Paint It Black (25 page)

24

Lotus Room

J
osie, on her second vodka, sat in the corner banquette where she and Michael had liked to sit, in the beginning. Their heads pressed together, making up stories about everyone. From here she could watch the door. She itched to take one of the reds, but this was no time for a blackout. She shook her hands, blew, and rubbed them together, trying to get some feeling back. All around her people were talking, laughing, their jackets hung on the back of their chairs. Nobody else seemed to be cold. She flexed her fingers, trying to get some of the stiffness out of them, they were so clumsy, she was spilling her drink. But as long as she stayed in the bath of colored lights from the Lotus Room’s Chinese lanterns, nothing could hurt her. She could always get someone to walk her to her car. Like that big bus-driverish man with the salt-and-pepper hair, or the dyke drummer, watching her from the bar. How fast would a bullet be, she wondered. Would she even hear it?

She kept thinking about that night, when they sat around in the big living room, talking about Michael. It should have brought them closer. But Meredith was as unpredictable as her son, one minute they were friends and the next, she was ripping off her stuff, trying to get her killed. If Michael was here, what would he say about his mother now?
Please,
she prayed to the vacant universe,
don’t let this be happening.
All she’d ever wanted was to be accepted by people she respected, and look where that had gotten her.

The Lotus Room door opened and closed, she watched each new figure, waiting for Flattop, or perhaps someone she hadn’t even seen yet, but the black portal only admitted more civil servants in high-water pants and office workers dressed for success. When Meredith finally arrived, however, there was no missing her. Tall, wearing a sable brown coat and matching narrow pants, a turtleneck. She had forgotten how beautiful the woman was, even at her age. Her luminous eyes caught what light there was, and her skin glowed unnaturally, like she was some kind of phosphorescent fish. Even the drunks at the bar looked up from their Old Grand-Dads, astonished. She came into the room a few feet, blinking, trying to adjust to the light, peering through the gloom, ignoring the gazes of the men around her—no, more than ignoring them. Not even seeing them, as if they were just so many trees or bushes.

Josie didn’t wave or help her, just watched Meredith hunting for her in the crowd. For some reason she found it intensely satisfying. When in the world had a Loewy ever looked for a Tyrell? She waited until the older woman found her. “Josie.” Meredith slid into the banquette, her purse firmly wedged on her lap. She gazed around her, her clear eyes taking in the tables of civil servants in cheap loud jackets, the pulsing disco lights on the jukebox, the tables of early rockers, Willie Woo scolding someone at the bar, the TV turned to the news with the sound off, smiling Ronald Reagan, stern ayatollahs, something about the hostages. Jerry Dunphy’s white hair like the crest of a wave. “You know, I’ve been by here a thousand times, but I’ve never been inside. You look different,” Meredith said. “Your hair.”

Josie felt a flush of pleasure, automatic, it pissed her off. She dropped her eyes so Meredith wouldn’t see it. Christ. “I’m on a movie.”

“The dress is good too,” Meredith said. “I used to have one just like it. Must be a collector’s item by now.”

Meredith had had a Pucci dress like this? She didn’t want the woman to flatter her, and yet, she was flattered. Even now, she was glad Meredith could see she could be chic, put together, she had her own kind of glamour. Then furious at herself for caring what this woman thought, this woman who’d emptied her apartment, who’d walked in as if she owned the place, as if Josie was just a slight obstacle, a minor nuisance, a squatter in her own home. This woman who wanted her dead approved of her dress.

“Want it?” Josie asked. “You’ve got everything else that belongs to me.”

The old waitress, Helen Chow, tiny and vivacious in an embroidered sweater, her black-dyed hair arranged on her head like something you’d see in a cake-decorating class, threw a napkin in front of Meredith and switched out the ashtray. “What can I get you gals?”

“I’ll have a J and B on the rocks,” Meredith said in her breathy, elegant voice.

“Another voddy.” Josie drained her glass and put it on Helen’s tray.

Meredith fingered the stained appetizer-and-drinks menu. “How’s the food?”

“Diabolical,” Josie said.

They watched Helen walk away on her tottery high heels. Meredith crossed her arms on the tabletop and gazed up at the lantern above and the table across, men in short sleeves and ugly wide ties, they looked like engineers from Water and Power. They’d been stealing glances at her, but quickly looked away as her gaze drifted over them, terrified of what might happen if she caught them staring. Like the Gorgon, who turned people to stone. “Did Michael ever come here?” Meredith asked.

“Lots of times.” Charmed by its cheapness and its jukebox full of kitschy old music, and Willie Woo and Helen Chow. The rockers irritated him, though, Ben Sinister and David Doll. He thought they were ignorant, crass. The truth was, he was always uncomfortable with people his own age. He felt they judged him and so he rejected them first, and the fact that Josie knew them made him feel more of an outsider. So he came less and less, did his drinking at home in the chair by the window.

Helen brought their cocktails. Meredith took a sip of hers and made a face. “I don’t think this is J and B.”

Helen shrugged, unapologetic. “You want something else?”

“I never said this was a good place,” Josie said, sipping her own drink.

“I suppose this will do,” Meredith said.

They sat quietly and drank their weak drinks in the dark booth, Meredith’s face stark in the light from the lantern over the table, like an old movie star shot in black-and-white, very high key, the sculpture of her brow and cheek thrown into relief. She traced a circle around the mouth of her glass, around and around, but it didn’t make a sound. “Really, I’m surprised you didn’t see the man before. You’re not very observant.” She put a manila envelope on the table, slid it to Josie.

Josie opened the brass claw, saw the thick packet of photographs and typewritten pages, and swallowed, feeling the tightness in her throat. How far someone would go. She had always underestimated that. She was still so naive, right off the turnip truck, Daisy Mae from Dogpatch. She spread the photos out on the table, not bothering to wipe off the wet and sticky surface, hoping it would ruin some of the expensive surveillance. She was amazed at how many there were. Her, coming out of her apartment, wearing the yellow coat, though it was gray in the photograph. Morning light, her breath in a cloud. Her on the movie that day in Topanga behind the wheel of the crushed BMW. Walking naked on the road. They were grainy, shot from a long way off, he must have been up on the hillside. Like a sniper with his gun. Here she was walking around the lake in Echo Park, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, looking like a monk. Her and Pen having coffee at that Scientology-run hamburger place on Fountain. Now what was that supposed to reveal? That she drank it black? That she was a lousy tipper? She felt flayed, gutted like a fish caught and cleaned right on the dock before it was dead. It felt just like when she got back and found her place stripped. Meredith thought she could get away with murder.

Here was Jeremy, coaching her, arm around her shoulder. Jeremy kissing her. Josie fought the urge to explain, to defend herself. If Meredith wanted to invade her life, she could bloody well guess what it all meant.
Your boyfriend Jeremy, the fake Englishman.
Her trying on clothes at Goodwill. It was like God, watching you. She wondered why people found this idea comforting, someone always watching, when it really made the world a giant prison camp, with God and his angels the warden and guards.

“And where’s the one of you, stealing my fucking stuff? Look at this shit.” She pushed the pile over to Meredith. “What’s it prove except you’re one controlling bitch. Did you find anything? I mean, what were you looking for?”

“You’re the last piece of him left,” Meredith said simply. “I needed to know you.”

She flipped through the reports:
Subject meets white male, early twenties, Canter’s Delicatessen. Subject attends concert with Hispanic female, Penelope Valadez, Palladium, Hollywood. Subject modeling, California State University, Long Beach; instructor Gloria Reyes.
Dates, times. It was a movie without sound, the movie of her own life, and only she knew the story. To Meredith she was a mystery to be solved, and no amount of detective work would solve it all.
You’re not very observant.
But Meredith could look at these pictures all day and have no idea what she was seeing. How oddly fascinating, really, to be of such interest to another human being, her life such a riddle, and still, Meredith would never know the answer. But in the end, all people were like this, standing outside a telephone booth, trying to understand some stranger’s conversation.

Stupid not to have known she’d been followed, and for such a long time. Like being raped while you were asleep. Her in Life Drawing at Otis, how had he gotten those? No one ever came in, only the models and students. In the photo, she looked painfully tired and thin. The strain was showing. Talking to Phil Baby after class, their heads close together, Christ, anytime someone touched her, the little man with the camera was there. No wonder Michael had been so eager to move to Echo Park, away from his mother’s prying. Pictures of her and Pen sweating at the Elks Club, Pen laughing at something, Josie looking the other way, a glass halfway to her mouth.

“You’re very photogenic,” Meredith said, angling her neck to see the picture better, her thick dark hair falling forward. “I had no idea.”

Josie couldn’t help liking the compliment and it made her angrier still. “Add that to the list of the things you know nothing about.”

Meredith plucked a photograph from the mass and set it on top. “Like this?”

She should have known it was coming, but had not. The actor, Wade, coming out of the gate of her house. She had almost succeeded in forgetting about that. But here it was. She stared down into her hands, feeling like she would burst into flame. Michael had been dead for five weeks, and there she was already, fucking some actor. Josie leaned back against the banquette and closed her eyes.
It was a mistake, I was drunk, it’s not what you think.
But what excuse could there be? Her throat hurt. She waited for Meredith to say something.
You slut, you unfaithful slag.
There it was, proof, what she had obviously been looking for, proof that Josie never really cared about him, that her love was a fiction, that she couldn’t stay true to him, dead or alive. But when she opened her eyes, the older woman was just gazing down at the picture, sorrowfully. Wade in the sharp morning light. The sun on his strawberry hair, he looked so smug in his leather jacket.

Meredith’s hand went to her own throat. “This was the best you could find?” she whispered. Her voice hoarse as if it had been grated.

Did Meredith think she was the only one, that she had a lock on the mourning department? Did she think the only way to mourn was to stay home and play Brahms and walk in a rose garden? “He’s dead no matter what we do,” Josie said.

Meredith sagged back onto the banquette, stared up into the light. Her skin looked bruised. Her gaze dropped to the table, cluttered with images of Josie’s days and nights, her friends and colleagues, Josie full face and in profile, Josie dressed and naked, Josie with this man and that one. “What was it I thought I’d find out?” Meredith said, picking up the shot of her at the Elks Club. “What did I think you were hiding?”

She felt sad to see the woman like this, so suddenly helpless and lost looking. It scared her worse than seeing her powerful and in control. If Meredith was lost, what did that make Josie? “You could have just called.”

“You never pick up.”

She thought of phones ringing, a city of phones ringing and no one picking up. A universe of people in need, and nobody answering.

“I think about dying,” Meredith said, looking into her drink. “I think about it all the time. I don’t know what I have to live for now.”

“I know the feeling.”

The table of Water and Power engineers across the way burst into laughter, one had a bray like a donkey, high-pitched and silly. How strange, Josie thought, that people could still laugh like that. She felt like a Martian, all these people living their regular lives, having a laugh with their coworkers, stopping in for a little camaraderie before they went home to families or empty apartments, their cat and TV. Whereas this was her only comrade, the only person who understood just how empty a house could be.

“You have your music, that’s not nothing.”

Meredith sighed. “You know, I was about your age when my father killed himself. I don’t know if Michael told you.”

“He told me some,” Josie said.

Meredith arranged her coat around her shoulders, the cold that only the two of them seemed to feel. “I’d been working with Rudolf Serkin at Curtis, just before he died.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table covered with photos. “A very great pianist, one of the three greatest of his time. It was terribly important. Anyway, he was going to play with the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York, Carnegie Hall. The Brahms Second. And he got sick, I don’t remember with what, but he recommended me to Ormandy to replace him. I was all of twenty-one. One day’s notice, the Brahms Second. It’s a monster concerto. A huge responsibility.”

All these names, floating like buoys in a sea of the things Josie didn’t know.
Serkin
and
Ormandy
and
Curtis,
but she could understand that Meredith was her age and suddenly she was supposed to play at Carnegie Hall. It had to have been a super big deal.

“It was like something right out of an old movie, where the star twists her ankle and the girl gets her big chance. I was so nervous I threw up just before the concert, then went out and something took over. It was like being lifted up on wings. Harold Schoenberg called me a goddess. Hurok signed me the next day, and within a week, he’d organized a tour. It was like being in the nose cone of a rocket, the momentum, how fast it all came. Everything I’d worked for since I was four years old. Like breaking free of earthly gravity.”