Darkroom (9 page)

Jim looked at her warily. ‘I still don't get it.'

Eleanor Shine leaned closer to the painting, and steadily drew in her breath. ‘He's here, I can
smell
him. Either he's hiding, or he's been imprisoned. But he's here.'

‘My cat really hates this picture. So does my friend – the one who owns the apartment.'

‘Your cat? What cat? You're not supposed to have cats here, you know. Tropical fish, they're permitted, so long as you have flood insurance for a broken tank. Birds, too, so long as they stay in their cages. But not cats.'

‘She's very quiet. Very clean. Very well behaved. She's practically human.'

‘All the same, the regulations are absolutely specific. Pussies are
verboten
.'

‘What about this picture?' asked Jim, changing the subject.

‘I don't know. It's very strange indeed. You were going to sell it?'

‘That was what I had in mind.'

Eleanor Shine clasped her hands together. She had rings on every finger, including her thumbs. They were all silver, or platinum, or white gold, and they were all studded with various semi-precious stones – garnets, and sapphires, and moonstones.

‘I don't think you should sell it. Not without warning the next person to own it.'

‘Warning them? Warning them about what?'

‘That it's more than just a painting, of course. You don't know what they might do with it. More important, you don't know what it might do to
them
.'

Jim glanced into his apartment. Tibbles, in her blanket, appeared to be sleeping. He looked back at Eleanor Shine and he didn't know what to say. She was obviously eccentric, but Tibbles had been perched directly in front of this painting when her fur caught fire, so maybe there
was
something more to it than met the eye. But how could a man's personality be concealed in oils and canvas and a grimy gold frame? It didn't make any sense.

‘Maybe you could explain this to me,' Jim suggested.

‘Not now,' said Eleanor Shine. ‘I'm always late, but today I'm later than ever.'

‘Well … when you come home, why don't you knock on my door?'

‘All right,' she agreed. ‘But in the meantime …' She nodded toward the painting.

‘OK, I'll take it back inside and I promise I won't sell it. But I'm going to cover it up, whether there's anybody's soul inside it, or not. I just don't want to look at it, that's all.'

‘Oh, I'd cover it up, too,' said Eleanor Shine. ‘But only to stop it from looking at me.'

N
ext morning the air was stained with yellow smog. When Jim looked out of the leaded windows of the Benandanti Building, he felt as if he had woken up inside a nineteenth-century photograph. He went into the kitchen and made himself a mug of murderously strong black coffee and then sat down at the kitchen table and tried to think what he ought to do today, to start putting his life back together. Meet some old friends for a pizza? (‘Do you really want to know what happened to me in Washington? Three young people died, horribly. How about another slice of meat feast?') Start writing a diary? (‘Dear diary, last night my cat caught fire but I met a very sexy woman from the next apartment.') Book a session with a psychoanalyst? (‘This very sexy woman from the next apartment thinks a painting has a real man inside it, and I'm worried that I might believe her.') Get drunk? (‘Karen, darling, you're the only woman I ever wanted.') Stay sober? (‘Of course, Karen, it never would have worked out between us.') Go for a nine-mile run? (‘Cough, pant, cough, cough, pant.')

He couldn't help feeling that he was doing little more than picking up one piece of his life at a time, turning it over and dropping it again, like an auto mechanic who doesn't have a clue how to reassemble the car that he's taken apart.

Maybe the best thing for him to do – maybe the
only
thing – would be to concentrate all of his attention on the students of Special Class II. Maybe
they
could show him which bits of his life were still worth salvaging, and polishing up, and which bits ought to be tossed away for scrap.

He finished his coffee and stowed the mug in the dishwasher. Tibbles was under the sink, wolfing down her breakfast of economy tuna. She was still patchy and scruffy, and she walked as stiffly as if she had rheumatism, but if her appetite was anything to go by, she seemed to have recovered from the shock of her burning.

‘I don't know how you can eat that stuff at six thirty in the morning,' said Jim, wrinkling up his nose in disgust. Tibbles briefly glanced up at him as if he had no taste at all, and went back to her bowl. Cheap, slushy, rank-smelling tuna – nothing like it.

‘Listen, TT, I'm going to work now. Behave yourself. Don't start yowling, because you're not really allowed to be living here. And if you think I'm going to give up this apartment just because of you, forget it.'

He stopped by the front door. ‘If you catch fire again, dial nine-one-one. Or jump in the shower and turn on the faucet marked “Deluge”.'

Behind the heaps of Vinnie's uncle's shoes, the portrait of Robert H. Vane was propped against the wall, covered by a gray blanket with red stitching. The blanket had slipped at one side, and Jim tugged it back into place. He didn't even want to see an inch of Robert H. Vane's black funereal pants.

He closed the front door behind him and stood in the corridor and waited and listened. He was hoping that he might bump into Eleanor Shine again, but he couldn't hear any sound from her apartment. She hadn't knocked on his door yesterday evening, even though he had spent nearly half an hour tidying up and dusting and trying to make the place look reasonably presentable.
And
bought some flowers,
and
some ruffle-cut potato chips,
and
a bottle of Chardonnay.

When the clock had dolefully chimed midnight and he had known for sure that she wasn't going to knock, he had realized – to his genuine surprise – that he was disappointed. There was something about her. Her face. Her liquid black hair. Her extraordinary notion that Robert H. Vane was hiding inside his own portrait. Or trapped, maybe. Or a bit of both.

She was a real original, Eleanor Shine, and he hadn't met an original in a long, long time.

Except Pinky Perdido, maybe. When she stood up in class to read her tribute to Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller, she was wearing black ribbons in her strawberry-pink bunches, a black T-shirt, a pink lace skirt and black pantyhose, with pink-and-white trainers. Pinky had a freckly nose, spiky eyelashes, and a voice so squeaky that it sounded like a dog's rubber toy.

‘They woke up and Bobby blunk his eyes and said where are we what happen and Sara said what is this place it's all sunny and roses everywhere so many roses it smells like that sashay I put in my underwear drawer. So an angel all dress in white Armani came to them and said you are in wedding land and I will take you to the chapel of weddings where you will be married with bridesmaids and champagne every day this is your reward for loving each other in the real world a wedding every day even a stretch limo and wedding gifts. Sara said this is bliss this is what I always wanted a wedding that goes on for ever amen.'

There was a smattering of applause. Pinky sat down, her cheeks all fired up. Jim nodded, and said, ‘That was excellent, Pinky. It was tender, wasn't it? It was full of imagination. But it wasn't all cotton candy, was it? It also posed a very poignant question. ‘Poignant – meaning what?' he asked, looking around the classroom. ‘Anybody?'

Edward put up his hand. ‘Affecting the emotions, or relevant, or intense. From the Latin
pungere
.'

‘Yes, like you is an intense poignant in the ass,' put in Shadow.

Jim gun-pointed his finger at Shadow, and mouthed the word
pow!
as a warning. Then he said, ‘If Bobby and Sara were to find themselves in Pinky's version of paradise, what would it be like? They would have wedding cake and champagne and all the toasters they could wish for, for all eternity, but they would never grow older. They would never know what it's like to have children and to travel the world. Every day, for ever, they would have to go through that same wedding celebration, over and over, like in
Groundhog Day
. Maybe that's heaven, or maybe that's another kind of hell. What do you think?'

‘I went to my dad's wedding last year,' said Edward. ‘That was definitely my definition of hell. I mean, my stepmom's cool. She used to be a pole dancer. But you should have seen her family. Talk about cave dwellers. One of the cousins had a circular target tattooed on his forehead. He said he wanted to be like Kurt Cobain, but he didn't have the guts actually to blow his head off, so that was the next best thing.'

‘Who is
you
to diss anybody, you geek?' Shadow challenged him. ‘That guy probably went home and told his friends that you was the biggest freak since Pee Wee Herman.'

Jim walked toward the back of the classroom. As he made his way between the desks, cellphones and comic books and Snickers bars miraculously vanished out of sight. He stopped, and turned around, and caught Randy with his cheeks bulging. ‘Hands up how many of you believe in an afterlife?' he asked. There was a moment's bewildered pause. ‘I mean, are we still conscious after we die, or not? Can we see, think, feel … or have we gone for ever?' One by one, hesitantly, eleven hands were raised.

He stopped by Brenda Malone's desk. Brenda was plump and pale and asthmatic, with coppery-colored hair that frayed like electrical wire, and a slight squint. ‘Brenda? It is Brenda, isn't it? You don't believe in an afterlife?'

Brenda shook her head so that her pigtails swung. ‘When you die, that's it.'

‘So you don't believe in any kind of heaven, or hell, or continuing existence? When you die, that's it, the lights go out, and you're gone?'

Brenda nodded. ‘My sister died and before she died I made her promise to send me a message when she got to heaven. She was supposed to pick three petals from a daisy that I had in a vase on my windowsill.'

‘But she didn't?'

‘No.' Brenda started biting at the edge of her thumbnail.

‘Did it occur to you that maybe she couldn't do anything physical, like picking off petals, once she was a spirit?'

‘Unh-hunh, she's gone,' Brenda insisted. ‘I can't even feel that she's close.'

Jim looked around the classroom. Some of his students had grown tired of holding their hands up; others were propping up their elbows with their other hand. It was then that he saw a young girl standing in the doorway – a girl wearing a long, pale-green nightdress. She wasn't a pretty girl. She had a plump, plain face and bushy red hair, which was pinned behind her ears. But she was smiling optimistically, and she was holding a red long-stemmed daisy in her hand.

Jim smiled back at her. He knew who she was, and what she was doing here. He also knew that nobody else in the classroom could see her, not even Brenda. Especially not Brenda.

He hadn't had a visitation like this for over two years, and he found it unexpectedly welcoming. The afterlife was crowded with people who were furious that they had died before their time; or vengeful; or couldn't believe that they had died at all. But there were contented spirits, too, and this girl was one of them.

‘How old was your sister when she died?' Jim asked Brenda.

‘Twelve-and-a-half. She had leukemia.'

‘What was her name?'

‘Mary.'

Jim laid his hand on Brenda's shoulder. ‘Mary hasn't left you, Brenda. She still watches you. She still loves you, and cares about you.'

Brenda stared up at him suspiciously, as if she might have expected her family priest to make an assertion like that, but not her remedial English teacher.

‘You don't believe me?' Jim asked her.

‘I've never felt her. Ever. And she didn't give me a sign.'

Jim beckoned, and Mary left the doorway and walked across the classroom toward them, passing right through Vanilla King and George Graves as if they didn't exist. Vanilla must have sensed her, though, because she suddenly said, ‘Oh!' and looked around as if somebody had touched her. George was too busy doodling Gothic-style gravestones in his notebook, with RIP inscribed on them.

Mary came right up to Jim, still smiling. ‘I never left her,' she said. She sounded distant, as if she were speaking in another room, and in a way she was. ‘I never left Brenda for a single minute.'

‘Couldn't you show her?' asked Jim. ‘It would make her very happy.'

‘What?' asked Brenda.

Mary plucked three petals from the red daisy that she was carrying and dropped them into the palm of Jim's hand. Jim closed his fingers and said, ‘Thank you.'

Brenda frowned at him. ‘Thank you for what?'

Jim opened his hand. Brenda stared down at the three red petals in disbelief. She opened and closed her mouth, and then she said, ‘How did you know the daisy was red?'

‘I told you, Mary's close by. She didn't leave you, when she died, and she never will. She's your sister.'

Brenda's squinty eyes filled up with tears. ‘It's a trick, isn't it? You're playing a trick!' George turned around in his seat and frowned at her, and then at Jim, but when he saw that nothing particularly interesting was going on, he returned to his doodling.

Jim laid a hand on Brenda's shoulder. ‘Do you think I'd be so cruel to you?' He tipped the petals on to her workbook. ‘Here, take them. Mary wants you to have them. She said that she'd give you a sign, and she has. She just needed somebody like me who could help her to do it.'

Brenda pulled out a crumpled Kleenex and dabbed her eyes. Jim said, ‘Listen, talk to me after class. I'll explain it all to you then. You're excused now, if you want to be.'