18mm Blues (12 page)

It was he who'd insisted she wear this hat today. (He was often around to be involved in her getting dressed.) This insouciant construction of felt touched with a few small feathers. She'd bought it at I. Magnin last year on an afternoon when she'd had some frivolous energy. Had tried on twenty hats and decided on this one only because she'd already tried on twenty. Ever since then it had been kept from dust in a tied tight plastic bag up on the second shelf of her bedroom closet.

The giving in to wearing it today had set off a chain reaction. The hat had demanded that her natural blonde hair be not so relaxed and more attention be given to her makeup. The slacks and sweater she'd planned on wearing were not at all right, but a short-sleeved afternoon dress of sleek, somewhat animate rayon was, in a rich blue shade that complemented both the hat and her eyes. Then required were compatible shoes, a pair of medium-heeled pumps only a year out of style and hose that unobviously idealized the complexion of her legs.

Although it wasn't how she'd intended to look, she was now rather glad she'd been influenced. There'd been a time in her life when fashion had been important to her, however not lately. It didn't matter that with her height and slender figure she looked well in clothes, nor that she had the taste required to exceed safe, repetitive choices. Fashion, like most other things of that nature, had become degree by degree, season by season, irrelevant. Anyway, the image of the artist was better served by inelegance, she rationalized.

As though prompted by those thoughts, Julia took up from the reception room side table the June edition of
Vogue
. Paged through it mindlessly until it occurred to her that the women of the photographs, they with their put-on ennui or predation, exemplified detachment. Who could touch them? How could they possibly be anything other than misunderstood? There, in those crowded challenging eyes and impatient mouths and insubordinate stances, was insularity most blatant. They knew, these lanky sisters mired in vanity, perhaps temporarily medicated by vanity. They knew even if they weren't yet aware that they knew.

Julia came to a perfumed page, sniffed it obediently, then, for a respite, lowered the magazine. Enough so her eyes overlooked the crease of its binding and focused upon the man seated across the room.

She'd noticed him before, of course, but now, she had the opportunity to more than merely notice. He seemed to be napping. At least his eyes were genuinely closed. Perhaps he was resting his eyes. What was she doing? Just something to pass time, Julia told herself. She wasn't studying him because he was a man and an attractive one at that. Had the person with whom she was occupying this waiting space been an older woman or a child she'd have done the same. It was a practice she'd come to rely on, the observing of others in detail, the mental painting of them, so to speak. Often it had helped cool down the buildup within her subjective furnace.

The first thing she contemplated were his shoes. Shoes usually betrayed the person. His weren't new, nor were they cheap. Black, cap-toed, probably self-shined. Italian made, according to their better leather and more delicate soles. How neatly he'd tied his shoelaces, she noticed. His plain dark gray socks revealed by the seated hitch-up of his trousers said nothing except that they were plain dark gray, appropriate for his suit, a conservative, subtly striped gray on gray worsted that fit him well. He had ample shoulders for the slouchy cut of the unpadded jacket and his white shirt appeared soft, not at all punishing to his neck. However, that tie, the bow tie, spoiled everything. It was wine colored with a small gray geometric pattern. Looked like some rare species of butterfly about to take flight.

Julia despised the tie but forgave him for it. At least it wasn't a clip-on sort. Perhaps he'd been in need of a rebellious note that morning or perhaps he believed bows provided jauntiness to his cachet and he was phobic when it came to mirrors.

Except for the bow, she approved. He was, she guessed, in his midthirties, no gray yet at his temples and nothing contrived about his hairstyle. Dark brown hair combed straight back. Tended eyebrows but not overtended. A good honest nose and some extra strength in his chin. His hands weren't relaxed; they were half clenched, only a swift reflex from becoming fists. What was he ready to fight? Julia wondered.

He stirred, opened his eyes.

Julia brought the
Vogue
up. A stockbroker, a marketing or publishing person or something of that sort, she thought. Married to his college sweetheart and wishing they hadn't had so many kids so soon. Such was life. And hardly a moment to consider what it was until there weren't many moments left. Distractions, including the unpleasant ones, were a blessing while they lasted. Fortunate were those who could make them last all the way from oblivion to oblivion.

She placed
Vogue
back on the table, decided not to look into the edition of
People
that was there. Glanced across at the man, and because his attention happened to be upon her, she smiled. A mere acknowledging smile. He responded with a smile, more of a smile than hers. She liked his smile, so she couldn't take too much of it, looked aside, not really seeing the fox-hunting print on the wall, looked down at the Persian area rug on the walnut-stained hardwood floor, then at her watch, which told her it was already ten minutes past her ten o'clock appointment. And the man over there might be scheduled ahead of her. She had things she needed to accomplish, mainly the painting she'd promised the gallery, a commission from her last show. She'd gotten up at dawn and done some work on it in order to be able to finish it on time. Anyway, she didn't want to spend a good part of this day of all days in this legal box.

She asked the man, “Are you waiting for Mister Browderbank?”

“No,” he replied, “Mister McGuin.” McGuin was the other half of this law firm.

“Is he running late?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems to be the nature of the beast.”

A resigned shrug by the man.

A concurring sigh from Julia.

Silence entered the exchange. Julia recrossed her legs. Her hose caused a frictional sound, much like a sizzle. She was arranging the skirt of her dress when the pearls happened.

For no apparent reason, the thread between the sixth and seventh pearls down from the clasp of Julia's twenty-eight-inch-length necklace chose that instant to give way. A surprised oops from Julia as, like some living thing, the necklace slid down her front and out of her lap. Proper knots prevented some of the pearls from coming loose, however a great many rolled free, scattered individually in every direction, as though delighted with the prospect of escape.

Julia began retrieving them.

The man helped.

At first they bent over and picked up from the surface of the Persian rug those most obvious. Next they were down on their hands and knees, searching and finding the creamy white spheres. The more evasive ones had rolled all the way to the baseboard and to corners. Some necessitated reaching way in under the couch.

“I didn't realize they were so small,” Julia commented as she found one of four millimeter size trying to be overlooked behind the back leg of a chair. She deposited it into the man's cupped hand. For some reason Julia now felt the necklace was safer with him.

“Do you think we've found them all?” she asked.

“Probably not, but nearly. When did you last have them restrung?” he asked.

“I never have,” she replied. “Oh, how embarrassing!”

“Happens to people all the time.”

“Really?” Nervous laugh. “How do you know that?”

He didn't answer.

“Do you go around helping people pick up their pearls?” she asked lightly. “Is that what you do?”

He was examining the pearls, tossing them respectfully back and forth from hand to hand, causing clicks, holding up those that had remained stranded. “Hair spray, perfume and such gets to the thread and eventually rots it. Pearls should be cared for and restrung twice a year, anyway at least once.” He continued to look at them, saw they were only fair quality but nice enough. Four to eight millimeter graduated. Twelve hundred retail. “These weren't properly strung to begin with,” he told Julia.

“They should have been,” she said. She'd bought the necklace from a New York jeweler, on Fifth Avenue at that.

“There weren't proper knots between each pearl,” the man explained. He seemed about to hand the pearls over to her when, as though on second thought, he said, “I could have these restrung right for you. On silk.”

“Don't bother.”

“No bother, really.” He gave her a business card.

She saw that the Harold Havermeyer Company and its address and telephone number had been neatly crossed out but not Precious Gems and Grady Bowman. A telephone number was hand-printed near the name. “My new ones are being printed,” he told her and read her ambivalence. “No need to worry. I won't make off with your pearls.” He smiled her an even better smile. “If you want I'll write you a receipt for them.”

“That won't be necessary.”

“Okay then, I'll have them for you within a week. How can I get in touch with you?”

CHAPTER FOUR

At half past noon that day Julia arrived home from attorney Browderbank.

Found that two birds, common sparrows, had gotten into her studio by way of a broken pane of the skylight. The week before some boys and perhaps a girl or two higher up on Potrero Hill hadn't been able to resist that expanse of panes and had flung some heavy hexagonal-headed bolts at it. Evidently it was mischief they'd needed to get out of their systems as they hadn't been throwing since. Julia, instead of driving up and complaining to parents and all that, had decided what the hell, let them have this fling.

But now the sparrows. Were they lovers come in searching for a softer more private place to nest? Or a couple of buddies on an expedition for better quality crumbs? Well, they had regrets now. Way up there, two stories up, out of help's reach, panicking, beating hysterically against one pane and then the next, fooled by the clarity, believing what looked to be sky was sky.

The sparrows had Maxx crazed. Julia's Russian Blue cat. He was up on the tallest possible thing, which happened to be the top of a seven-foot-high metal storage cabinet. Up there despising his futility but keeping his eyes so fixed on the birds he seemed to be trying to will them into the fatal error of giving up their twelve feet of protective altitude.

Julia called Maxx down but he ignored her, ordered him down but he still wouldn't mind, was entirely removed, heeding only primeval genes, absorbed in a kill. Julia gave up on him.

She went to the front hall and up to her bedroom on the second floor. Having been away for hours she was able to realize how strongly the odors of painting permeated the place. Her intention when she'd renovated the house was to keep her work and living spaces separate. To create the studio she'd knocked down the walls and eliminated the ceilings of the rooms situated in the north half. Then created double-doored passageways to serve as buffer chambers between the studio and the rest of the house. The arrangement would have been more effective had she been less lax about the doors. More often than not they were left wide open, the purpose of those intermediate spaces lost to the synaptic relativity of artistry and ordinary existence. Too, there was the sort of negligence that Julia came upon now as she opened her closet door.

She saw four pairs of sneakers, so thoroughly and thickly splattered they appeared to be made of paint. Their eyelets caked, laces saturated and so rigid they couldn't be untied. (She had to shoe-horn her feet in.) Several pairs of jeans and a pair of overalls in the same condition, like stiff tunnels into which she inserted her legs. Time and again she'd reminded herself to leave her messy smelly things in the studio, however, she forgot so regularly the rule no longer had any force.

She unpinned and removed her hat. Disregarded the plastic bag it had been kept in, tossed the hat up onto the second shelf. It tumbled back down as though protesting. She let it lie where it fell.

Took off her clothes, everything, hurriedly as though she were removing shackles. Hung up the dress but left shoes, hose, underthings batched on the closet floor. She decided against the old jeans and overalls, even the old sneakers. They'd been faithful and she owed them consideration, but her skin told her it wouldn't tolerate them today. For the past year she'd often painted while nude. In fact nudity had been growing into one of her conditions for painting. She didn't entirely believe it had elicited the something extra from her that had resulted in what many regarded as her best work, however neither did she entirely believe in coincidence.

After scrubbing off her makeup, she contained her hair in a cheap blue cowboy bandanna.

Went down to the studio. The sparrows were still nervous and chirping but had found a high perch. Maxx, by then resigned to quandary, had reverted to his normal superior forbearance and was sitting by the rear door, gazing up at its knob. Julia let him out.

The studio was, as usual, a mess. A comfortable, familiar mess. It astounded people, especially the magazine and newspaper interviewers who came there, that Julia was able to compose such impeccably ordered paintings while besieged by such rampant disorder. When asked about that her stock reply was presumptuous but too flip to be taken seriously. “Hasn't that always been the neat trick?” she'd say, no doubt referring to God's and her own accomplishments.

Had she only picked up the newspapers and the plastic bowls it would have made a difference. When she spilled or dripped paint, varnish, thinner or whatever on the enameled hardwood floor, to avoid stepping in it she covered it with a sheet of newspaper. When paint fell on that sheet of newspaper she simply covered it with another. The paint dried, the newspapers stuck. The plastic bowls, shallow, one-quart size, she'd paid less than a reasonable price for at a liquidation sale south of Market Street. Bought a thousand, so she used them indiscriminately to mix in. Colors exacted to her vision canvases ago, so precious then, evaporated, hardened, crackled in those bowls that were everywhere, hundreds of bowls. And nearby just as many mayonnaise and pickle jars and paint cans, gone dry with stirring sticks and forsaken brushes upright in them. Brushes that had been favorites were abandoned or lost in the chaos, their bristles rigored, turned ugly, curled. There were used rags, sponges, silvery gallon containers of varnish and linseed oil, thinner and turpentine, the screw tops of them somewhere.