The Bend of the World: A Novel (28 page)

16

So somehow these little projects were popping up every couple of days in the neighborhood, and Bill kept calling, and I’d even said to him, I see what you’re trying to do. Thank God, he’d said. I was beginning to think you were as dumb as your old man.

17

So I was at the gym. Julian had beaten me again, always a step faster, his swing that much harder, his aim that much better. But because he played hard, had no natural inclination to play to anyone’s level but his own, I had no choice but to run harder and faster than I might otherwise be inclined, and while it hurt at the time, it felt, far from frustrating, freeing, renewing, and clean. Then afterward, after we’d showered and changed, after he’d gone back to work—after, by the way, he’d asked me if I’d ever had any interest in finance, because, given my background, he thought he could probably find something right in my wheelhouse, an expression that I found as unbearable and off-putting as an overripe and under-emptied kitchen garbage can, to which I must have reacted visibly in kind, because he grinned and slapped my shoulder companionably and jogged off toward the exit—after all that, I was standing at the stupid hippie juice bar at the gym drinking the sort of concoction that I’d have theretofore scoffed at as the purest sort of bullshit but which, lately, having finally tried, I found that I rather enjoyed—I was standing there with a glass full of greenish liquid in my hand watching the muted TV when something about the local reporter standing beside the big concrete bathtub beside the river with the drizzly sky behind her caught my eye, and then the closed captioning read, I’m Katie Bologna reporting from Lock Number Nine on the Allegheny River just outside of Harmarville, where this morning a local technician discovered a body floating . . . And though the body had not yet been identified, had been in the water for weeks, had bloated and swollen and begun to rot beyond easy recognition, they knew that it was a woman, and I knew, I just knew, that it was Helen, and that the Allegheny and its currents had conspired to bring her body back to us.

18

It was her. They used dental records. It was reported in the paper. I nearly called Mark, but couldn’t. There was an obit. There would be a funeral and burial in two days, a service at Rodef Shalom, and internment at Homewood Cemetery.

19

In the immediate aftermath of her death two things happened: she was suddenly a famous artist again, and I was suddenly the last person who’d seen her alive. Two detectives came to my house and asked me a series of leading questions; I broke into a sweat and said I’d better call my lawyer. The detectives exchanged glances. You’re not a suspect, one of them said. We just want to know, Was she distraught? Well, yeah, I said, I guess. Do you know of anyone who’d want to harm her? Yes, I thought. Why? I said. So we can rule out homicide, said the other detective. You think somebody killed her? I asked. No; we think she jumped in the drink. She had more drugs in her than a pharmacy. To
rule out
, they said. No, I said. No.

20

An up-and-coming artist. The potential to rescue abstraction from its post-seventies dead end. The best hope for representational painting. A savagely insightful mind that exploded the old categories. A sort of visionary and mystic. A darling of the scene. A favorite of important collectors. A significant force in contemporary painting. An Audubon of the post-natural, post-human age. The Philip K. Dick of visual arts, who’d bridged the gap between science and science fiction and fine art. A major player. A critical darling. An articulate spokeswoman. An articulate spokes
person
. A back-to-basics painter. A genius, really. Yes, absolutely. An immense loss to the American art community. A once-in-a-lifetime talent. Always underappreciated by the commercial galleries. No, no, never valued highly enough by the museums and institutional collectors. The next so-and-so. The next this. The next that. And this was just what the Internet had to say. She hadn’t, I knew, had a significant show in years. But the valedictory virus was already multiplying out of control. For whatever reason, it was this more than anything else that made me decide to go to her funeral.

21

The service and burial were in the evening. I’d tried to call Mark, but he’d never called back. Not that I’d expected otherwise. I woke up early. I’d wrapped myself in the blanket during the night. The window was open. It was cool. It smelled like the fall. The air was dry. I could hear dogs out on morning walks yipping with pleasure after the long summer they’d endured. I heard the beep of a truck backing up. I heard a distant helicopter, an ambulance, the sigh of a passing bus. I made myself coffee and sat in the kitchen for a long time. Then I got dressed and caught a bus downtown and walked through the suits and ties along the glass and brownstone corridor of Grant Street, past the Federal courts and the Federal Reserve and the Steel Building and the Frick Building and the little church tucked between skyscrapers and the courthouse and across the Boulevard of the Allies and down under the rusting frame of the Liberty Bridge approach along Second Avenue past the squat public works building and the bail bondsmen’s offices to the county jail. I stood in line with the wives and girlfriends and the occasional parent and the occasional husband and the many children and the few friends and the lawyers. I forfeited my wallet and phone and sat on a bench for a while. Then I went in to see Johnny. He’d lost some weight over the last few weeks, but he didn’t look sick this time. I almost regret to say that it suited him. His features were more pronounced; his jaw looked stronger; his eyes more deeply set. Morrison, he said. Johnny, I said. How’s Ben David working out for you? I don’t know where you found that guy, brother, said Johnny, but he’s the goddamn moshiach as far as I’m concerned. Well, good, I said. I’m going to be a star witness, he said. He announced it as if he’d said he was starring in a film. That’s great, I said. Pringle is fucked. Well and truly fucked. We’re going to pin his ass to the wall like a fat fucking butterfly. That’s great, I said. Really. Reb Elijah says I shouldn’t take so much pleasure in another man’s downfall, but I have to admit I’m enjoying myself. Uh-huh, I said. So, what about you? What’s the deal? A year, Johnny said. Then probation. The powers that be—he lowered his voice—are highly displeased by this outcome. Oh yeah? I said. Yeah. Apparently, certain insinuations contained on Alieyinz.com hit a little too close to home for a certain elected official. Hm, I said, so the mayor’s really an alien? No, Johnny said, his face drawn and serious. No, a
homo
. Oh yeah? I said. Apparently, Johnny told me, he and his whole inner circle are a gang of utter pervs. I mean, boy-butt sex orgies at the Duquesne Club, the works. You have this on good authority, I said. Common knowledge on the inside, Johnny told me. Well, I said, I guess that would explain why Kantsky was so pissed about the whole deal. I was joking, but Johnny said, Exactly.
Exactly
. A classic lady-doth-protest-too-much situation.

22

We talked for a while longer, and Johnny filled me in on the secret homosexual underground directing the politics of the city of Pittsburgh. I told him it was a shame he’d never been invited to participate. He insinuated that certain, uh, overtures had been made. When were these overtures made? I said. What overtures? Just overtures, he said. I’m afraid that I need to remain hazy on the details, for the safety of all involved. He grinned. I could not tell if he was shitting me. I asked him if he’d really been selling for Pringle. He shrugged. Nah, he said. The sales end never really appealed to me. Mostly, I was helping him out with the Internet. The Internet? I said. For a guy who built the fucking time portal and the psychic chamber and cetera, Johnny said, you’d think he could hook up a wireless router. Are you shitting me? I said. When have I ever shit you? Johnny replied. I gave him that look. Don’t give me that look, he said. I’m not, I said. You are, he told me. On the plus side, he said, I got to see a UFO. I’m pretty sure that was just a helicopter, I said. Fuck, no, he told me. Helicopters can’t make directional changes like that. That was a goddamn UFO. Sirian, by the looks of it. Definitely extraterrestrial. I’d stake my reputation on it.

23

By the way, I said, do you know about Helen? Ben David told me, he replied. What a fucking shame. And how about fucking Mandy? I can’t believe that bitch took your car. I don’t care about the car, I said. Do you know I think the whole thing is Mark’s fault? What whole thing? asked Johnny. Helen, I said. That thing. That was him on the phone, for sure, texting her and shit. I’m sure it was him when she said she had to make a call. You know she fucking jumped in the river. Whoa, whoa, said Johnny, that’s a pretty wild tale without any evidence. Seriously? I said.

24

I cried when they took him back to his cell. Not much. But I had to blink it away. I had to touch my face with hand, a thumb beneath one eye, my forefinger beneath the other. Then I went back out under the empty sky.

25

I caught a different bus home, and on the walk from Liberty Avenue up to my apartment, I passed a neat Queen Anne with a for sale sign. I stopped to look. There were six mailboxes; it was divided into apartments. The roof over the front porch sagged a little, but I could see where a crew could replace some rotted wood and shore it up without tearing the whole thing down. You could replace the buzzer on the front door. You could get rid of those shitty, seventies-era crank casement windows and knock out the original openings in the exterior walls, put sash windows in. The roof needed shingling, but it looked fine structurally. I could not recall when I’d begun to think this way. I pulled out my phone and entered the listing number from the sign on the real estate company’s website. It occurred to me that I had, or I would soon have, enough money to buy the place. Six units, I thought. You could turn that into income. The Mexicans could do the whole thing for twenty, thirty K. And not a shitty job. But still, a reasonable price point. Mid-level. Appropriate for a medical resident or an arts admin or something. An actual and essential function for the world I’d made.

26

After lunch, I met Julian at his other gym in East Liberty and we played racquetball for an hour. I’d considered canceling; it seemed absurd to play before going to a funeral; but then, phone in hand, finger about to tap Julian’s number, I thought, Well, what the fuck, it would be even weirder to cancel because of a funeral, as if a dead woman could be insulted that your attention was elsewhere and otherwise, as if an as-yet-unascended soul could be fooled by the artifice of grieving in excess of the grief one actually felt, as if, having already spent the morning in a jail and contemplating a future livelihood bought with my blood money bribe, it would be anything less than entirely absurd to sit in my apartment trying to be, of all things, appropriate. So I went, and we played, and I was glad that I went and glad that we played, because the
thwack
of the ball against the raquets, the
thock
of the ball against the walls and floor, the whine of our shoes as we sidestepped and pivoted, the drops and then rivulets of sweat, the pulse, the breath—they conspired to take my mind out of itself. I couldn’t remember running quite so fast or swinging quite so hard. I felt, as we went into the third game, the beginning of a strangely familiar separation from myself, a sense of seeing my own body move from the outside, an abiding calmness, a weird pleasure in sensing my own self move in spite of me, a thin figure moving toward the ball as the ball moved toward it, right arm back, left arm angled slightly out, the wrist cocked, the shoulder pivoting, and as my left foot planted and my torso turned slowly toward the little blue onrushing globe, I swear to you I saw my head open up like a flower in the morning; out of the bright cavity erupted a mandala with a thousand petals; then Julian had his hand on my back, and we were both bent over; my hands were on my knees. Finally, he said. Finally what? I said. You won, asshole, he said. About fucking time.

27

Julian was meeting Tom. I thought you guys broke up, I said. Yeah, we did, but you know, Julian replied. He’s making me go to some funeral, he said. We were getting dressed. Helen’s funeral? I said. I guess, he answered. That artist. Whatever. Did you guys know her? I asked. Not me, said Julian. Tom did. Well, Tom says he did. And he smiled at me, the conspiratorial smile that men share when discussing the women in their lives, which I imagine women also share when discussing their men, and which, in an era and in a scene where half the men date men and the women, women, probably ought to have been a relic but persisted—among some of us, anyway—and said more about those of us who used it than it did about the absent boyfriends and girlfriends. Anyway, I responded in kind. And Julian said, I think she was more someone that Tom thought we ought to know. And I’d like to tell you that it had a profound effect on me, his referring to her in the past tense, but it didn’t, because I suppose I’d always thought of her in the past tense anyway.

28

Tom was waiting for us at the coffee shop across the parking lot from the gym, looking as always as if something, or everything, were a great inconvenience to him. Lauren Sara was with him. Her hair was shorter. I didn’t think I liked it. Hey, I said. Hey, she said. What’s happenin? Not much, I said. You cut your hair. Patra cut my hair, she said. I hate it. I look like a dyke. A little, I said. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. We’re going to be late, Tom said, ostensibly to Julian. I heard my own voice coming out of his mouth. I looked at Lauren Sara, and she at me, and we both laughed at the same time. What? said Tom. Nothing, I said. Late for what? He sighed, exasperated. Helen Witold’s funeral, he said. Oh, I said. Are you going? Everyone’s going, said Tom. Oh, I said. Everyone. She was an important artist, said Tom. It’s fucking tragic. All coincidences converge on the inevitable, I said. Huh? said Tom. Nothing, I said. Just something someone said to me once. It’s a good definition of tragedy. Hm, said Julian, swinging his bag from one shoulder to the other. I always thought it was just shit that’s sad. Really, Jules, said Tom. Well, I said. I’ve got to go to the whatnot as well, so I’ve got to run home. Are you going? I asked Lauren Sara. Yeah, no, she said. Funerals are weird. Yeah, I said. Well, see you around. Yeah, said Lauren Sara. I’ll be, you know, around.