Solos (24 page)

Emily stares down at Marcus's hands, which are wrapped around hers. The backs of his hands are scattered with fine black hairs. There are black hairs on his knuckles. His wrist bones stick out. She observes the effect of Marcus's bright blue sweater sleeve against her bright red sweater sleeve. She remembers Anstice's words, that she and Marcus could live together in perfect felicity, and feels the familiar pang of sorrow:
Marcus is leaving
. When is he going to tell her that? Or isn't he leaving, after all? Or isn't he going to tell her? Like his father, will he just go out for Thai and never return?

Marcus is waiting. “Joe gave the paintings to me and my ex-husband jointly,” she says. “Or something. One day when he was getting really sick but was still functioning we all went to this notary at the bank in Greenpoint and signed some sort of document. I don't know if it was legal or not, it was just a thing Joe typed up. Then when we got divorced I agreed to store the paintings upstairs in Anstice's closet. I don't remember any of this very well.”

“You have copies of these documents?”

“I don't know. I think so.”

“Let's go over to your place. Let's look at them and find out.”

But Emily doesn't want to move. She'll go home and look at the documents in question, which have resided unexamined in her filing cabinet all these years, and they will show that the paintings belong to Hart. Hart will sell them and become rich. She'll be poor all her life. Thanksgiving is coming; she has nowhere to go. And then Christmas, that blasted holiday that is the scourge of the poor.
Yonder peasant, who is he?
He's Emily Lime.

“Emily?”

“What?”

“Let's go.”

“I don't have any faith in this, Marcus.”

“So what? Let's go anyway.” He smiles. “Says Marcus, what do you do? You do what Marcus says.”

“That is such an old one.”

Still smiling, he holds out a hand. Emily sighs and—only because he is Marcus—lets him haul her up out of the chair. They walk over to Emily's, Otto tugging ahead on the leash as if he knows something good is waiting for him there.

16

He lived as a devil, eh?

(Late November 2002)

A week before Thanksgiving, Marcus takes the subway into Manhattan and rings the bell at Hart's place on Crosby Street. He hasn't been there since he first came to New York, when Hart gave him a place to sleep, an overcoat, and some rent money. Back then, Crosby was a sleepy little street off the beaten path between SoHo and Little Italy, where a couple of struggling antique shops wavered precariously between the remains of rows of tenements. Hart's upstairs neighbor used to hang her laundry from the front window, and it was not unusual to see a rat sneaking out of a Dumpster. Now the buildings on either side bear
LUXURY LOFTS
signs, with information about square footage, Euro kitchens, and wine cellars. Hart's building is a rotten tooth in a mouthful of glossy caps, hanging on by a thread, and it is obvious that the dentists are panting, ready to pounce.

Marcus doesn't expect Hart to be awake yet—his father was never the early rising type—so he is surprised when Hart answers the door promptly, and realizes he's probably been up all night. At least he looks like he has. He looks, in fact, even more than usual, as if he hasn't slept for a week.

Hart greets Marcus with a combination of disapproval and barely suppressed agitation. “What's this about, anyway?” All Marcus said on the phone was that he had some news for him.

“Let's walk up to Starbucks.” Marcus figures a public place will be best for breaking the news. “I'll buy you a coffee.”

Hart is immediately suspicious. “Why?”

“I'll tell you about it when we get there.”

They walk the block to Starbucks in silence. Winter is in the air, and the city seems clean and fragile in the cold. Marcus knows he will miss New York with all its lofts and rats and crazies and dangers and comforts. But this is not something he can think about now; he has given notice to his landlord. Thanks to the booming Williamsburg rental market, his apartment has already been rented to a pierced young artist couple, starting December first. The Salvation Army, in the person of a hulking Pole who spoke no English and who carried everything out single-handed and usually one-armed, has removed all of his furniture but his bed. Marcus has packed one suitcase and seven boxes, and wrapped the double-dog
Daily News
in brown paper.

He is planning to leave on the day after Thanksgiving.

Beside him Hart shivers; he has come out in his shirtsleeves. Marcus—who has the provincial idea (for which he has been ridiculed by, among others, Lamont and Luther) that when you go to Manhattan you dress better than you do in Brooklyn—wears the old tweed overcoat he got from Hart two years ago. He is also wearing his brown hemp shirt, and real shoes, not sneakers. Hart occasionally glances down at his son, but Marcus refuses to meet his eyes, which he knows are puzzled and probably angry.

He is in no hurry to tell Hart what he has to tell him. His father is not a temperate man. Marcus sees himself frantically explaining the tangled legalities while Hart is trying to strangle him with his bare hands.

Marcus and Hart both order the Colombian special of the day, and they both add cream and lots of sugar. His father, Marcus knows, has always used caffeine and sugar to wake himself up; back in the Honesdale days, the coffee would be waiting, along with homemade raisin scones or a hot stack of buttermilk pancakes, when Hart stumbled downstairs at noon. Summer used to brew it in a special Italian machine with a row of buttons and dials that looked like a cockpit. Marcus has never been much of a coffee-drinker, and he only likes it if it's milky and sweet enough so it tastes like hot coffee ice cream. Their motives are different, but—like their eye color and food tastes—it annoys him that it comes down to the same thing, and that anyone observing them as they take their tall paper cups to the milk-and-sugar station would think
Like father, like son
.

Marcus waits until they have doctored their coffees, scoped out the tables, found one in the window, and are sitting at it, and then he says, “So I didn't do it.”

Hart takes a sip of coffee. “You didn't do it,” he says calmly. “Well, it's not Thanksgiving yet.”

“And I'm not going to do it.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“Then give me back my ten thousand dollars, you little punk.”

Marcus reaches into his pocket and brings out a wad of bills with a rubber band around it. “Nine thousand four hundred.”

Hart sets down his cup and takes it. His olive green eyes burn into Marcus's. Time stops in Starbucks. Nothing breaks the sudden silence, not even the whoosh of the coffee machines or the tapping of laptops. Their coffees sit on the table between them, weird twins. Finally, Hart says, “You little twerp,” and lets out a massive sigh that sounds like he's been holding his breath for a long time. The laptops start up again, the murmur of conversation. “You chickened out.”

“You could say that. You could also say, if you knew anything about the law, that if you'd had Emily Lime murdered, the paintings would have gone to her next of kin. In this case, to her mother out in California.”

Hart looks at him blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“She owns them. You gave them to her when you got divorced.”

“I didn't give them to her! She was just storing them. We own them jointly!”

“Sorry.” Marcus shakes his head. “Wrong.”

“Give me a break. What are you, a lawyer or a fucking dog-walker? What about Joe Whack? He
wanted
us to own them together! He typed up a document, and we had the damn thing notarized! Don't a dead man's wishes mean anything?”

“Dad. You gave up your claim. It's all there in black and white, signed and witnessed.”

“Shit.” Hart frowns into his coffee, then pulls himself together and glares at Marcus. “Do you want to tell me where you get all this legal expertise all of a sudden?”

“I've seen the documents.”

Hart pounds his fist on the table, but softly, and he lowers his voice. “I'm asking you how do you
know
all this? What the hell do you know about the legal issues involved?”

This is the hard part. Marcus pauses before he answers. “I went to the lawyer's office with her. The same guy who drew up the divorce agreement. Lenkiewicz. He confirmed it. The paintings belong to Emily.”

“Lenkiewicz. Jesus. Joe's lawyer.” Hart slumps back in his chair. “You
told
her?”

“I didn't tell her what you asked me to do.”

“So what are we talking about here, Marcus? Or did you just subtract a week out of my life expectancy for the fun of it?”

“We're talking about Joe Whack, Dad. The paintings. I told her what I knew. That the paintings are worth some money.” Marcus waits for Hart to attack him, or at least start swearing at him, but he just sits glaring, and after a minute even the glare isn't there any more.

“I haven't looked at that fucking agreement in years. I didn't think I gave her the paintings. I had no place to store them, and she did. She got the washer, the dryer, the car. My Trollopes! Now this.” His eyes narrow. “How did you find out?”

“I did some research. What does it matter?”

“It matters because I want to know how you fit into all this.”

“Dad, you asked me to kill her! That's how I fit in.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“There was
no way
I was going to kill her!”

“I knew that.”

“What?”

“Give me a
break
, Marcus. What do you take me for?” Hart looks at him the way he used to when he saw that Marcus had finished the Saturday
Times
crossword puzzle:
If the kid is so smart, why doesn't he know anything?
“I didn't know what to do. I needed the money. I thought you'd probably figure it out and come up with something. You always were a bright kid.”

“Is that true?”

“I can't imagine how it happened, since you hardly ever went to school, but somewhere there are tests that prove it. I'm sure Summer saved them all—”

“I don't mean that. I mean you really
didn't
want me to do it?”

Hart squeezes out something that passes for a smile. “That's what I said, isn't it?” There is a pause. Hart sits staring into space, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

Marcus sips his coffee, thinking:
Can it be true, that the whole thing was some sort of test? Like a fairy tale, or an opera. Or is Hart simply lying to him?
He says, “Hey, Dad?”

Wearily, Hart looks at him. “What?”

Marcus studies his father's face: putty-colored, morose, unshaven. His hair is, as usual, greasy and in need of a wash, and it occurs to Marcus that maybe Hart greases it up with some kind of gel in an attempt to make himself look younger and hipper. Actually, Hart looks older than he did a couple of weeks ago at the Botanic Garden. He seems to be aging rapidly, like a bad case of time-lapse photography.

“Why did you want the money so badly?”

Hart sighs and gazes out the window, where people in down coats and woolen hats are hustling down Crosby Street. An occasional snowflake drifts in the air. “This weather,” he says. “I've had it with the weather. My arthritis is no joke. It' gets worse every day. And my fucking allergies. I've got a chance to relocate to Tucson. A guy I know is out there, selling cowboy art. He wants me to go in with him. I need money for that.” Hart sips at his coffee. “It's big, Marcus. The cowboy stuff. That whole market is crazy, out of control. There's money to be made. This guy needs a partner, I need a change.”

Marcus has no desire to know exactly what cowboy art is, but he wishes he knew where, on the spectrum of absolute fact/wishful thinking/blatant lie, Hart's plan should go. He finds himself hoping devoutly that, if there is a deal, his father doesn't blow it, whatever it is. Hart two thousand miles away in the desert sounds perfect.

“So you closed your gallery here?”

“You could put it that way.” Hart exposes his canine. “Let's just say it closed. Over a year ago now. And some of my more recent endeavors haven't panned out. I do believe my long and checkered career in the New York art scene is officially over, Marcus.”

“What exactly have you been doing in the art world, anyway?” It's a question Marcus has always sensed he shouldn't ask. Now, though, the issues between him and his father have subtly shifted, and he feels he can ask Hart anything—not caring if he answers or not, just enjoying his slight edge. “Like all that time in Honesdale. And before you opened the gallery.”

“You really want to know?”

“Sure,” Marcus says. “Don't I?”

“Maybe you don't, but I'll tell you anyway. What the fuck. I'm out of here, one way or another.” He sits back in his chair and laces his fingers together; immediately his face seems younger, smoothed out, less crabbed and gloomy. “Okay. I can put it pretty simply. For years, I was a fence. Back in Honesdale Pee Ay? Fence.”

“You mean—”

“You know what I mean. Stolen goods, Marcus. Art. There was a guy in Allentown I used to work with. Buy and sell. I had a couple of collectors in Manhattan, plus one guy in Cincinnati. Fanatics. They didn't care where they got the stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Not the big boys. Little stuff. I wasn't about to fence the fucking Mona Lisa. Drawings, watercolors, prints. Keep it low-key, that's my motto.”

“Did Summer know?”

Hart gives him a look. “Be serious, son. Did Summer know who was president? Did Summer know it was Wednesday?”

Marcus ponders this.

The evening before, he had called Tamarind to tell her he was coming home. Tamarind has checked on the house every week or so since Summer died, mowing the lawn, having the driveway plowed. It will need a new roof one of these days, she said. And a paint job. And he might want to have the chimney pointed. Otherwise, it seems all right. “She's still there,” Tamarind said before they hung up. “The whole place is Summer. You'll see. The little labels she printed for all the drawers? Not even faded. There's one in the kitchen that says:
CORKSCREW
,
CAN OPENER
,
MELON BALLER
,
CHEESE KNIVES
,
MARCUS'S AVOCADO PITS
.