on Tuesday have stuck with him: “My wife and I had a little agreement,” and “Everything is locked up tight.”

These two sentences, of course, could mean nothing.

The first could refer to a casual conversation, the second could be a metaphor.

But Marcus can't be sure until he looks, and that is what he is there to do. He wishes he didn't have to, but what if Hart had asked someone else to do the deed? Emily could be dead by now, and the whatever-it-is could be in Hart's pocket.
My wife and I had a little agreement
.… How, how, how could Emily ever have been Hart's wife? It's beyond him, and he doesn't like to think about it. He would rather think of Emily up on a roof somewhere in Brooklyn Heights right now, tying back vines and potting up tender plants and bundling rosebushes in burlap against the coming winter. It's a cool, sunny Thursday morning—a perfect gardening day.

The light is pouring in through the tall windows, and Emily's loft is a pleasant place to be. Except for its size, it always reminds him of van Gogh's painting of his bedroom in Arles: colorful, plain, a bit eccentric—and poor. He hates it that Emily is so poor. He knows she isn't eating much: She lives on eggs, apples, and canned salmon. She is appealingly slender, but one of these days she will be precariously gaunt, like a teenage supermodel. He had considered bringing over some groceries, leaving them on her kitchen counter with a note:
I went shopping while you were at work. Hope that's okay. Love, Izzy
.

But she would know it was him, even if he misspelled some of the words.

Marcus wants the whatever-it-is to transform Emily into a rich woman, and tells himself he won't leave New York until he figures out how to make that happen. Eventually, he gets up and goes over to Emily's desk, which is a piece of plywood balanced on two file cabinets. Emily has devised a keyboard holder under the desktop: a scarred maple cutting board resting on two pieces of half-round molding that stick out below the plywood like arms. Marcus always smiles when he sees it: It's primitive, sad, ingenious, and ludicrous, because the keyboard it supports is attached to a sleek and powerful top-of-the-line computer Emily bought during the Y2K panic with the proceeds from the sale of two
BREADS
and a
DOG
.

The computer is seductive: He's tempted to get on the Web and try to find the fiendish crossword puzzle site he heard about from Saul. But it's too risky, and Izzy chooses that moment to screech “Pretty boy!” as if warning him away. Who knows what time Emily and Sophie will finish for the day, or how long it will take him to snoop through Emily's possessions?

Hating himself, he opens one of the file cabinets. He is surprised by its finicky order, which is worthy of himself. It seems to contain only information relating to her photographs: correspondence with galleries, receipts from photo labs, lists of what she sold and to whom and when. It's in the second cabinet that he finds, instantly, what he knows instinctively he has been looking for.

In between folders marked GAS BILLS and MEDICAL STUFF is a thin one marked LEGAL, and inside it is a multi-page document headed STATE OF NEW YORK: DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. He has an unsavory desire to read it straight through—Docket No. FA-96 04587553F, Statement of Income, Marital History, Judgment File—but in his first quick perusal he sees a page headed “Schedule C: Personal Property to be Retained by Wife pursuant to Paragraph VIII of Agreement dated July 16, 1997.” The list reads:

washing machine and dryer

1985 Volvo

54 novels by Anthony Trollope, “Everyman” edition

74 oil paintings, three notebooks of drawings, two pastels:

work of artist Joe Whack

Marcus sits down on the floor, dazed, and stares at it. His first thought is the Joe Whack painting of the toaster and safety pins Hart gave to Summer, which is still hanging on the wall in the gray farmhouse. He'd forgotten all about it.

His second thought is:
What a shit
. At a time when Hart was making plenty of money, this is all she got. She probably couldn't afford a lawyer, probably in her Emily-ish way didn't even quibble: Sure, whatever, let's just get it over with.

He gathers his wits together, finally, and produces his third thought:
Whack
. It must be Joe Whack. His work must have become valuable. Posthumously, he has been discovered. Somewhere, somehow, somebody wants Whack. Hart knows this, Emily doesn't.

Emily has seventy-four Whacks.

He looks vaguely around the loft. Where the hell are they?

He is putting the document back when another one catches his eye. It is badly typed on flimsy paper, and it is headed JOINT TENANCY AGREEMENT, dated March 14, 1995. Feeling slimy, Marcus peeks at it. It is written in legal gobbledygook that sounds to him like a parody:

“Notice to whomever it may concern, now and hereafter and in perpetuity,” it begins, and goes on to say:

the artist herein named and whose signature is below, I, Josef Whack, do hereby transfer the property that comprises my life work, namely 74 paintings, 2 pastels, and 3 notebooks, to Tab Hartwell and Emily Lime, which they will own jointly now and forever, to do with what they wish, and in the event of the death of one of them, the works of art in question, namely said paintings, pastels, and notebooks, become the sole and exclusive property of the other.

The document is signed by Josef Whack, Emily Lime, and Tab Hartwell and notarized with a signature that is barely readable but looks female, Polish, and in a hurry.

In the event of the death of one of them
. If Emily Lime's dead body is found at the bottom of an elevator shaft, Hart will get back the Whacks he gave up, plus pastels and notebooks. But if Emily Lime's death is averted, Hart will own nothing but his own twisted soul, and Emily could be a wealthy woman. Or at least a wealthier woman. Or is a Joint Tenancy Agreement some kind of binding lifelong covenant that Marcus doesn't understand? Do Emily and Hart, bizarrely, still own the paintings together, as if they were a child in joint custody?

But—again, the vital question—where are the paintings?

Marcus returns the document to its folder and closes the file drawer, ignoring the urge to wipe off his fingerprints. Then he exchanges a few “pretty boys” with Izzy, pets Otto until the dog starts to get wild, and lets himself out. He has to wait for the elevator, which is above him on the sixth floor. The elevator makes Marcus nervous. Whenever he takes Otto out, he's always terrified that, in his zeal to get to the park, the crazy little guy will fling himself over the edge.

Marcus leans out into nothingness to pull on the cable and he looks up the open shaft, where he can see the dark steel cube that, Emily has told him, Anstice is planning to replace with a regular elevator, one with numbered buttons and automatic doors. Anstice can't bring herself to do it yet, because during the time it's being worked on (conservative estimate: a month) she will have to walk up to her sixth-floor loft. And until the building achieves legal status, nobody says she has to do it.

Marcus moves back, well away from the shaft, knowing that if he looks down he will see the bottom of the long vertical tunnel where he has told Hart that Emily's body will lie in a broken heap. He leans against the wall and squeezes his eyes shut, and into his mind comes the image of a body at the bottom of the shaft, and it's not Emily's, it's Hart's.

Finally, the elevator grinds into action, descends noisily, and stops in front of him. He wrenches open the door and sees Anstice and Dr. Demand, each of them wearing the pleasant and elaborately neutral look worn only by people who have just sprung guiltily apart.

“Oh! Well! Hi, Marcus,” Anstice says. She is wearing what appears to be a nightgown under a quilted Chinese jacket. “Nice to see you. I'm just going down to get my mail.”

“Hi,” Marcus says, nodding at them both. “I stopped in to see Emily, but I guess she's not home. Her buzzer doesn't seem to be working.”

“Oh, right,” Anstice says vaguely. A smile hovers around her lips. “Those damned buzzers, always wimping out when you need them.”

Dr. Demand hauls on the rope, and the elevator starts to descend. “I had to deliver something to Anstice,” he says. “A small dental complication.” He glances at Anstice and shrugs, looking suddenly helpless. “Something minor, but, you know, major.”

“It was so nice of you, Doctor,” Anstice says, and the smile breaks out.

Dr. Demand gazes at her, then turns with an effort to Marcus. His face is bright crimson above his nattily knotted blue tie. “Great weather we're having, eh?”

“Pretty good, Doc.” The elevator is agonizingly slow. Even on a cool autumn day, the smells of cinnamon and cloves linger in the building, permeating the elevator. There is an awkward pause, which Marcus figures it's his turn to break. He says, “Running into you like this reminds me I should probably do something about that broken tooth.”

“Ah—yes.” Dr. Demand visibly struggles to remember the tooth. When Marcus chipped a piece off a year ago on a frozen candy bar, the dentist said it wasn't serious, not to worry unless he lost some more of the tooth, which is one reason everyone goes to Dr. Demand.

“Snickers bar,” Marcus prompts him.

The dentist's face lights up. “Second bicuspid in the upper right quadrant? I still think you can wait on that, Marcus, but if it's bothering you, give Renata a call and make an appointment. I'll be glad to take another look.”

“Will do,” Marcus says, and the elevator lands, with a little bump, at the first floor, and they all file into the lobby.

Anstice says, “Well—guess I'll get that mail,” and Dr. Demand says, “Guess I'll be off to pull some teeth.” But neither of them moves.

Nor does Marcus. He stands there, suddenly struck by an idea. “Anstice,” he says.

She wrenches her gaze away from Dr. Demand. “Hmmm?”

“I wonder if I could talk to you about something.”

Anstice gives him her full attention, genuinely surprised. “Sure.” She looks at Dr. Demand, back at Marcus. “You mean—now?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, if you're not too busy.”

“No, no, of course not. I'm just …” She looks down at her feet for a moment—she is wearing what Marcus believes are called mules—pink ones—and then seems to pull herself together. “Sure. That's fine.” She holds out her hand to the dentist. “Thanks, Dr. D. For stopping over and everything.”

Dr. Demand takes her hand, and Marcus turns away for a moment, hands in pockets, whistling a little, so that they can exchange the kind of look they seem to want to exchange.
Anstice and Dr. D. Well, well
. He doesn't know what to think. He is aware of the usual combination of boredom, bafflement, and envy, but it's like distant hoofbeats, going someplace without him.
When wolves howl
, he thinks,
they sing in harmony, like a barbershop quartet, each wolf on a different note. The songs of whales, on the other hand, are intricately structured
,
and they come and go like pop tunes. For a couple of months, they sing the same song, then it changes
.…