Ghost Music (21 page)

* * *

“What's wrong?” I asked her, after I had let her into my apartment. “You look like you're sick.”

“I'm okay. A little tired, that's all. Do you have a glass of water?”

“Sure.” I went into the kitchenette, opened up the fridge and poured her a glass of Evian. I said, “I saw Victor last night. I heard a whole lot of shouting and screaming and I thought it was coming from your apartment. As a matter of fact, I thought the woman who was doing the screaming was you.”

Kate looked up at me and gave me a wan smile. “You worry about me far too much.”

“Well, obviously. When I went downstairs and knocked on the door, nobody was shouting and nobody was screaming and you weren't even there, although that redhead was. She had really made herself at home, too.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. Whatever goes on between you and Victor, that's your business. That doesn't mean I don't get incandescently jealous.”

“You don't have any need to, Gideon, I promise you.”

Malkin came into the living room and jumped up onto the couch. She sat close to Kate, and Kate stroked her and gently tugged her ears.

“Maybe we shouldn't see each other for a while,” she said.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I can see that this is hurting you, and I don't want you to be hurt.”

“It's not hurting me, it's just frustrating me.”

“Gideon—I need you, but not if the price is too high for you to pay.”

I sat down next to her. “I've already made up my mind,” I told her. “If you want me to wait and see what this relationship is all about, and what all that weirdness with the Westerlunds and the Philipses was all about, then okay, I'll wait and see. I can't say that I enjoy being kept in the dark, but if it means that you and I stay together, I'll sit here with the light off for as long as it takes.”

She kissed me. Her lips felt very cold. I was sure that she was coming down with the flu. I took her hands in between mine and they were freezing, too.

* * *

She stayed until nearly six, which was when Victor was due home. I had turned the heating up to “ox roast,” and by the time she left she had some color back in her cheeks, even though she still looked feverish. Malkin loved it being so warm: she lay on her back on the rug with her legs spread wide apart.

“No modesty,” Kate smiled.

I kissed her at the top of the stairs. “Go to bed,” I told her. “Take a Tylenol and don't let that husband of yours anywhere near you.”

She started to go downstairs. Halfway down, she turned around and blew me a kiss and said, “Go back inside. I'll be fine, I promise you. I probably won't be able to see you tomorrow, but maybe the day after. And look—you have a friend!”

I turned around and saw that Pearl was standing close behind me, in her stained pink bathrobe. She had one hand raised to her forehead and she was frowning.

“Pearl?”

“I think I've forgotten where I am,” she said. “Is this a hotel?”

I took hold of her elbow and steered her back along the landing. “No, Pearl. This is your home. This is where you live.”

“I was afraid of that. There are too many people here, aren't there?”

“What do you mean?”

“They come and they go. There are far too many of them. Always opening doors and closing them again. It never stops. Opening doors, and closing them again. You see them, don't you? You see them as clear as day.”

“I don't really understand what you're talking about, Pearl. Come on—let me help you get back upstairs.”

“There are far too many. And it never stops. Did you see my Jonathan downstairs? He went to Blick's to buy some new brushes.”

“No, I didn't see him. I'm sorry.”

We had reached the second-story landing now. Pearl's front door was open and I could smell the familiar waft of fresh oil paint and stale cauliflower.

“He's been such a long time . . . I get worried. It's all these people, you know. They covet everything you own, even the sunlight that shines into your eyes.
They want it.
”

I helped her into her living room. She sat down and reached for a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes. She took out a cigarette and lit it with a worn-out brass lighter, blowing smoke halfway across the room.

“How's the painting coming along?” I asked her.

The easel was turned away from me at an angle, and the light was shining off the oil paint, so I couldn't see her life study at first.

“Very good,” she said. “But I think there are too many people in it now. It's far too crowded.”

“I thought it was just you.”

“It was, to begin with. But see for yourself.”

I walked around the easel. Whoever was painting Pearl's life study, he had made unbelievable progress since the last time I had looked at it. The nude portrait of Pearl was almost completely finished, and the artist had caught her expression completely: a coquettish old woman who knew that her naked body was still capable of attracting men's attention.

But around the ottoman on which she was sitting there were now seven other figures—two women, two men, two children, and a baby. The two women were both naked, but the two men were dressed in black three-piece suits, and the two children were wearing old-fashioned pinafore dresses, with narrow blue and white stripes. The baby was lying on the floor, in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, wrapped in a dark maroon blanket.

So far, the artist had painted only the children's faces in any detail: the adults' faces were still a muddy blur, as if he had painted them and then smeared them with a paint-rag while they were still wet. The baby's face was blurry, too. But the children had both been rendered in meticulous glowing detail, like Pearl.

I didn't know what to say. I felt as if my hair were crawling with hundreds of lice. The two children in the painting were both girls. One was Elsa and the other was Felicia. And even though their faces were partially obliterated, it wasn't hard to guess who the adults were.

“You see what I mean?” asked Pearl, with twin tusks of smoke streaming out of her nostrils. “Too many people by far.”

“But they didn't actually come here and sit for this painting, did they?”

“What are you talking about? They're always here. I told you. Opening doors and closing them. Coveting your very breath. They didn't
come
here, Gideon Lake. They're
always
here.” She paused, and then she flapped her hand at me. “You see? I remembered your name. I told you I would, didn't I?”

I stood and stared at the painting for more than a minute. I couldn't make any sense of this at all. How could the Westerlund
girls have come all the way from Stockholm to pose for this painting? How could Axel and Tilda have come here, and the Philipses, too, from London?

No—Pearl must be mistaken. These portraits must have been painted from photographs. But—even so—why these particular people? What possible connection could Pearl have with Kate's acquaintances in Europe? And why had they been included in this painting?

And another mystery: who did the baby belong to? It seemed to be wrapped in the same blanket as the baby I had seen Kate pushing in the park.

“When is your painter coming again?” I asked.

“You mean Jonathan? He went to Blick's to buy some new brushes. He always goes to Blick's, but it seems to take him forever. I think he stops for a drink on the way home. Not just one drink either. Or maybe he's seeing some floozy. He always had an eye for floozies, the floozier the better. He likes tiny little breasts. That's why he fell for me. Tiny, teentsy little breasts. His friend Gordon calls him the tiny titter.”

“So you're not sure when he's coming back? I'd like to talk to him, when he does.”

Pearl crushed out her cigarette. “In that case,” she coughed, “I shall tell him to come downstairs and see you. But I can't tell you for certain when that might be. I think he stops for a drink on the way home from Blick's. I'm sure of it. Either that, or he's seeing some floozy.”

Now she started coughing in earnest, coughing and coughing until she had to reach for a Kleenex. When she took the tissue away from her mouth, it was speckled with blood.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. “Maybe I can get you some water.”

She shook her head. “I'm all right. It's
you
that I'm worried about.”

“Me? Why should you be worried about me?”

She coughed again, pointing her finger at me. “I saw you with that woman. You should be very careful with that woman. I know what she's up to.”

“Oh, yes? What?”

“She's getting you to do her dirty work. That's what she's up to.”

“Pearl,” I said, “I really don't think so. She and I, we're just enjoying each other's company, that's all.”

“But to what end? That's what you have to ask yourself.”

“Pleasure. Affection. Friendship. Isn't that enough?”

“Not for
her
, Gideon Lake. I know what she's up to. She can't do it herself, so she's getting you to do it for her.”

“So what exactly is it, this thing that she can't do for herself?”

Pearl shrugged one shoulder, so that her bathrobe slipped off it, and exposed the deep hollow above her collarbone. “How should I know? Everybody has a different agenda, don't they? Coming and going, opening doors, closing them again. You can't follow each and every one of them, to find out where they're going.”

“No,” I said, even though I had no idea what she was talking about. “I guess you can't.”

I looked at the painting a little longer, while Pearl looked at me.

“
Dejeuner sur l'herbe
,” she said.

“What?”

“It's that famous painting by Manet. Ed-oo-uard Manet. Picnic on the grass. The men are both fully dressed but the woman is
completely
naked. It caused a tremendous scandal when it was first exhibited.”

The portraits of Elsa and Felicia were uncanny. They were so lifelike I felt as if they might suddenly speak to me from out of the canvas.

“Jonathan always says that women ought to be naked all the time, day and night,” said Pearl. “Then we would see them for what they really are. One day you'll see that woman downstairs
for what she really is.
Then
you'll need a shoulder to cry on, believe you me.”

She stood up. Without any warning she let her bathrobe drop to the carpet and stood in front of me naked. She was very bony, and the painter had generously given warmth to a skin tone that was almost transparent, but even in her midseventies she was still very feminine and even erotic, like an elderly nymph.

She lifted her chin proudly. “Now you can see
me
for what I am, and you know that I am telling you the truth.”

I picked up her robe and hung it gently around her shoulders. “You're a great-looking girl, Pearl,” I told her. “And I
do
believe that you're telling me the truth.”

* * *

That night, when the moon was shining into my bedroom, I heard it again. Tony Bennett singing “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and then shouting and screaming and furniture toppling over.

I sat up and listened. The noise was coming from Victor and Kate's apartment, right below me, that was for sure. I could hear Victor shouting, “What did you ever do? What did you ever do? Tell me! What the
fuck
did you ever do?”

I heard Kate then, but very muffled. Then another crash, which sounded like a picture being broken, or a mirror. A door was slammed, and then another door. After that, there was silence.

I lay back down again. I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do now. My natural instinct was to tear downstairs, kick open the Solways' apartment door, and punch Victor very hard. On the other hand, Kate had made it clear to me that she wasn't going to leave Victor—not yet, anyhow—and I had a very strong feeling that no matter how catastrophic her marriage was, and no matter how badly Victor mistreated her, she wouldn't thank me for interfering.

Now that everything was quiet, I decided to do nothing until
the next time I saw her. But I would have to make it clear to her that if I heard Victor shouting at her or beating up on her, I wasn't going to let him get away with it. She was Victor's wife, but she was my lover, too, and I loved her, and I was determined to protect her.

I had an hour-long wrestling match with my sheets, but I couldn't sleep. I got up and went to my Roland keyboard, and played a few experimental riffs for
Jack the Snipper
, with my headphones on so that I wouldn't disturb Pearl upstairs or Victor and Kate below me.

Then I played a slow, regretful melody, and made up some words for it.

“Kate . . . she came into my life oh much too late . . . and now, no matter what I do or say . . . she always smiles and turns away . . . and never tells me if the things I see . . . are real or if they're just my fantasy . . .”

* * *

I didn't see Kate at all for the following three days. Twice, when I saw Victor leave the house, I went downstairs and knocked on her door, but there was no reply. I didn't see Malkin either. I left out a plate of anchovies that I had picked off a takeout pizza from Joe's on Carmine Street, but on the second morning they began to smell so much that I had to scrape them into the InSinkErator.

I was beginning to wonder if Kate had decided to finish with me, or at least to cool things for a while. Maybe Victor had given her a black eye, and she didn't want me to see it, in case I tried to give
him
one, by way of retaliation.

The weather was strangely still and gray. It was like living in a 1950s photograph. On Saturday evening, my chilled-out friend Johnny Stuber came to visit from Fort Lauderdale, where he usually divides his days between surfing and writing
highly lucrative ballads. We went to Suzie's for Chinese, and then to Bowlmor Lanes on University Place for a couple of beers and a couple of hours of bowling. Johnny wore a bright blue windbreaker and yellow pants, and he was so suntanned he made me look as if I only had ten days left to live.