He was relieved to hear it. Gallery Six was shady. He couldn’t come out and tell her. For one thing, he had no proof. And what if she let it slip? He did not want to tip off la Paloma. “We’ll get on that as soon as this fair is done.”
“We won’t be doing anything. You’ll be gone and I’ll be packing up for Orlando.”
He couldn’t believe how deeply those words cut him. She was dismissing him and had very concrete plans on how to move on. “This is the first I’m hearing about Orlando.”
“That’s where I’m from.”
“Don’t you like it here?”
“I do.”
“This apartment is great.” He meant it, even though he was desperately grasping at reasons for her to abort her plans. “I’ve lived in Miami my whole life, for the most part, and I’ve never met anyone who actually lived in this area.”
“Chris picked this apartment.”
Chris...
She took a long sip from her glass as if stalling for time. “It’s close to the university’s school of marine science,” she said, finally.
Ah. Now for whatever reason he didn’t think the apartment was so great. It was old and dated. He reached for her hand. “Just so you know, I’m not leaving right away. I’m sticking around awhile.”
“Why?”
“Film production delays. Plus, my agent seems to think I need a break.”
“Do you need a break?”
They stood at opposite sides of the kitchen island, hands linked. “It wouldn’t hurt.”
She drained her glass, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t leave for Orlando right away. The lease doesn’t lapse until March of next year.”
He could work with that.
If Sandro were brave enough to be honest, and bold enough to hope, he’d admit that his meeting Angel felt fortuitous. It felt like the beginning of something good—if they didn’t mess it up.
Angel took their glasses to the sink. “You know that thing I said last night? I don’t know why I had you call me that...it was crazy sex talk.”
A lot of crazy sex talk had gone down last night. He wasn’t ready to take any of it back.
He grabbed one end of the dishrag she was holding and used it to draw her to him. “You mean when I called you mine?”
She nodded slowly before putting it in words. “Yes.”
Sandro watched her struggle, but he would not relent. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Come here, my angel.”
She melted into his arms. He held and rocked her, stroking her back, until someone simultaneously knocked at her door and rang her doorbell. Then a strident female voice called out, “Angeline!” and a few words in French that he did not understand.
“Angeline! C’est ta marraine!”
Damn it all to hell! It was Angel’s godmother. Not the “fairy” kind who made your dreams real with a wave of a wand, but the Haitian kind who snooped, meddled and reported back to your mother.
Angel gripped Alessandro’s shoulders, her fingers digging into his flesh.
“Listen to me. I want you to go into the bedroom and not make a sound until I come get you. Do you understand?”
The actor gave her a look of hurt betrayal. “You’re determined to keep me in the closet.”
“We’re not yet at the point where you meet my crazy family.”
“When do you think we’ll get to that point?”
“Never!” Angel said. “Now go and hide. I’ll pump up your deflated ego after.”
His eyebrows shot up. “By any means necessary?”
She was shaking with bottled-up laughter. He was impossible. “Just go!”
Alessandro blew her a kiss before disappearing into the bedroom. Angel was still grinning when she opened the door to her mother’s cousin Hélène Roger, or Tati Hélène, as she liked to be called. A petite woman with smooth dark brown skin, she wore pastel pink scrubs and a matching cardigan with a brown leather Coach bag tucked under her arm.
“Tati Hélène! What brings you here so early?”
Her godmother presented her with a pair of stacked Tupperware. “You missed Charles’s retirement dinner. I brought you some food.”
How thoughtful. But Angel suspected her mother had dispatched her ally to check in on her child who’d been “abandoned” in Miami by the boyfriend that she had never liked in the first place. Stunts like this made her plan to move back home less and less enticing.
“So heavy. What’s in this?”
“Just a little something. Lambi en sauce, salade Russe, macaroni au gratin...”
“Wow! Thanks!” Conch in Creole sauce, rice and beans, beet and potato salad, and her godmother’s famous mac and cheese: a feast in takeout containers. “Sorry to have kept you waiting. I was getting ready for work.”
“Is that what you’re wearing to work? Ah, non!”
Angel glanced down at her dress, purchased on a whim off Instagram. She was headed to the cocktail party in the Swiss-designed parking garage straight after work. The dress struck the right balance with its capped sleeves, bias-cut skirt, and high slit over her right thigh.
“Don’t worry,” Angel said. “This is very appropriate for an art show.”
Before her godmother could tell her to find a “good” job in hospital administration, Angel took the food into the kitchen and arranged the containers in her mostly empty refrigerator. She had no doubt her godmother would be back within a week to collect the prized containers.
“I’ll get these back to you,” Angel called out from the kitchen. “I promise!”
She returned to the front room to find her aunt examining a pair of tailored black trousers. Angel stopped midstride and came close to toppling forward. She raced through hundreds of possible explanations, settling for the most probable one. “Those belong to Chris.”
Tati Hélène shot her a look that said she wasn’t born yesterday. “This is quality. Chris never wore anything this nice.” She held up the pants as evidence and Angel prayed another condom wouldn’t come tumbling out. “That boy only wore khaki pants, even to your cousin’s baby shower, and he was not this tall.”
“That’s why he left them behind,” Angel said, no longer able to hide her irritation. She was a grown-ass woman in her own rental apartment. Why should she have to explain herself? This would be the part of the sitcom where the main character would tell her busybody godmother to mind her own business. Angel, however, was not born into a sitcom prototype family. Her parents, aunts, uncles, and honorary aunts and uncles were from Haiti. She and her cousins were first generation American who gave their parents ulcers with their “American” lifestyles. Dating, pursuing careers outside of the medical profession, marrying foreigners, and best of all, “living in sin,” were all signs that they’d lost their way.
“Tati Hélène,” Angel said as respectfully as possible. “I hate to rush you, but I am going to be late for work. You don’t want me to lose my job.”
Those proved to be the magic words. Losing a job, or pèdi travay, was a calamity no Haitian immigrant would wish upon anyone.
“Okay, okay, I’m leaving.” Tati Hélène shuffled to the door. “Bonne journée, ma cocotte. And wear a sweater, at least. It’s December.”
“I will. Don’t worry,” Angel said. “Merci for the dinner. I’ll eat it tonight.”
With that, Angel ushered her godmother out the door and went to join Alessandro in the bedroom. He was standing by her dresser studying a painting on the wall. It was one of her few from childhood, a bougainvillea vine creeping over a cement wall. Angel handed him his pants. She wondered how much he’d heard or understood of her conversation with her godmother, but the devilish grin he flashed her confirmed that he’d heard and understood everything.
He fell onto the bed and joined his hands behind his head. �
�There better be enough food for two.”
Angel rolled onto the bed and cuddled next to him. “That was just a preview of my family. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to meet them.”
He tucked her to him. When he answered his tone was surprisingly solemn. “I would, actually. Family is important.”
She raised herself onto her elbow and studied the near-naked man in her bed, seeing him with newfound appreciation. Chris had never wanted to spend time with her rambunctious family. Toward the end of their relationship, she’d had to resort to bribery. “Come with me to my cousin’s baby shower and I’ll go with you to see the hundredth Star Wars movie.”
He smoothed her hair. “Come on, let’s go. I don’t want you to lose your job.”
Angel checked her watch. “I’m going to be late, and Paloma will kill me.”
“No way. I’ll get you there on time.”
And he did.
Twelve
“We cannot certify the authenticity of El Jardín Secreto.” The expert had called while Sandro was running lines over Zoom with his acting coach.
He stepped out onto the terrace for privacy, even though he was home alone. The authenticator explained in detail how they’d come to their conclusion.
“It all comes down to red paint?”
“That particular pigment was not commercially available until 1985. There’s no way your grandfather could have found it for such liberal use ten years earlier.”
The blooming bougainvillea flowers had betrayed the secrets of the garden. Funny.
“We wish we had better news for you, Mr. Cardenas.”
“It’s the news I expected.”
Over the last few days, Sandro had managed to put the painting out of his mind. He hadn’t wanted the results back this soon, either. It forced him to link Angel to the gallery that sold him a forged copy of his own grandfather’s painting, a thing he did not want to do.
“Most professionals would try to avoid this common mistake. This leads me to think we’re not dealing with a professional. How would you like to proceed?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You may file a police report. We find that most of our clients don’t.”
Most wouldn’t for the reasons Paloma had so eloquently explained. They wouldn’t want their neighbors to know they’d been conned.
“More often than not these cases are not prosecuted, even with the best of evidence,” the authenticator continued. “Either way, our discretion is guaranteed.”
Sandro ended the call and pocketed his phone. The cloudy morning sky mirrored his mood. Who would go through the trouble of reproducing the old man’s paintings? Who had suddenly expressed interest in their market value? And called him out for not doing more to increase it? All signs pointed to his brother. Sandro wasn’t delusional. Ed didn’t have the skill to reproduce an original stick figure, let alone an oil painting. But he could have hired someone to reproduce the paintings and pass them off to galleries. You didn’t have to be a genius to work out that plan.
He was going to have to pay his big brother a visit.
Two hours later, Sandro landed in Tampa. Good thing his brother’s tire shop wasn’t too far from the airport. A driver was waiting to take him there and back. The car hadn’t slowed to a stop when he pushed open the door. When he burst into the small shop, welcomed by the smell of grease and rubber, his brother proved that Sandro wasn’t the only one with theatrical inclinations.
“Well if it isn’t the King of Hollywood!” Eddy bellowed from behind the cash register. “To what do we owe this honor?”
The few customers threw glances their way, but none likely recognized him. He was just another Latino guy in the ball cap, sunglasses and bland T-shirt. “We need to talk.”
“Nah,” Eddy replied. “I need to take care of my customers.”
“Eddy,” Sandro said through clenched teeth. “I came a long way.”
“Is that right?” Eddy said. “Well, take a damn number.”
Balding, paunchy, with a lined face, Eddy looked older than the seven years he had on Sandro. But he’d had a difficult life. Their father’s death had hit him harder. Sandro was only four at the time and had been living with JD since he was two. In the family, they said their dad had died of stubbornness, having refused to go to the ER when a minor cut turned into a raging infection. Sandro was deemed too young to attend the funeral. All he knew was that his father, like his mother, had stopped coming around. It was complicated, as was his relationship with this half brother whom he had once worshipped.
Sandro went over to the waiting area and flipped open a frayed copy of Car and Driver. He was going to sit here until—
The staged sit-in didn’t last long. Eddy waved him over. His office was down the hall. It was large enough for a desk and not much else. Still, Eddy had managed to squeeze in a recliner for himself.
“Welcome to my humble abode. Have a seat.”
Sandro lowered himself onto one of the two guest seats that lined the wall. There was little legroom, but he made it work.
“Coffee? Tea? Or what do you guys drink in California? Green lettuce juice? Is that it?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Yeah. I can tell you’re good.”
“Why the attitude?” Sandro asked, point blank.
“It’s not about nothing,” Eddy said. “You show up here unannounced. You don’t ask about Linda.”
“Oh? How is she, by the way?”
“She’s a certified substitute teacher.”
“Give her my best.”
“I will.”
“Can we knock this off now?”
Their relationship had not been considered loving. As the illegitimate child of their dad and his mistress, Sandro was by default the black sheep. The power dynamic had shifted over recent years, with Sandro gaining confidence and asserting himself.
“Sabina tells me you two have talked about JD’s paintings, wanting to see them in the world.”
“Don’t know why you’re hiding them. Are you embarrassed?”
“Don’t go there,” Sandro said quietly.
Eddy looked down at the points of his shoes. “Just asking.”
“What do you care? You’ve never cared.”
“That’s what I don’t like. Righteous attitude. You’re not the only one who loved JD.”
“I don’t question that. Just your interest in the paintings.”
“I’ve got no interest in the damn paintings. You’ve seen to that.”
“Seeing how you’ve wiped out more than half of them, I don’t know how you can complain.”
“There you go, blaming me for that fire again!”
“Whose cigarette was it?”
“It was an accident.”
“You tossed a cigarette into a shed full of turpentine and other explosives.”
“It was an accident,” Eddy repeated.
Straight after their grandfather’s wake, his friends had gathered in the yard outside JD’s painting shed. One tossed cigarette had set the shed ablaze. “Accident or not, the result is the same.”
“Why are you here?” Eddy asked. “You didn’t come all this way to fight about the fire or JD’s paintings.”
“Actually, yeah, I did.”
Sandro opened the duffel bag he’d brought with him and pulled out El Jardín Secreto. He dropped the painting on Eddy’s cluttered desk.
“What’s this?”
“A fake.”
“No me jodas,” Eddy murmured. “How do you know?”
“An expert analyzed it.”
“How does the expert know?”
“That’s what he does.”
“Or he’s taking your money and feeding you bull.”
“It’s a fake.”
“Okay...so what?”
Eddy said. “What do you expect me to do about it?” Sandro stared at him. “You think I have something to do with it? You think I have an art studio at the back of the shop?”
“I’m not saying that. Just wondering if you know anything about it.”
“I don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Get outta here with this mess! You show up—unannounced—and freaking ruin my day.”
“Sorry,” Sandro said, unfazed. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“The result is the same.”
Sandro did not budge. He sat stewing in frustration. This was plainly going nowhere, but was he really going to leave without answers?
Eddy shooed him off like a stray dog. “Go on! I got a shop to run!”
The shop was nearly empty. There was no way Sandro could remind him of that without coming off as an ass. He stood to go.
“And take that with you,” Eddy said, sliding the painting across the desk with the tip of a logo pen. “Don’t plant it on me.”
Just when Sandro reached for it, Eddy stopped him. “Wait.” He studied the painting for a long moment, his eyes wistful.
“What is it?” Sandro asked.
Eddy shook his head. “Like I said—you weren’t the only one who loved JD’s work.”
Sandro snatched the painting off the desk and shoved it back into his bag. “It’s a fake. Remember that?”
“Says you and your expert,” Eddy said. “But you gotta admit. If it’s a fake, it’s a damn good one.”
“I’ll pass that message along when we catch the forger.”
“You won’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“A hunch.”
Sandro leaned against the doorway. “A hunch?”
“Who really cares, anyway?”
“Someone is making money off JD. That doesn’t piss you off?”
“Imitation is the sincerest form of whatever.”
“Bullshit!”
“Here’s some advice.”
“I’m listening.”
“Go back to California or Cannes or wherever you spend your time. We’ve got enough problems. Leave us nobodies alone.”
What Happens In Miami... Page 9
