Darkroom (6 page)

After almost half a minute, Jim went up to the chalkboard. In large, clear letters he wrote BOBBY TUBBS AND SARA MILLER ARE DEAD.

The class fell silent almost immediately. CD players were switched off. Shadow scooped up his ball and gripped it between his knees. Jim turned back to face the class, dusting his hands. ‘The power of the written word,' he told them. ‘“Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.”'

‘Is it true?' asked Pinky Perdido in her squeaky little voice. ‘Bobby and Sara – they're dead?'

Jim nodded. ‘They died together sometime last night at the beach house belonging to Bobby's parents. I'm very sorry. I never had the chance to get to know them, but Dr Ehrlichman tells me that they were very well liked, both of them.'

‘What happened?' asked Freddy Price, and it was obvious that he was worried. ‘They didn't OD or nothing, did they?'

‘So far as we can tell, their deaths were not directly caused by drugs or alcohol. There was a very fierce fire. The police don't yet know how it started, but they didn't stand a chance. They were probably overcome by fumes before the flames got to them.'

‘Oh, man,' said Philip Genio. He was thin and Latin-looking, with a high shiny pompadour and a pale-pink silk shirt. ‘I was messing around with Bobby only last night.'

‘Sara was my best friend,' wept Sue-Marie, with mascara running down her cheeks. ‘We've been best friends ever since grade school. I couldn't understand why she didn't text me this morning, when she didn't show up.'

Jim cleared his throat. ‘I'm sorry I had to bring you such bad news. You can all leave college early today. I guess you don't feel like remedial English, just at the moment.'

‘They weren't
trapped
, were they?' asked Sally Broxman breathlessly.

‘I don't think so,' said Jim. ‘It looked as if it happened very quickly.'

‘You
saw
them?'

Jim nodded. ‘The police wanted me to visit the scene of the fire, just in case I could shed some light on what happened. But … I don't know. I couldn't really tell them anything very helpful.'

‘Was it really gross?' asked Randy Bullock. ‘I mean, were they all, like, roasted and everything?'

Jim shook his head.

‘Did they look peaceful?' asked Sue-Marie. ‘They didn't suffer, did they?'

Jim thought of Bobby and Sara's skulls, staring into each other's sightless sockets. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘I guess you could say they looked peaceful.'

For a long moment, nobody spoke, but nobody stood up to leave, either. Sue-Marie mewed quietly into her handkerchief, like a lost kitten, and there was a chorus of emotional sniffs from most of the other students. David Robinson had his eyes tightly closed, and his hands pressed together, and he was rapidly mumbling in prayer.

Jim said, ‘It's always a terrible shock when somebody dies so young, and so suddenly. You ask yourself, don't you, what kind of a world can this be, when people with so much promise can have their lives snuffed out, just like that. This is what we were talking about this morning, wasn't it? Time. Bobby and Sara had the greatest gift of all taken away from them. Time to grow up, time to fall in love, time to enjoy all the pleasures this life has to offer. For Bobby and Sara, time has stopped forever, while all the rest of us go rushing on – minute by minute, day by day, week by week, and every second that passes leaves them further and further behind.'

He went to the chalkboard again, and underneath BOBBY TUBBS AND SARA MILLER ARE DEAD, he wrote: So WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

‘Since none of you seem to feel like leaving early, and this
is
a writing class, I suggest that we try some creative therapy. Try to express what you feel about Bobby and Sara on paper. You can write anything you like – an essay, a poem, a song lyric, if you want to.' He tapped the chalkboard with his ruler. ‘All I expect you to do is to answer this question.'

‘Maybe they're ghosts,' said Edward Truscott.

‘There's only one spook in this class and that's you,' retorted Shadow.

Jim sat down. ‘If you think they're ghosts, say so. Write whatever you like … so long as it's thoughtful, and honest, and it comes from the heart.'

Vanilla King put up her hand. ‘Mr Rook, sir. Do
you
believe in ghosts?'

Jim looked at Vanilla for a long time, with his hand partly covering his mouth, saying nothing. She was just about to ask the question again when he gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

‘Y
ou are going to
so
love this place,' said Vinnie as he parked his bright-red Pontiac GTO and switched off
Nessun Dorma
, which he had been playing at full volume all the way from West Grove to Venice.

Jim climbed out of the car and looked up at the gloomy 1930s apartment building which took up the entire block between Willard and Divine. When he had lived on Electric Avenue he had driven past this way almost every day, but he couldn't remember having noticed this building before, in spite of its monstrous bulk. It seemed to keep itself aloof from the busy, brightly colored neighborhood around it. It was five stories high, built of dark reddish-brown brick, with tiny diamond-leaded windows and twisted barley-sugar pillars. When he looked up, Jim saw dozens of gargoyles leaning over the parapets, and the chimneys bristling with elaborate lightning rods, as if the residents were trying to protect themselves from the wrath of God.

A discolored bronze plaque over the main entrance announced Benandanti Building, 1935.

‘Forty years my uncle Giovanni lived here,' said Vinnie, bounding up the front steps and pushing open the heavy oak doors. ‘He was old and he was sick, and his apartment was way too big for him, but he absolutely refused to move. He said he had to live here until he died. He never told us why, silly old coot.'

As the oak doors swung shut behind them, Jim was overwhelmed by the sudden silence. It was total. He listened and listened, but he couldn't even hear a TV playing or the sound of the traffic outside. ‘It's like a church,' he said, stepping forward into the hallway. His footstep echoed, and re-echoed.

The hallway looked like a church and it even smelled like a church. It was octagonal, with pillars of streaky red marble, and a matching marble floor. The walls were paneled in decoratively carved oak, with bunches of grapes and wild roses and human faces, all of them Italian-looking men with hawk-like noses and highly disdainful expressions. Even the elevator doors were covered in bas-reliefs of trees and brambles and pictures of distant castles.

At one side of the hallway stood a creamy-colored statue of a naked man, about three-quarters of life size, with one hand raised in front of his eyes as if he were trying to stop himself from being blinded by the sun. In his other hand he was holding a square box, about four inches along each side.

‘Interesting statue,' said Jim. ‘Any idea what it's supposed to be? Michelangelo's David is Deeply Disappointed with his Bar-Mitzvah Present?'

‘I don't have any idea. All I know is that my mother always kept her back to it when we were waiting for the elevator. I think she was embarrassed by the size of his schlong.'

‘Well, he
is
pretty well endowed, isn't he? But there's an inscription on the side here. L
IGHT
S
NARETH THE
S
OUL
. What does that mean?'

‘Don't ask me,' said Vinnie. ‘I asked Uncle Giovanni about it once, and all he said was “don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to.”'

‘How were you supposed to know you didn't want to know the answer unless he told you what it was?'

‘That's what
I
said. But all he said was “shut up, kid, and eat your linguine.”'

The elevator arrived with a startling bang, and the doors shuddered open. Inside, the elevator car only had room for three or four people, but it was mirrored on all sides, so that it appeared to be crowded with dozens of Jims and Vinnies.

‘It's the fourth floor,' said Vinnie. He pressed the button but nothing happened. ‘It's old, this building,' he apologized. ‘But – you know – it's cramful of character.' He pressed the button again, and this time the doors shuddered shut, and they were winched unsteadily upward. Jim was sure that he could hear the cable pinging, strand by strand.

They walked along the fourth-floor corridor for what seemed like miles. The carpet had once been maroon, but now it was mostly string and holes and rumpled-up hillocks. When they reached Uncle Giovanni's apartment, Vinnie fumbled for the key and eventually unlocked the massive oak front door. They groped together into a gloomy lobby area which smelled strongly of shoes. Eventually Vinnie found the light switch and said, ‘Presto!'

On the right-hand side of the lobby stood a large mahogany hall stand which was clustered with more than two dozen men's hats – fedoras, trilbies, skimmers and derbies. There were probably six or seven overcoats hung up, as well as scarves for every conceivable occasion, from motorcycling to the opera, and a thicket of walking sticks and umbrellas.

The left-hand side of the lobby was a mountain range of discarded footwear – sandals, two-tone Oxfords, patent-leather evening pumps, tasseled loafers, bedroom slippers. It looked as if Uncle Giovanni had kept every pair of shoes that he had worn since he came to California.

‘Sorry about the whiff,' said Vinnie. ‘My mom used to call him Gorgonzola feet.'

He led the way through to the living room, and Jim could see that he hadn't been exaggerating about the size of the apartment. It was vast, almost baronial, but it was shabby and airless, and thick with dust. The living room was still decorated with the original 1935 wallpaper – faded green with wavy brown patterns – although there were so many pictures hanging everywhere that the wallpaper was barely visible. At the windows, nearly twenty feet high, moss-green velvet drapes hung rotting on their rails. The room was dominated by a huge marble fireplace, its grate overflowing with half-burned letters and documents. Assembled around it was a yard-sale collection of furniture: sagging couches covered with sun-faded brocade; 1930s Lloyd Loom chairs, painted turquoise; antique Spanish side tables and studded leather stools. In one corner stood a tall-backed chair that looked more like a throne, and on either side of it stood two torchères, those tall twisty pillars for statuettes or trailing plants.

Over the fireplace hung a large, dark oil painting of a man in evening dress. He was standing in front of a mirror, but he had a black cloth draped over his head. The painting needed cleaning, which made it look yellowish and even more sinister than it was probably supposed to be. It reminded Jim of the surrealist paintings of René Magritte – portraits of men looking into mirrors and seeing nothing but the backs of their heads.

‘That is seriously creepy.'

‘Yeah … that used to scare three colors of shit out of me when I was a kid. I never knew why he had to have that cloth over his head. Was he so homely that he didn't want anybody to look at him? If he was, why have his picture painted at all? I always wanted to know what he looked like, under that cloth, and I used to rest my head against the painting and try to peer up underneath it.'

‘You asked your uncle?'

‘Of course.'

‘And he said “eat your linguine”?'

‘No, surprisingly, he didn't.' Vinnie put on a thick, Neapolitan accent. ‘“You watch out for dis fellow, kid. You ever see dis fellow, you don't talk to him, you don't look at him, you don't stand still for one-a second. You come run to me, so fast you shoes catch fire.'

‘Didn't he tell you who he was?'

‘Nope. But I always felt that he had hung up this picture like one of those wanted posters. He used to sit in that chair and smoke cheroots and just stare at it.'

Jim approached the fireplace and peered at the signature in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting. Sebastian Della Croce, 1853. ‘Well, whoever this guy was, it's pretty certain that he's gone to higher service.'

Vinnie held up his left hand against the side of his face so that he wouldn't have to look at the painting directly. ‘I really hate that painting, you know. I should smash it up, or burn it, or throw it in the nearest dumpster. The nightmares it used to give me! I would be lying in bed, right, and I'd imagine that my door was suddenly thrown open, and this guy would be standing in the hallway, with that black cloth over his head. I would be so frightened that I couldn't even scream. I would just lie there and stare at him. Then he would step into my room, and as he came nearer, his legs would get longer and longer, like telescopes, and he would be leaning over my bed and I just knew that he was going to kill me.'

Jim stepped back. The picture was eerie, but it was so well painted that he could almost see the black cloth moving up and down, as if the man beneath it breathed.

‘No, you shouldn't destroy it, Vinnie, it's a good piece of art. Let me find out more about it. A friend of mine works in an auction house. She can tell you how much it's worth, and she can probably sell it for you, too, if you don't mind paying commission.'

Vinnie pulled a face. ‘Be my guest. But if it turns out that it isn't worth nothing, you'd be doing me a favor if you burned it.'

Jim looked around. Although the walls were so crowded with pictures, the man over the fireplace was the only painting. All of the rest of them were photographs, mostly black and white, except for half a dozen hand-tinted in a very faded color. All of them were either framed in ebony or tarnished silver. They were strange photographs for anybody to hang on their living-room walls. Disturbing, even. Ramshackle barns, somewhere in the mid-West, with frowning farmers standing beside them. Three cyclists on a deserted road in Iowa, one of them wearing an ill-fitting suit apparently made out of brown paper. A plump young woman in nothing but a tightly laced corset, her breasts bulging, standing by a window in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background, its upper levels hidden by fog. A cross-eyed boy with bare feet sitting in a ditch next to a dead, half-rotted dog, its stomach teeming with maggots.