Art on Fire (32 page)

Francesca, being sort of famous and famously aloof, held a certain allure. She knew this about herself. The less she heeded her effect on women, the more evident it became. Particularly in relation to the feminine ones, with bobbed hair and dark lipstick, smooth, tanned legs and full breasts. They watched her from far away, walked past her as they made their way to the bar, sending a breeze across her body. They loved about her the very things she'd once despised and disguised in herself: her tallness; the contradiction of her full breasts, rock hard thighs, sculpted arms, and the slight curve of her waist (all of it obscured beneath thick clothing); the smell of musky perfume in her uncombed hair; the salt of sweat on her lips; her large, turpentine-stained, desire-soaked fingers. Always, she felt their eyes on her as she skimmed the perimeter of the pool table, chalking her cue, resting her burning cigarette on the lip of a black, plastic ashtray.

One cold, November night, several weeks after Lisa had gone, Francesca rode home from a small bayside apartment where she'd spent the evening with Tanya, a local painter of bright, cottony waterscapes that hung in several Commercial Street galleries. She was still covered in paint from the previous day's work on
Study of a White Figure in Window
and wished, as she turned onto Route 6 and headed away from Provincetown, that she'd used Tanya's shower. But these encounters were so fraught with contradiction—freedom and limitation, passion and awkward mechanics, intimacy and utter isolation—that often, when their purpose had been served, Francesca could ask nothing,
not even the time, but would crawl from the apartment (or condominium or hotel room) to disappear.

She considered stopping by Charlotte's to clean up, but decided this would require her to explain why she was frazzled and riding her bicycle in the dark. Instead, she decided to endure the outdoor spigot behind her cabin.

She reached her cabin and leaned her bike against the front wall, then walked around the perimeter, feeling something disagreeable, some pointless, unpleasant sensation—restlessness? Guilt? Worry? Perhaps, she thought, it is because I slept with someone other than Lisa. Tanya had been the first woman she'd picked up since Lisa's departure. Had she been unfaithful? She turned on the water and poured mineral spirits over her fingers, rubbed her hands together, then yanked a rag down from a nail tacked to the outside wall and began to scrub the skin hard. She usually tolerated, even enjoyed the paint stains on her hands, quiet reminders of why she was alive, but now she went at them with determination. Paper cuts and scratches stung on every digit; her eyes filled with tears. It took nearly ten minutes for the last markings of red to fade, for the color of her skin to return, and even then there were faint patches of gray clinging to the gullies of her knuckles.

She dried her hands on her pant legs, then stared at her skin, reddened and chapped, but clean for the first time in months, naked against the cool air. She missed Lisa terribly, violently. It seemed wrong for them to be separated by several hours of highway miles. Especially now that Francesca could drive.

She stepped into the dark street. The sky was tipped forward, the earth warped like an old floor. She moved along the silent street toward the neon light of Sherry's pizzeria, now closed for the night. Through the glass she saw a silhouette of Sherry sweeping the linoleum floor. The pay phone, her destination, looked deserted, as if someone had failed to show up for an appointment: The door was open, the light above glowed a blankety blue, and the receiver waited on the cradle. Francesca was about to step inside the acrylic walls of the booth when a man appeared.

“Sir,” he said in a British accent. “I'm expecting a call. Will you be brief?”

She stared at him. “I don't know.”

“If you wouldn't mind, Sir. It should only be a few minutes.”

“First of all, I would mind. Second, I'm not a sir.” She thrust her chest forward.

“So sorry. Pardon me. Ma'am. If you wouldn't mind . . . there's another pay phone just a few blocks away.”

“Yeah,” she said, stepping inside, “But I want to use
this
pay phone.”

“I'll give you five dollars—” He began to fish for his wallet. “—if you'd walk to the next one.”

She shook her head.

“Ten dollars,” he said, now producing the wallet. “Please.”

She poked her head out from the booth and asked quietly, “How long have you been waiting for this call?”

“All my life.”

“Then it shouldn't be a problem to wait a little longer.” She felt high on cruelty, huge, imperious.

“Please. Could you just go down the street?”

“Nope,” said Francesca.

“If you would just come back in five minutes . . .” he pleaded.

Perhaps she could call someone other than Lisa—maybe her grandmother. She lifted the receiver, enjoying its smooth plastic weight. She stroked the shiny metal buttons, pushed her finger in and out of the change slot, stalling. She could hear the man breathing—short, shallow breaths. His foot fluttered nervously.

She might call her grandmother. She'd often fantasized about this call. How Evelyn would sob and beg forgiveness for being so cruel, then assure Francesca that she loved her as much as ever and would continue to love her, that her love was undiminished, no matter how Francesca lived her life, regardless of how many naked girls there had been in her bed (though still, after all these years, there had only been Lisa naked in her bed). But she was less given to fantasy now, more seasoned, aware that life rarely sewed its seams tight, and that once ruptured, things were never as good as new. Anyhow, the possibility of Evelyn's rejection after all these years was enough to keep her away forever.

The man knocked on the door.

“Look,” said Francesca. “I have a right to use this phone. This phone is located here, outside a place I frequent.” She pointed to the pizzeria. “I am a resident of this neighborhood. I live just a block away. I use this phone all the time.”

“I understand. I don't want to anger you.” He put his hand to his stomach and she could see his anxiety. So she agreed to walk around the block for a few minutes while the man attended to his business.

“I'll be back in ten minutes,” she stated, tapping her finger against her naked wrist.

On a Wednesday evening, Lisa told her father she had to pick up some groceries. She drove her car—a Ford Pinto, purchased with Francesca's money—downtown and parked in the lot beside the train station, climbed over a shallow stone wall, ducked under some barbed wire, and skimmed the tracks. They abutted the river, and all around them the ground was soft and pungent as rusty water. Thick, polluted liquid turned her brown shoes black, splashed up and spotted her socks with grime. She pulled the gun from her pocket and let it dangle between her fingers, feeling so much better now that life had paused, that she was no longer living, but instead wading through the canal between existence and death. She was walking in her mother's footsteps, though instead of riding an elevator to the top of a Manhattan building, she was passing through the squalor of this little city she hated and loved and hated and loved, equipped to end her life at any moment. At any point she could make it all stop. What liberation—to be alive absolutely out of choice and know that just when she'd had enough, she could lift the needle off the record.

She believed, as those who are about to take their own lives usually do, that there was nothing for her to live for: no family, no children, no career. She thought of Francesca, of walking along the beach in Provincetown carrying coffees, the boisterous wind making conversation impossible, so that all they could do was feel the shore pull between them. Their hands brushed each other, their hips bumped; they
stopped to kiss and taste the salt of the ocean, mysteriously, on each other's lips. Lisa felt bad about Francesca, but not bad enough to reconsider her decision. Anyhow, what hope was there for them? What could Lisa do? Leave her father and move to Provincetown? Become a lesbian? It was ridiculous even to contemplate.

She turned the gun over in her hand, stroking the molded butt, so easy to squeeze. She cocked the gun and brought its cold nose close to her face, pressed the long metal arm to her skin. She felt no fear. Then she pointed it to her heart—still nothing. Then she pressed it to the side of her head. Finally, a trace of fear, her heart pattering quick as rain. She slid it gently, like a friend, into the center of her open mouth until she felt her gag reflex, and let it rest upon her tongue. Then she pulled the trigger. After a quick blast, everything was still. A freight train neared, smearing the scene like it was made of oil paint, turning everything a soft, mutable gray.

“I'm looking for Lisa.” Francesca told Mr. Sinsong. Finally the man with the strange attachment to the phone booth had gone. Francesca could see him in the distance, his resigned figure shifting into the spillover of a street lamp. He seemed to still be alone, and Francesca pitied him. Probably the call he expected had never come.

“Who is this?” asked Mr. Sinsong.

“This is Francesca deSilva.”

“The one who paints?” he asked.

“Yes. Right.”

“There is bad news,” said Mr. Sinsong. “Very bad news.”

“What kind of bad news?” She felt her heart escaping.

“Bad news about Lisa.”

“Where is she?” Francesca felt the front pockets of her shirt for her cigarettes; there were only two left in the pack. She pulled one out with her lips, then felt for matches in her back pockets.

“Lisa not here.”

“O-kay,” Francesca said caustically, trying to mitigate her impatience and disgust. “Just tell me where I can find her.”

“You can't find her,” said Mr. Sinsong, hesitating, rummaging for a soft touch. “Nowhere to find her.”

“Look,” said Francesca. “I'm sure there's
somewhere
to find her. If you don't want to tell me where that is, okay then. That's that. But don't pretend she's disappeared into the atmosphere.”

“No, no, you not listening,” he cleared his throat. “Lisa died.”

“What?”

“She died!”

“She
died
?”

“She died. She died.”

Francesca's mouth grew tacky, tasted like dirt. “I'm sorry,” she spoke quietly. “You said . . .”

“She died,” Mr. Sinsong repeated, louder. “You want paintings, I can tell you where to go.”

“I don't understand. Was it a car accident?”

“No,” said Mr. Sinsong. “Accident with gun.”

“She was murdered?”

“Yes.”

“You're saying Lisa was murdered?”

“No, not murdered. Shot. She had accident with gun.”

Everything started to spin all around her, and Francesca seemed to be the only stationary object in the purling universe.

“You're saying she had an accident. With a gun.” She hesitated, suddenly understanding. “Are you saying she shot herself?”

There was a brief silence. She leaned her back against the wall of the booth and felt a thin sweat break out all over her skin. “I can't believe this,” she whispered. She wanted, ridiculous as it was, to talk things over with Mr. Sinsong, to acknowledge how shocking it was that their Lisa would take her own life, and with a gun no less.