Water from Stone - a Novel (12 page)

When he is finished, Sy looks up. Jack hasn’t moved. “Jack? Hey, Jack?” he says.

“What? Oh, sorry.” Jack moves to turn, but the hand that he’s held so long to the window sticks for a moment, frozen to the hard, cold pane. Sy moves to help him, but Jack rocks his hand back and forth and finally breaks nature’s hold on him. Turning, he moves heavily to his desk, giving Sy his first real good look at him.

Shock clutches at Sy’s heart and he bites down hard on a curse. Not only is Jack thinner, but his eyes, with their permanent smudge of black shadow, look haunted and old. A shadow seems to lurk over his features, casting bones in high relief and hollowing out cheeks to leave the fleeting image of death.

Suddenly, Sy doubts his approach. Maybe keeping this investigation alive is stupid. Even though it isn’t much of an investigation anyway, he admits to himself. Sure, the time and energy are there. In fact, Sy spends most of his time on it, taking other jobs just to keep the money coming in, but still, his main focus is this one, to the point where he wouldn’t be surprised if one of the few people he can follow up with – and has so many times – takes out a restraining order against him. After all, how many times can you badger someone who doesn’t know nothin’ before it becomes harassment?

No,
he thinks, looking at the man who sits before him, head resting against his chair back, eyes closed to the world,
no, this man needs a break. And it isn’t coming from the investigation. Shit.

“Jack,” he begins, “listen. I’m talking to you as a friend. Maybe it’s time to give it up. Just drop everything.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jack intones, moving his chair back and forth to some inner beat. Sy had seen a woman do that once, back when he was a cop and he’d come to tell her her husband was dead. She just started to rock and, hours later, she was still at it. “Yeah,” Jack comes to a dead stop and finally looks up. “That’s what everyone says. It’s been, what? A year and a half? Those drawings I had made up of her, the age projection ones? They don’t mean shit. Three different artists, three different projections. They’re less than five percent accurate on a newborn, anyway.” Jack’s fingers beat a stiff staccato on the desktop. “So,” he continues, “you think it’s time to give up.”

“Naw, Jack, I’m not saying that. Hell, I don’t want to give up. I don’t ever want to give up. It’s just, seeing you like that, like this, I don’t know what to say to you. I’ve got one lead that might one day become something if this girl Elie ever gets in touch with her mother again, or ever gets a real job. I got feelers out all over. She gets a job, I got her through Social Security. Or maybe she gets sick and there’s Medicaid, or she goes on welfare. Any one of those, and I’ve got her. Or the feds do, if they’re still lookin’, which I doubt, but you never can tell. Sometimes they stumble on to things. But anyway, shit, I’ve turned over every rock and then some and nothin’ is adding up to nothin’. Zip.”

Just then, there is a light tap on the office door and Jack’s assistant pokes her head in. “Jack? Sorry to interrupt, but Mrs. Fitzgibbons is on the phone. She’s been leaving messages all morning and I don’t know what to tell her anymore.”

“Elena? Just tell her I’m in a meeting.”

“I did, Jack,” Elena replies, her voice stretched thin. “But she says it’s urgent, an emergency.”

“Is she dying again, Elena?” Jack asks, a somewhat nasty tone in his voice that Sy has never heard before.

“Apparently so,” Elena whispers back, her hands fluttering before her as if to ward off an attack.

“So she says she wants to change her will again? That’s the third time this month,” Jack tells her, not even looking at her.

Sy does, though. Looks at Elena.  The once proud Executive Assistant looks harried and beaten. When once Sy had known her to spar good-naturedly with her boss, she now looks a hair’s breadth away from bolting. And the fact that Jack is handling a will doesn’t escape his attention either, great detective that he is. Fuck. Here’s this great attorney handling a fucking will. If it weren’t that this is his friend, a really good guy, really, whose entire life now seems such a tragedy, Sy might be tempted to think about how far the mighty have fallen. But he doesn’t, doesn’t even entertain it because he himself is part of the tragedy and is falling pretty fast in his own right.

“Just tell Mrs. Fitzgibbons to keep breathing for another fucking ten minutes and I’ll get back to her,” Jack hisses between clenched teeth. And then, as the door to his office quickly closes, he begins to swivel again. “They’re saying if I hadn’t already made partner, I’d be out by now,” Jack says, his voice almost conversational.

Sy sits forward in his chair. “Jack,” he begins, his voice now firm, “you gotta let her go.”

The swiveling stops. “Who? Let who go, Sy? Lindsey, or the baby? Or, maybe both of them? Is that what you mean? Let them both go? The only fucking thing I have left of Lindsey is that baby and I gotta let her go? Is that what you’re saying?”

Sy rubs his eyes, breaking contact with Jack’s fevered glare, and takes a deep breath. “Listen, Jack, I’ll keep looking, for as long as you want me to. I’m just worried about you.”

“Don’t be. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Just find my daughter.  Find Lindsey’s daughter.” And he swivels around in his chair, his gaze once more drawn to the stark grays of winter beyond the window.

Sy waits a few minutes, not knowing if he has been dismissed or forgotten. Either way, he finally realizes, it doesn’t matter. He gets up and walks to the door, the file in hand.

Twenty

Mar.

Spring bursts onto Boulder like a jack out of its box. In the space of a heartbeat, the earth moves from snow-encrusted to flower buds popping out all over, new-green grass lengthening almost before the eyes, birds chirping and chattering and swooping and flying in an endless, melodious tune. The sound of lawn mowers replaces that of snow blowers and bare-chested young men chase Frisbees down the street, ignored by lightly-clad young ladies who have already figured out that the quickest way to a man’s heart is through rejection.

Mar glimpses the changes from her studio, windows flung open to the warming sun. She is on a streak, working at a pace that she has never before matched. Whether from the change in temperature, the peace that has settled like an aura about her, or excitement for the direction her life is now taking, something urges her on, makes her squirt paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, to layer it and fold it back on itself, to pull it across and through other colors, to create, to build, to exult in her own frenetic pace.

And it is good. Not only the act of painting, but the results. Since Christmas, she has turned out five finished pieces and is working on the sixth. Each is better than the previous and she knows, without having to be told, that her work is moving to a new level, a better level. That knowledge, compounded by the peace and excitement the activity brings her, and she cannot remember a time she has ever felt so good.

Lizzie spends her mornings at a small day care center down the street where she can interact with children her own age and she, too, is thriving. On days when Mar just cannot set her brushes down, Diane and Picasso pick the little girl up and bring her back to the house for lunch.

“Hey, Mar,” Diane calls from the doorway.

“Uh-huh?”

“Are you busy? Can I bug you for a moment?”

“Yeah, sure, what’s up? Can you hit pause on the stereo there, please? I want to hear that again.”

Diane walks over and hits the pause button on the Bose system. “It’s not like you haven’t heard it a million times already,” Diane points out. Dave Matthews is just about the only thing Mar paints to and even Diane, who really doesn’t care for that kind of music, sometimes finds herself singing along.

“I know, I know, but it’s these colors here. And this, see how the Magenta goes up and around and swirls into the Gold? And then out through the Purple? I mean, look there, do you see that streak? Isn’t it gorgeous? I could get lost in that.” Mar points at the canvas and watches as Diane scrutinizes the painting, wills her to follow the beat of the music through the paint. When Diane cocks an eyebrow and nods, Mar knows she’s made her point, “OK, what’s up?” she asks.

“Well, you know the card sets? We’re running low and I want to know how many we should print this time. I was thinking of twenty thousand. We’ve got Barnes & Noble now, too, and we get a big discount on the printing if we increase that much. Besides, I’ve got a couple of good leads on some gift catalogs.”

So far, there are six different sets to choose from, some from her older work, a couple with reproductions of her latest paintings thrown in. Diane had started marketing them two years before to small coffee houses and independent bookstores around Boulder and Denver. Within the past year, a couple of the larger chain stores have picked them up, liking Mar’s quirky paintings. Recently, Barnes & Noble had come calling. Mar, unlike other artists who have assigned merchandising rights to some of their art, produces the note cards herself rather than turning them over to a publishing house. The returns are smaller, but she has complete control over quality.

She does a quick calculation in her head. “Well, yeah, that sounds about right. Will Stan give us our normal terms?” she asks, referring to the local printer they use.

“He will, even though this is a larger outlay than we’ve ever done. Listen, I have another idea I wanted to swing by you.”

“What is it?” Mar asks, stepping back to survey the canvas. “You know, I think that it’s time to introduce a new set. I should be finished with this one in a day or two. What do you think? Should we have Gustavo come shoot these?”

“I’ve already got him set up for next week,” Diane smiles. She enjoys jumping the gun on Mar and from what she’s seen of Mar’s latest work, she knows that this card set will be special. “Anyway, I’m thinking we need to branch out from the cards and prints. I’m thinking about coffee mugs and t-shirts.”

“T-shirts?” Mar can’t hide the dismay in her voice. “Isn’t that a bit, I don’t know, tacky?”

“No, not at all. I’m talking high quality. Silk, limited editions. This one, what’s it called?”

“
Mother & Child
.”

“OK, maybe this one on a nice white background, with a border around it and maybe a quote or just your name underneath. Maybe your signature?”

“Do you really think that’d be interesting? I mean, would people want to wear this on their boobs? I’m talking women, of course. Mostly women would get this one.”

“I don’t see why not. They wear Picasso paintings. I even saw some Van Gogh moccasins the other day.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s Picasso and Van Gogh.”

“I think it would look great with jeans. It’s so pretty.”

“But this one,” Mar waves at the painting, “is so much different than what I usually do. It doesn’t even have fish.”

“You have enough figurative pieces to make a set.”

Mar moves over to the little studio fridge and takes out a Diet Pepsi. “Want one?” she asks before handing a can to Diane and opening one for herself, her mind already reviewing the possibilities.

“I’m also thinking about diaries, or sketch pads – hardcover books with blank pages,” Diane puts in. “Stan’s working out a price for me.”

Mar wipes paint off the back of her left hand. As soon as the acrylic dries, she rubs it off and has a fresh, clean palette ready for more mixing. “Well, yeah, OK, if you think it’s a good idea. It sounds fun, at least. Why don’t you call the guys at Barnes & Noble and ask them what they think?”

“Well, actually, I called the buyer at Nordstrom’s. We’ve already got Barnes & Noble for the card sets and they’d be a natural for stationry and the like, but I thought this could be just the right thing to clinch Nordstrom’s with a limited edition of shirts. She loved the idea, by the way, wants to know if we’ll be ready for Christmas. For that, they need them by September for shipping. But they’ll need samples and photos to send to the stores for ordering purposes.”

Mar starts laughing. “If you’ve got it all figured out, why are you asking me?”

“Well, basically, I’m just telling you, in a nice way. But also, kind of because you have to decide if you want to produce these yourself or outsource them. I’ve got some quotes on outsourcing.”

“Can we do them ourselves? I mean, it’s a risk. Would it be worth it?”

Diane grins, “If it flies, it’ll be worth it. If not, you’ll have to paint faster and sell some new ones to pay the bills.”

“So,” Mar grins back and reaches for a tube of paint, “let’s make it fly.”

Twenty-One

Jack.

Jack leans on the fence and watches the pick-up game, watches the moves of the agile young men, black, white, Latino, Asian, who feint left then right, dribble, spin and then thunder down the court before springing through the air for that half of a second of pure nirvana when the muscles and the will are stronger than gravity and all things are possible. Here, mostly, on this court, baggage is left behind, gang mentalities are checked at the gate and the occupants become again, for a few minutes or a few hours, the young boys they might have been had they been born in another time, another place.

“I thought that was you,” comes a voice by his shoulder.

“Malcolm,” Jack grasps the small priest’s hand and squeezes warmly before being pulled into a tight embrace.

“Ha! You think you can disappear for more than a year and get away with a handshake? Not likely.”

Jack’s face contorts into a real smile, the first in a very long time. Malcolm, so much shorter than he, is broad and somewhat barrel-chested. His gray hair is shorn close to, for lack of a better word, a head shaped more like a block of concrete than an egg, and his nose, flattened a few too many times by the bullies of his youth who had tried, but failed, to torment him into submission, skews strangely to the left. The parts of Malcolm Brewster, now and for quite a long time Father Malcolm or even Father Mac, are a mismatch of spares left over in God’s kitchen and assembled hurriedly and somewhat haphazardly when an unexpected soul had appeared and needed a form. The soul they house, however, is monumental, and the deep crinkles by the sides of his eyes show that he, if no one else, understands God’s little joke.