A Butterfly in Flame (14 page)

Chapter Thirty-four

“Start with a name. If you are who you say you are. I have ‘Fred’ so far,” Cynthia Mangone said.

Fred said, “I started wrong.” He stood again, explaining, “Crick in my back,” and stretched. “The business you’re in, I imagine you’re used to a certain amount of misrepresentation. I thank you for the coffee. Also for your time.”

He’d hung his jacket on the coat rack provided so that the mist could drip from it onto the realtor’s artificial hardwood floor.

Cynthia proposed, “I might could help with the holdouts. But you’ll have to be straight with me. See, because so far I could see you coming from a mile away and it wastes time. So—maybe a card? Something real, on paper, that I don’t have to scrape up with a shovel after you walk out?”

“I believe I have attained what persons in my line of business call the hour of lunch,” Fred said.

“If that’s an invitation, don’t bother,” Cynthia said. “In my diet, the beef byproducts are strictly out. There isn’t a…”

Fred said, “After I consult with my principals, I could stop back.”

“Or telephone. That’s better,” Cynthia said. “Or e-mail. That’s the best. That always finds me. Here’s my card.”

Fred, on his way out, had to turn back to take the card from Cynthia Mangone who, demonstrating her aggrieved state, as well as her femality, had remained seated back of her desk, the light from the computer screen struggling against the print of hydrangeas on her blouse.

“Your card?” she demanded.

“Could be in the car,” Fred said.

“A good disguise, that car,” Cynthia Mangone said. “Like the sneakers and the jacket. I didn’t figure you out until you started talking guff. If I get a line on one of these holdouts, if I need to get in touch, what do I do? Just Google ‘Fred’?”

“You’ve been a help,” Fred told her.

“That P. O. box you people have,” Cynthia said. “Nobody answers the mail.”

“You may be right about e-mail,” Fred agreed.

***

Rockport, for all its grand and complex history, is a place that seems to specialize in lunch. Lunch, ideally, with a marine flavor. Being hungry, Fred parked amid the worst of the beckoning but mostly empty tourist traps in the most touristic portion of the seaside town. It was the wrong kind of day in the wrong season for the blessing of strolling tourists from far afield to be crowding the sidewalks looking for souvenirs of Rockport, or sitting in the restaurants ingesting more edible souvenirs, such as lobsters imported from the sovereign state of Maine.

Among the inedible souvenirs—and probably the worst—were the tangible evidence of Rockport’s chronic infestation by summer colonies of painters and sculptors.

As one looked to select the winning place for lunch one was obliged to confront, and to ignore as best one could, the gaping doorways of the galleries. Some even exuded that miasma of canned
pot pourri
meant to impair the sales resistance of those who wander, unaware, into gift stores specializing in objects of decorative uselessness.

Rockport’s famous motif number one, whether that was a red barn or a lighthouse, was broadly represented both in watercolor and oil. Which it was—whether the barn or the lighthouse—Fred might never know. Those bringing themselves to tinker with an attempt at representing natural things did floral arrangements, floral patterns, or the lone seagull whose feet have become fastened to the lone bollard.

For the more ambitiously “artistically” inclined, there were varied but cruelly abstracted versions of the female nude either painted or, perhaps more pernicious, bronzed. Of those objects that sported color, the color tended to the garish. In these instances, sales must depend upon the willingness of the tourist to return to Dubuque with the object in question, and the rehearsed line, “I bought this in Rockport, Massachusetts. We stayed there. Ed had his eye on a seagull picture—over a breaking wave, you could see the reflection even, of the gull, and the sun setting and all, but I thought, ‘No. We can remember that anyway with a postcard. Let’s take the risk. Sure people will talk, but I’m like that. Something came over me. It’s art. It’s OK among friends.’

“If strangers come for drinks, or people from the bank, we can hang it upstairs.”

Was this the hideous fate of the students who managed to persist in struggling through their painting courses at Stillton Academy, and who then must find a means to earn a bare minimum to subsist on while they churned out pictures that progressively, over the years, looked less and less like what they had imagined when they were young and ideals plagued them—and more and more like what all the tourists imagined they would find in Rockport’s galleries?

Hell, you wouldn’t have to look at, know, or be, a naked human being, in order to turn out stylized “nudes” like these. The “bronze” wasn’t even bronze, but a congealed liquid like that cosmetic spread they used to sell called “Man-Tan.”

Had all these painters been through a comparable train of study? Wasn’t it all wasted? Even if she does it very well, is the ballet dancer’s skill not misused if she spends her days walking people’s dogs? Even though the occupation makes use of many of the same talents?

Bad as the student paintings might have been, last night, when he glanced them over in his quick look through the painting studios—at least they were honest. Give Stillton’s teachers that much credit.

Even granted that the world did not exist for which they were training their students, at least they were training them for an imagined something and not to become automatons with no aesthetic scruples.

Fred’s lunch might have been the moral equivalent of the seagull picture. However, it was tasty fish chowder, a tasty and resilient hard roll, and a convincing plate of broiled blue fish to follow.

***

There were all of seven other diners. Each of them, even the little girls, was involved with either one lobster or a matched pair. It wasn’t until his coffee that Fred exclaimed, “For God’s sake, it’s Albert Bierstadt!”

Everyone in the place looked at him, alarmed.

“It’s OK, folks,” Fred reassured his fellow diners—as well as the hovering waiter and the woman back of the cash register. “Perfectly OK. AB is Albert Bierstadt.”

Chapter Thirty-five

Whatever the clues had been that led to Clay’s suspicion, once again he had scented possibility. The box of papers Fred had skimmed through so haphazardly this morning, in his room, endangering the evidence with weak coffee, showed correspondence and familiar dealings between some persons named Ludlow and this significant nineteenth century American painter.

Bierstadt’s paintings, whether tiny or simply huge, had reported an idealized version of the landscape of much of northern America as the United States was expanding into the west. New Bedford, where he had lived in his early years; the White Mountains of New Hampshire; Wyoming’s Wind River Valley; Yosemite; the Pacific coast—Bierstadt had known and traveled them all, making sketches from which, back in his New York studio, he rendered finished paintings sometimes of monumental size, and even majesty.

To amuse his friends, he had also liked to make small, even postcard-sized versions of invented butterflies. That card, on the table in his room, even without the initialed AB, was solid proof: the issue on Clayton’s mind was Albert Bierstadt.

Fred paid his money and made tracks for Stillton.

And was obliged, once he had arrived in town, to move with care. For one thing, it was a completely different town from the one he had left a few hours before, on account of what he had learned about it.

His instinct had been correct. Something was up. The place was either controlled by a monopoly, or under siege, apart from a few buildings. No wonder so much of it was vacant. His unwitting informant, Cynthia Mangone, had let it drop—in her unwise attack—that most of what the academy did not control, this other entity, the Stillton Realty Trust, whose members coincided with the academy’s board, either owned or had an option to buy. If the Stillton Realty Trust wanted to own the entire town, only Stillton Academy stood in its way.

Massachusetts is a commonwealth, and not a state, as any fourth grader in Massachusetts will tell you. Fifth graders have mostly forgotten it. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth’s police are called State Cops by everyone, even fourth graders. And it was the cruisers of the state cops, about six in all, that presently moved through the streets and lanes of Stillton.

A cruiser was parked in front of Morgan Flower’s building. The car was empty. Uniformed figures passed in front of Flower’s windows. A second cruiser idled in front of the admissions and administration building. One uniform behind the wheel. Presumably another uniform, of a detective type, was inside, talking with Elizabeth Harmony about her predecessor; perhaps interviewing faculty.

Fred left his car at some remove, down in the lanes by the shore where doomed fishermen, the unwitting tenants of the Stillton Realty Trust, congratulated themselves on the cheap rents that let them afford to follow this trade.

“Holy Toledo,” Fred said, walking. “All of that silly fantasy I found in Flower’s desk? The ‘Inn at Stillton Sound’ and the rest of it, whatever it was. The Spa. Condos and lap pools and the rest. That horse shit? Responsible luxury. All that? Maybe it wasn’t fantasy.

“Maybe it
isn’t
fantasy.

“If Dubai can build its own new offshore island in the form of a Dunkin’ Donut, and fill it with parks and yachts and docks and arboretums, why can’t the Stillton Realty Trust build and promote a New England Williamsburg-by-the-Sea, complete with authentic historic lap pools and casinos, and all the other luxurious responsibilities they can dream up?

“So. What is Flower up to, and who is Flower? Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, that man’s no teacher.”

Four o’clock. The last third-year painters were packing up in Stillton B, Fred’s classroom. The lean young man Fred recognized from some twenty-seven exercises seen by dimmed flashlight the previous evening, was buttoning his shirt.

“OK, Don. Thanks. Next week, then?” Meg Harrison said, handing the model an envelope.

Did these folks pay in cash?

Fred wandered through the studio, edging between the easels where students, reluctant to surrender for the day, were studying their progress. Emma’s figure had become more contorted. The man’s green penis now sported a lavender shadow. They suited each other. She’d painted out the bowl of fruit.

“It’s better,” Fred did not say. He contented himself with a nod.

“I’ll recommend we put in an exhaust fan,” he told Meg.

“Go ahead. I’ve told them for five years,” she said. “By the way, I got your hint about the setup. I photographed it. I’ll strike it. Take it down. I can put it up again, no problem. So it’s not in your way.”

Fred said, “There are students here majoring in sculpture? Whatever you do in that line here, you told me, that isn’t metal or fabrication?”

“It’s better without the fruit,” Meg was telling Emma. “A better picture. Granted. However, the fruit is part of the problem. Put it back in. Paint the fruit the way you did the penis—straight on, here it is, get on with it—you’ve got something. Put it back in. Keep the fruit, take it with you. Bring it back next week. Even better, match it with something new. When you paint it, make it look like something you’d be interested in putting your mouth around; but scared.”

“Like that penis,” she might have pointed out.

The students had a variety of ways to pack and carry their wet paintings. They were too large to be stored in their lockers. Meg started to fold the orange and blue cloths.

“We have a couple of possibles,” Meg said. “To answer your question, Fred. One third-year is wavering. Two second-years in figure modeling show promise, though don’t confuse figure modeling with sculpture. And there’s a genius in first year, but…”

“So. One of mine,” Fred said. “Which one?”

Meg finished folding, tucked the cloth under her arm and hoisted the stool down to march it across the studio to place with the others. “Make sure these easels are back against the wall,” she said to the room, “and stack the horses. Show some respect for the folks who have to clean this whorehouse. Some of those folks are you.”

Emma had boxed her equipment and was carrying the wet painting into the hall where a sudden scuffle produced raised voices. “Lay off, Tom. You’re on her like a ghost.” That was Peter Quarrier’s voice.

Fred stepped out for a look. Peter was standing in dangerous confrontation with Tom Meeker, who had appeared from somewhere with a portfolio under his arm. “What do you fucking care?” Meeker countered. “It’s not like you could fucking want her.”

Students, interrupted in their departure, were gathering in a loose crowd. Emma, both of her hands occupied, stood between the men. “I can talk for myself, Peter. You lay off too. And listen, I’ve told you a hundred times, Tom. I mean it. Lay off of me. Get lost.”

“We know all about you,” Meeker sneered. “You and the weed…”

“Keep this up if you want me to break your neck,” Peter said quietly. His breathing was fast and shallow, and his face was white.

Fred eased into the mix, took Tom Meeker’s elbow in a grip that could be disregarded only at the cost of a broken arm, and let him out into the air.

Chapter Thirty-six

Tom Meeker, fuming, might nevertheless be grateful for the force that had pulled him from the confrontation. If Quarrier had to, he could take Meeker apart in three well-trained minutes. “It’s not like Quarrier could want her,” Meeker complained. “He’s queer.”

“It’s likely more a matter of what she wants,” Fred said. “At least in my experience. Anyway, why don’t you take the opportunity to cool down?”

“Show off. He has it all except he’s queer. I’ll show them. I’ll show her,” Meeker blustered. A few students had followed them warily out of the studio building and into the chilly air, in which the foghorn seemed to be causing hysterics amongst the seagulls. “You think I can’t?” Meeker shouted. If he had friends among the gathered students, none admitted to the fact. Meeker glared at his audience a moment, then turned and went away. The hallway outside the studios had emptied.

Fred found Meg in Studio A, finishing up. “They can seem almost cute in the first year,” Meg said. “Sorry about that. It’s been brewing. Meeker. Talk about cute! Remind me, if we ever have time, to tell you about the Meeker Method.”

“I’m going to check this building,” Fred said. “For my report. That whole building next door, the painting studios, that’s a fire trap.”

“Tell me about it,” Meg said. “It’s been a long day.” Her arms full of props, she hovered in the studio doorway.

Fred said, “I haven’t even gotten to the printmaking studios. As far as this building goes, I’ve noted the need for ventilation, and you concur. Anything else?”

“Get me decent sinks and drains in the figure modeling studio. And in the annex out back. And a strong water supply we can depend on. If you can do that…hell, who am I kidding?

“The way these committees and commissions work, it’s always the same thing. Like government. Form a group. Do a study. Face squarely and honestly your needs and shortcomings. Talk through them until you agree how to write them down. This after you’ve already wasted seventy-five institutional hours composing an utterly futile and irrelevant ‘mission statement’. So, write your report. Then in five years, when it comes time for the next report, it’s easier because if you can find the earlier study, you can just copy it, because the problems are still the same, but with additional leaks and financial troubles.

“And all the cracks you found the last time around have gotten wider.

“Sure, the painting studios should be brick or cinderblock. That means a new building. Or, let’s go beyond buildings a minute—if we say with a straight face that we offer a major in sculpture, we should acknowledge that there is such a thing as metal. Casting. Pouring. Welding. Fabrication. That means the space, the tools, the hoists, the faculty.

“Good luck with your report. Me, I’ve had it, I guess. You could feel it at that faculty meeting, I know. Everyone’s given up. We’re so used to being treated like shit, we don’t react any more. Why fight if there’s nothing to fight with or fight for? I’m heading for the high ground. It’s a shame.”

While she talked, Meg had walked the length of the corridor, past the student lockers, to the swinging doors leading into the figure modeling room. She pushed into it and tossed her props into a corner. It appeared that no class had taken place here during the day. All was as it had been at the end of yesterday’s class. “Go ahead, look around,” Meg said. “Just don’t fool with the students’ work. Don’t for God’s sake unwrap anything. If it doesn’t stay damp, they’re screwed. Not that you’d have any reason to look at it.”

“Heading for the high ground,” Fred repeated her words. “You’re looking for another position?”

“This place won’t survive,” Meg said. “It should. It has an impressive will to live. But it won’t.”

“Because?” Fred said.

“We’ll see what your report says,” Meg whispered. “Take it from there. I’m out of here. Turn out the lights when you’re done. The doors will lock themselves. The kids will be coming in to clean, probably seven in the morning. If they remember. But they’re pretty good about it.”

The building had become his. Fred checked the men’s room and the women’s. Everyone in the world apparently had somewhere else to be. It was the space above the studios he wanted to get to.

The studio ceilings were ten feet high, generous, and that allowed for the easels to be extended to accommodate even large paintings—if any of these students could afford such extravagance. But the building had a long peaked roof. In its twin, where the third- and fourth-year studios were, the ceiling had been removed. The reconfiguration of the roof line included the shed dormer that permitted the extent of glass in the north wall.

But here, in Stillton Hall, the ceiling remained, with large square traps visible in both studios, painted as the ceiling was. That would be an immense space for something, though the roof’s peak would be low.

Fred checked both traps, looking up from the studio floors. One or the other of them should offer a ring bolt into which the person below, armed with a stick with a hook in the end, could pull down the hinged trap and unfold the ladder—if there was a ladder.

Except that there was no sign of hinges, nor of ring bolt.

A tall stepladder would be useful. There had been a couple on Milan’s porch, chained and padlocked to discourage borrowers—but never mind. The studio’s furniture offered an alternative. He’d make the ascent in Stillton B.

Fred dragged the platform on which Don the model had spent the day, under the trap. On that he engineered a wide platform of horses, standing toe to toe; on top of that a further platform of horses on which he could place a stool. Standing on that, he was able to reach the plywood trap and, pushing it upwards, to free it from the latest coat of paint that glued it shut at its edges.

It lifted evenly; therefore had to be lifted high enough to clear the joists, then be slid to one side. Dust rained down and glinted in the studio’s waning daylight. The stool allowed him to get arms and shoulders into the attic space. The stool, though, was uncertain enough that there was reason to hope that he would not finish this part of the mission in a comic debacle. If he’d had time, and help, he could have used the student lockers to construct a nifty set of stairs.

It was the best he could do. He hoisted himself upwards until he was in.

And he was surrounded.

By junk.

Light filtered upward through the opening. Wet daylight also muscled in through dirty windows at either end, under the roof peak. Fred could not stand, the peak being no more than five feet.

“They’re crazy not to insulate this roof,” Fred said. “Given in winter they have to keep the studios warm enough for a naked person to work in. And not the kind of work that generates heat. Presumably this floor is insulated. Still…” something else for the report he was not going to write.

Worrying smell of char all around, pervasive. Char and dissolving junk.

The building, like its neighboring twin, and like the rest of the town, had the feel of having been built no later than the 1880s. Though it had been remodeled, rethought, and recast, the bones of Stillton Hall were basically as they had always been. The building’s original purpose, whatever it was, was consistent with its present use—except that, in this useless attic space, the Josephus Stilltons, or their survivors, instead of going the yard sale route, had stored all their impossible crap.