Restoration (13 page)

“To the one where I ask you out, you mean?”

She moved back from the window. “Now let me ask you a question: Have you ever gone out with a black woman?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know why not. Maybe I never really knew any.”

“You never knew
any?”

“Not really. Not like I’ve come to know you. I went to Jesuit, an all-boys high school, and the girls I knew at Tulane were all white. I was in a fraternity and so they were mostly sorority types. I just never had the occasion to get to know any black girls. They didn’t seem interested, anyway.”

“Maybe they didn’t seem interested because you didn’t seem interested.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Rhys. I wasn’t making a judgment about their desirability. My path just never crossed with theirs.”

We moved on again, silent but for an occasional groan from Rhys when she spotted something she liked in a window. We were a block away from the auction house when I said, “I’m going to ask you, anyway. Rhys, would you go out with me? I don’t mean beer and oysters some afternoon after an auction. I mean a real date where I show up at your place with a bouquet of flowers and we have a nice, candlelit dinner in the French Quarter, then go for a walk by the river holding hands. One of those dates two people go on when they’re interested in each other. Where I kiss you good-night at the door when it’s over and then ask you out for a second date. Where you say yes.”

She opened the door to the van and got in and lowered the window. “I like you, Jack. I like you a lot. But I have to be honest with you even at the risk of hurting your feelings. I will not date you.”

She started the engine and shifted to Drive, and when she looked at me again, and began to mutter her good-bye, I leaned my head in the window and brought my mouth against hers. She didn’t resist, but
neither did she respond as I would’ve liked. Her lips were cool and soft against mine, but so, I supposed, would most anyone’s have been. When I pulled away her eyes were still closed, her mouth slightly parted. “Go out with me, Rhys.”

She shook her head. “No, Jack.”

I stuck my head back inside and kissed her again, and this time it was for real. I started to pull away but she brought her hands up to my face and led me back close. It had been weeks since I kissed a woman, and now I realized I’d been only half alive in all that time. She was as hungry for me as I was for her. But then I put my left hand on her waist and she grabbed my wrist and pushed me away. “You need to go,” she said.

“Why?”

“You just do, Jack.”

“I don’t understand you,” I said.

“There’s nothing to understand.”

“Sure there is. I wish I knew what it is you want, Rhys.”

She raised the window about halfway, to make sure I was kept out, and I could feel the van nudge forward. Now she was talking through the glass, but traffic passing by made it difficult to hear. I watched her lips move.

At first I thought she was saying, “Somebody likes me,” which, though not exactly a promise of great things to come, still offered reason for optimism. But then it occurred to me that she might’ve said, “Somebody like me.” And I thought,
Somebody like you? Somebody like you, Rhys? Somebody black like you?
And I felt utterly hopeless.

I could do many things to improve myself to live up to her expectations, but changing who I was wasn’t one of them.

Every night when I went to bed in my damp apartment I thought about the ghosts Patrick Marion had mentioned on the day I first met him. I listened for footsteps on the floor, but if I heard anything it was
the imagined sound of Formosan termites eating out the studs in the walls around me.

I removed what remained of my father’s art collection from the trunk of my car and hung the canvases on the walls of my bedroom. None was a Drysdale, and none had a recognizable signature. But they were nice enough, if you liked the swamp.

After living for years on noisy Esplanade Avenue, I relished the quiet of my new home. And I quickly established a routine. I would sleep until midmorning, then walk up to a coffee shop for a café mocha, a bran muffin and the paper. That was breakfast. Next I went for a long jog along the bayou. For lunch I visited a restaurant in the area or grabbed a sandwich at the Whole Foods deli. Occasionally friends from my former life joined me, but I stopped seeing them when none seemed able to complete a meal without quizzing me about my plans for the future. Did I intend to go back to work at the paper soon? Was I dating anyone? What did I do with all my time now that I had no obligations and nothing to do? I rarely walked home afterward without feeling like the world’s biggest slacker, which was exactly how they wanted me to feel, and perhaps how I was.

In the afternoon I napped on the bench in the shade of the garden oak, oftentimes with a book open on my chest. I still liked an occasional murder mystery, but most of my reading these days went to southern art and the monographs, pamphlets, auction catalogs and books on the subject that I’d inherited from my father.

I was particularly drawn to the coffee table tomes published by museums and individuals to promote their collections. In these Levette Asmore was often featured. The books tended to follow the same format: on the left page a brief biography of the artist and description of his work, on the right a color plate showing the painting in the collection. One publication, brought out in 1958, featured portraits from the Louisiana State Museum and showed an Asmore painting whose composition was strikingly similar to the one Patrick Marion owned. A young woman—
Beloved Christine
, she was called—stood before a
fiery Louisiana river landscape, looking as if she’d just been ravaged. “Asmore, you horny dog,” I said when I encountered the image.

The bulk of the artist’s bio added little to what I already knew about Asmore, but then came the last line:

“Wiltz Lowenstein,” I said out loud. “Wiltz Lowenstein? How do I know…?” When the name finally registered, I nearly fell off the bench.
Lowenstein?
The painting’s donor was named
Lowenstein?
I scrambled to the apartment to try to figure out what to do next. “Lowenstein,” I kept saying.

My rent check went to High Life Realty, Patrick Marion’s company. I’d never thought to inquire about my landlord’s first name.

In minutes I was standing at the front door of the main house, beating a fist against the whitewashed cypress that formed the frame. A woman appeared past the screen, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking as she approached on the high-polished parquet. “Hi, hate to disturb you, ma’am. My name is Jack Charbonnet. I rent the apartment in back and I was wondering if I could speak to Mr. Lowenstein, please?”

She sniffed and brought her eyes together in a tight squint, then shook her head as if I’d asked the impossible. “Mr. Lowenstein expressly
asks not to be disturbed today. I’m sorry, Jack. If there’s a message I’d be more than happy to deliver it.”

“Are you his sitter?” I asked.

She was wearing pale blue house pants and an oversized T-shirt advertising the Cat’s Meow, a Bourbon Street karaoke club. Even though I stood about six inches taller than she did, she outweighed me by no less than fifty pounds. “I’m his nurse,” she said.

“Ma’am, would you by chance know Mr. Lowenstein’s first name?”

“Charles.”

“It isn’t Wiltz?”

“It’s Charles. Charles Howard Lowenstein.”

“Will you ask him if he’s related to Wiltz Lowenstein?”

“Wiltz Lowenstein,” she repeated, then shuffled up closer, staring at me through the screen. She sniffed again. “Wait here, please.”

After she left, I pressed my face up close to the screen and looked in the house. It had a large center hall holding an antique buffet. On both sides the walls were crowded with paintings, the space so thick with them that frames touched and in some instances overlapped. There were several dozen Drysdales, large and small, as well as five or six French Quarter courtyard scenes by Alberta Kinsey.

The nurse came striding toward me. I gave a grateful smile as she approached, figuring an invitation was sure to be offered, but instead she checked the latch on the screen door. “Jack, I’m sorry but Mr. Lowenstein says he isn’t related to a Wiltz Lowenstein. Is there anything else?”

I heard a clattering from behind her in the hall, and the metal wheel of a wheelchair poked out in the darkened doorway before creaking back out of view. The woman glanced over her shoulder.

“Did you ask Mr. Lowenstein if he knows anyone named Wiltz Lowenstein?”

“No, I did what you said and asked him if he and Wiltz Lowenstein were related. He said they weren’t. Jack, please, Mr. Lowenstein isn’t feeling well today. Why don’t you come back some other time when he’s doing better?” And with that she took a step back and closed the double French doors in my face.

In the White Pages for Greater New Orleans there were three listings for Lowenstein. I immediately ruled out the first of them because it belonged to a suburban funeral home. A second listed Charles H. of Moss Street, and the other was Lawrence David, whose address wasn’t listed. I dialed the number for Lawrence David, using a French Quarter prefix, and asked for Mr. Lowenstein. “Speaking,” said the person who answered.

“Sir, are you by chance related to someone named Wiltz Lowenstein?”

“No, I’m not. Who the hell is Wiltz Lowenstein?”

“What about Charles Howard Lowenstein?”

“He’s my late father’s uncle, my great-uncle. Who is this?”

I told him who I was and why I was calling, then added, “I found your name in the phone book. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all, Charbonnet. Uncle Charlie has kept a low profile for years, and so we don’t talk much. But I can’t recall his ever mentioning a Wiltz. Have you asked Uncle Charlie about this man?”

“The nurse who sits with him spoke to Mr. Lowenstein on my behalf. He told her they weren’t related.”

“Well, he would know. When he lived here in the Quarter he ran with that bohemian crowd—the writers and the artists and the gals with hairy armpits. Tell me, Charbonnet, how is Uncle Charlie? Treating you well, I hope?”

“I’m enjoying the apartment. But to be honest I haven’t met your uncle yet. He doesn’t seem to want to leave the house.”

“He can be a real pain in the ass, that’s for sure. I could blame the arthritis—you’ll notice it’s crippled him, disfiguring his feet and hands—but the truth is I never knew him to be very friendly, and he resigned from what you might call life long before he was ever diagnosed with the disease. Come to think of it, he resigned before I was even born. If he gives you any crap, don’t hesitate to call again, you hear?”

“I’ll call again if there’s a problem.”

“Well, all the best in your hunt for Wiltz Lowenstein.”

Next I called Rhys Goudeau at the Guild’s studio. I didn’t mention
our kiss the other day on Magazine Street, or any of what we’d talked about. Instead I told her about the odd coincidence connecting the name of my landlord to an Asmore portrait, a subject that I was sure would excite her. “They’ve got to be the same guy,” I said.

“If you have any time today,” she said, “you should go by the Williams Research Center and see if they have an artist file for Wiltz Lowenstein. Maybe something will turn up. You might also visit the State Museum—the place you want is the Old U.S. Mint at the foot of Esplanade—and find out if they have
Beloved Christine
on display. While you’re there ask for Dr. Gilbert Perret, the curator. I’ve done some work for him and we have a good relationship. He’s a decent-enough fellow and he’s certain to have information about the painting’s provenance. Hey, look, Jack,” and now she paused, long enough to catch her breath, “are we still on tomorrow for your haircut?”

“Oh, right. My haircut.”

“Meet me here at the studio at four o’clock. There’s something I want to show you, something you need to see.”

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with your boy Levette, would it?” I said.

“Four o’clock,” she said, and before I could respond, she put the phone down.