“The maid let me in,” he said at the gate.
“What’s wrong, Patrick?”
“Let’s go sit somewhere.”
His face was unshaven, his hair uncombed, his eyes shot red. Another rowdy dinner party with friends, I figured. He drove me over to the coffee shop on Esplanade. He was quiet until we took our chairs at a table on the sidewalk in front. He glanced around to make sure no one was within earshot. “Got a favor to ask,” he said.
“Sure, man. Anything.”
“Would you be willing to safe-house Dorothy for a few days? Rhys Goudeau and I have made an appointment with the Neal Auction Company to consign the painting on Monday, and until then the dear girl needs a place to hide.” He lifted his steaming cup of coffee and rippled the surface with his breath. “Somebody broke into my apartment last night, Jack. I’m pretty certain he was after the painting.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” I said.
He shook his head. “I wish I were.”
“Were you there when it happened?”
“I was asleep in my room. The painting was maybe ten feet away, propped up against the wall behind my chest of drawers. It was three o’clock in the morning and I could feel the bed vibrating. That’s one thing about life in the Loeber Mansion: when one of your neighbors gets up in the middle of the night to pee you know it because the house shakes. Only last night it was a heavier vibration, closer. It felt like it does when Elsa stays over, and at first I thought it might be Elsa until I remembered she’d gone to Mobile on business. My door creaked open and in the darkness I saw the figure of a man. He was a big person, dressed all in black, with a stocking cap covering his head. Had it been like most burglaries in this city, he would’ve gone straight for my TV or stereo. But this guy was checking out the walls.”
A waiter began cleaning off the table next to ours. Patrick waited until he was finished before continuing the story. “He might’ve been in the room for thirty or forty seconds—a minute at most—but I tell you it felt like forever. I pretended to be sleeping, but my heart was beating like a kettledrum and I was afraid he’d hear it. He spotted the painting behind the chest and moved toward it, then he lowered himself to a crouch and brought his face up close to the surface. He might’ve been sniffing the paint. I heard a small clicking sound and then a tiny beam of light was shining on the painting. He was holding a penlight to it, I suppose to make certain he was stealing the right one. He made a sort of gasping sound, as though he were trying to catch his breath, and that’s when I came out of the bed screaming at the top of my lungs. I think I scared hell out of him. He tucked tail and ran, in any case. I’d have gone outside after him but I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Later as I was getting dressed and waiting for the police I suffered a bout of extreme paranoia and convinced myself he was coming back. But then the cops arrived and looked around and made out a report. As soon as they were gone—it now was about five o’clock in the morning—I put Dorothy in the trunk of my car and left the building. I’ve been driving around since, trying to figure out what to do next.”
“By all means leave her with me,” I said.
“I was hoping you’d say that. And I thank you, Jack. I’d bring her to Elsa’s house but as I told you Elsa’s traveling. I thought about the Conservation Guild but the studio is too obvious a place for me to stash it, and my intruder’s likely to go there next. I was trying to decide on a course of action when it came to me that you would be the right person to take her.”
“This is pure coincidence, I’m sure, but the other day I had an intruder of my own, Patrick. It turned out to be Lowenstein, checking on me after the storm. But for a while I was certain it was a burglar.”
“Yes,” he said, “the old man told me. He called and explained, probably because he was afraid you were going to bail on the lease.” Patrick laughed and sipped his coffee. “He said you nearly bashed his head in with a baseball bat. I hope you’ll protect Dorothy the same way, Jack. You’re a Chambers man. I know she’ll be fine.”
By the time we returned to Moss Street all the workers had gone. Patrick, however, was still worried about carrying the painting to the garçonnière. I went inside for a blanket, and when he opened the trunk a splash of sunlight fell on the painting’s surface and brought as much color to the face of Dorothy Marion as when Rhys had zapped it in her office with photoflood lamps. We covered the painting and each of us held a side of the frame as we walked along the path in the garden. Even in the privacy of the garçonnière Patrick looked uncomfortable. “It’s safe here,” I said, then gave his shoulder a squeeze. “No one’s going to steal it.”
“This painting is my future,” he said. “It’s my life. You understand that, don’t you? I sell it and my worries are over.”
“I won’t let anyone near it. Trust me, Patrick.”
“It’s not insured,” he said. “If someone takes it now it’s gone and I get nothing. But it’ll carry three hundred thousand dollars in coverage as soon as Neal takes it. If somebody were to steal it from the auction house I wouldn’t mind so much because I could file a claim and get my money.” He put a hand on my shoulder and raised a finger up to my face. “You can’t let Aunt Dottie out of your sight, Jack.”
Scouting my distressed and flaking walls for the perfect spot, I suggested we hang it on the old nail over the fireplace in my bedroom, but instead Patrick placed it on the bathroom floor with the image facing the wall. “Of course you’re free to put it wherever you like after I leave,” he said, “but a bathroom seems the last location a thief would think to find a valuable painting.”
“The dampness in here might not be good for it. Have you thought of that? Maybe we should put it in a closet.”
“Put her wherever you want, Jack. I have to leave now because I’m exhausted and I have to sleep or else I’ll throw up. I’ll call in periodically over the next few days to check and see how she’s doing.”
After he left I hung the painting over the fireplace and spent the better part of an hour observing the image from different vantage points in the room. The sitter’s eyes followed me wherever I went, and I felt a passion growing in me for the youthful Aunt Dottie, her post-coital glow being the aspect of her appearance that I found most beguiling. Like many other Beloved portraits, her mouth was less finished than her other features, and for this reason my eyes kept returning to the smear that formed her lips. I studied the image with the intensity of a man who means to memorize the face of a departing lover. I really got to know the lady. Wondering if the ghost of my dead father had somehow invaded my body and taken possession of my soul (who but John Charbonnet ever acted this way, after all?), I went out in the garden to inspect the new bench, but I’d hardly reached the spot when I changed my mind and headed back for the garçonnière. “You weren’t thinking about stepping out on me, were you?” I said to the painting. “Hey, you. Dottie! Talk to me.”
I might’ve offered a response, in the imagined voice of Dorothy, but the phone rang and spared me the interlude with madness. It was Patrick, calling for a report. “She still in the toilet?” he said.
“No, she finished up and retired to my bedroom. She’s waiting for me now with the most amazing come-hither look on her face. It might spoil the moment, but would you like to speak to her?”
“I’m glad one of us finds humor in this situation. That was humor, right?”
“She’s in good hands, Patrick. Stop worrying.”
“I’ll stop when the money’s in the bank,” he said, then put the phone down.
At noon the next day I found myself standing at the front door of the main house, rapping against the frame. Lowenstein’s nurse came squeaking down the hall in rubber shoes, and the old man appeared in his wheelchair in a doorway behind her. From the hall came the odor of rubbing alcohol and liniment oddly mixed with one of spicy boiled beef. Not pleasant.
“Didn’t I already say he isn’t related to that person?” yelled the nurse. She checked the latch on the screen
door.
“I’ve got a painting by Levette Asmore,” I said past her to Lowenstein. “It’s hanging in my bedroom if you’re interested in having a look.”
He backed up out of the doorway, and deeper into the shadows, although his feet and the edge of a wheel were still visible.
“You can come see it. But you’ll have to tell me who Wiltz Lowenstein was.”
I left as the nurse unloaded with a verbal assault and returned to the garçonnière, certain that the collector of southern paintings who resided in Lowenstein would be unable to resist an audience with the single greatest painter ever produced by the region. As I lay in bed not ten feet away from the portrait, I flipped through one of my art books, entitled Louisiana Painters and Paintings from the Collection of W.E. Groves. The book was a slim paperback crowded with fuzzy, black-and-white images produced by mostly nineteenth-century artists who’d painted the state’s agrarian scenes and portraits of its wealthy Creoles. The book did not include an entry for Levette Asmore, but it did provide a glimpse into the mind of the collector whose obsession always trumps the will of his better judgment. “Collecting is a vice that brooks no competition from other vices,” I read in the Groves essay called “Notes on Collecting.” “It is a passion that grows and dominates until you stand trembling before the object of your desire, determined to own it at all costs while earnestly striving to conceal your cupidity lest it affect the price.”
I was all but certain, of course, that it was Tommy Smallwood who’d broken into Patrick Marion’s apartment. I believed this to be so not only because of Patrick’s physical description of the intruder but also because of his recollection of the man’s behavior upon entering the bedroom. He had scanned the walls in search of something. Discovering the painting behind a piece of furniture, he’d dropped to his haunches to better inspect it. He’d then illuminated the thing with a flashlight, and this had provoked in him a gasp that could not have been voluntary. Having failed to persuade Patrick to sell him the painting, and unwilling to wait for the auction at which he risked being outbid, Smallwood’s intention likely had been to steal Beloved Dorothy. In the end, however, after escaping Patrick’s without being caught, he’d probably been pleased simply with having had a look at the painting. Only madness prompts a man of Smallwood’s wealth to risk calamity for a moment such as that one. I wondered at the unforgiving power of a collector’s desire, and made ready for a visit from Lowenstein.
It was a little past midnight; I’d turned the lights out an hour before. The door was unlocked because I’d left it that way. In the dark he moved past me wielding a flashlight that remained pointed at the floor until he was positioned directly in front of the painting. He moved the light to the girl’s face, held it there for several minutes, then traced circles with it around the rest of the canvas. He let out a sigh and glanced back at me. He seemed to want to say something, but the image drew him back. Finally he shut off the light and sat in a posture of exaggerated defeat on a chair at the foot of my bed.
“After what happened the last time you visited,” I said, “and you still haven’t learned to knock. Who taught you manners, Mr. Lowenstein?”
He was still looking up at the painting when he said, in barely a whisper, “You’re right to hate me. I only hope you’ll stay on.”
“Hate you? I don’t know you well enough for that. And are you really worried I’m going to break the lease?”
“You spoke to Mr. Marion?”
“Yes.”
I heard a click and his light found the painting again. A minute passed before he shut it off and the room returned to darkness. “Your rent helps me pay the nurse,” he said. “I need the woman. My hips are finished and I suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. My hands and feet… I’m not well, Mr. Charbonnet.”
“I won’t break the lease, I like it here just fine.”
“Thank you. Now what is the question you wanted answered, in exchange for allowing me to view your painting?”
“Who was Wiltz Lowenstein?”
“Oh, yes. Wiltz Lowenstein. Wiltz Lowenstein, Mr. Charbonnet, was a small law firm that once occupied an office in a building on Canal Street. It specialized, as I recall, in maritime law. Its founding partners were Joe Wiltz and Jonathan Lowenstein. I was not related to Johnny Lowenstein—he was from Boston, and much older than I—but I did know the man. In those days I lived in the French Quarter, blocks away from the Wiltz Lowenstein office, and often by mistake the post office would deliver the law firm’s mail to my address and my mail to theirs. Mr. Lowenstein would come for his mail or I would go for mine, and I got to know him this way. We had lunch once, if I remember correctly, in the restaurant at D. H. Holmes. A fine man and quite the raconteur.”
“He donated a painting by Levette Asmore to the Louisiana State Museum.”
“You’re mistaken there,” Lowenstein said. “It was the Joe Wiltz estate that donated the painting, after Wiltz died in the early seventies, some ten years after his partner was killed in an automobile accident on the Airline Highway. The painting you’re referring to is titled Beloved Christine.”
“That’s the one.”
“Yes, but Joe Wiltz was the collector, not Johnny Lowenstein. After Wiltz’s death the Wiltz Lowenstein law firm was absorbed by a much larger group—I forget the name—and its painting collection went mostly to museums in the area. The donations, you see, were tax deductible.”
“Did you know Levette Asmore, Mr. Lowenstein?”
“Yes, I did. I knew him as well as anyone, I suppose.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Nothing tonight. I agreed to tell you about Wiltz Lowenstein.” He whipped the flashlight around and pointed the light in my eyes. “Levette Asmore wasn’t part of our agreement. But I do thank you for the time with your picture.”
The light went back to the Asmore, and it was a while before I could see again.
“Are you familiar with the term ‘metaphysical desire,’ Mr. Charbonnet? It concerns the pursuit of that which isn’t available to us. The closer one hopes to get, the farther away he finds himself.”
“Never heard of it.”
“When it comes to love, we desire most that which will never want us in return.”
“Sounds like an interesting concept.”
Lowenstein looked at me and smiled. “You have a beautiful painting,” he said. “I must go now.” His face grew distorted with pain as he struggled to rise to his feet. I got up to help him but he gave his head a shake, stopping me. He turned on the flashlight and started for the door.
“What do you want in exchange for information about Levette Asmore, Mr. Lowenstein?”
“What do I want?”
“What if I paid you rent for three months in advance? That would go a long way with the nurse.”
“Three months?” He shook his head. “No. That wouldn’t do it.”
I followed him outside. He was moving better now. He’d nearly reached the house when suddenly he turned back around. “Let me spend the night with the girl,” he said. “In consideration I’ll tell you all you need to know about Levette.”
“The girl?”
“The painting, Mr. Charbonnet. Levette’s beloved.”
I might’ve let him have the painting had Patrick’s voice not filled my head, reminding me that I was a Chambers man. It occurred to me that a fellow without a job or a woman needs to be something, and I had better keep my word. I’d lost most everything else lately. “I wish I could do that. But the painting doesn’t leave my room.”
He slipped into the darkness of the house without saying anything more.
He came early Monday morning and knocked to be let in. I’d covered the painting with a blanket and placed it in the bathroom, in the spot where he’d last seen it. He came alone, which shouldn’t have surprised me. He seemed to read disappointment in my expression. He bent down and checked the canvas for damage, and when he stood up again he said, “Sorry, Jack. She’s set to meet me
later at the auction house.”
I didn’t ask if I could join them. We carried the painting to the car as we’d carried it to the garçonnière three days before. Lowenstein watched from the front door, his seated form in the wheelchair visible past the screen. Behind him stood the nurse. “For a while she was mine,” I said to Patrick, “and we got along beautifully.”
“Rhys or Aunt Dottie?” he said.
“Aunt Dottie. Definitely Aunt Dottie.”
We lay the painting flat on the floor of the trunk and I stopped him when he reached to close the lid. “One last look, please,” I said.
He nodded and I had my moment and then Patrick, in his old car belching smoke, started on his way down the road that hugged the bayou.
Weeks would pass before I saw Beloved Dorothy again. In the meantime I agreed to do something I’d sworn off forever only a short time before. That is to say, I contracted with a magazine to write a story, this one about the tourism boom on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I took the assignment because I needed to. The thought of having to place my fingertips on a computer keyboard was nearly enough to make me physically ill, but I recognized the fact that a break from my dark little cave on Moss Street would do me good, and the Gulf Coast wasn’t a bad destination if one meant to reacquaint oneself with the world. The place was made even more attractive by the magazine’s promise of a generous expense account.
The beach was wide open and there the wind blew. Even the light was different. My first day there, I called Rhys and invited her to drive down for a night out on the town. We could have dinner and take in a show, I said. If she liked, she could stay over in the hotel—not with me in my room, but in her own room. She was polite about it, but in the end she declined the invitation.
As long as it wasn’t my money I was spending, I made sure to enjoy myself. I went out for meals at seafood restaurants. In huge, audacious gambling halls I played the slots and attended fight cards featuring flabby, washed-up pros who ten years before had been headlining in Vegas. One night an assistant publicity director for one of the casinos gave me a tour of what she called “my Biloxi.” The woman’s name was Cindy Fournier, and she was a twenty-something divorcée who’d become a PR flack after a brief career as a television reporter in Jackson. Her accent was pure Mississippi Delta, and the sexiest I’d ever heard. We drank beer and ate hamburgers in a dark little redneck bar by the water. Maybe she was only doing her job, that being to sell the area as the “Deep South’s premier vacation paradise,” as she kept calling the place, but it felt good to be with a woman who constantly looked at me as if she could eat me whole. “You’re a very handsome man, Jack Charbonnet.”
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