Alive in Shape and Color

by Lawrence Block

  She was about to pour it out when she pictured Gregory, how sweet and concerned he always was, and how he would give her that stern parental look—the one she’d seen often enough on her parent’s faces.

  She poured herself a cup.

  It was tepid and acrid on her tongue. Two sips were more than enough, though she’d tell Gregory she’d drunk it all.

  A moment later, it hit her, a slight blurring of vision, the room starting to spin.

  Paula eased herself into a chair and waited until the spell, if that’s what it was, passed. And it did, though her head had begun to throb.

  She took deep breaths, then a few more sips of the tea, her hand shaking so that she almost spilled it.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Should she call Dr. Silvershein and see him again, or maybe her old family doctor? But she’d had all the tests. Surely anything serious would have shown up.

  Was it all in her head?

  And if so, why? She’d never been happier, married to Gregory, someone who loved her for who she was, not who she could be or should be.

  Another sip of the tea, so considerate of Gregory to have made it before he left.

  She didn’t want to bother him while he was working but the cell phone was in her hand and she had already hit autodial and the phone was ringing. Paula pressed the cell to her ear, waiting to hear her husband’s voice and have him console her.

  Voice mail.

  When he was painting he often turned his phone off.

  “Just calling to say hi,” Paula said, affecting a lighthearted tone. She didn’t want him to hear her desperation, her need. “Nothing important. I know you’re working, no need to call me back. See you tonight. Love you.”

  She disconnected, her hand still shaking, but even hearing Gregory’s voice on a machine helped to soothe her, a little, give her strength so that upstairs she took a detour into her studio. She hadn’t stepped foot in it for months, but perhaps it was time to get back to work, something to distract her, to make her feel productive.

  At first glance the studio looked as neat as ever, though on closer inspection she noticed several of her brand-new paint tubes were dented, as if squeezed, one leaking color around the cap, the label on others ragged.

  Paula tightened the cap on the leaky tube. She must have been fiddling with it and didn’t remember.

  One more time she worried about her memory, her mind, but shrugged it off while she carefully arranged paint tubes around her palette like a prismatic color chart: yellows then oranges, then red; next purples and blues; finally blacks and whites. The act calmed her and it looked good. She did the same for her pastels, noting that some of the casings were torn or unraveled, a few of the pastels worn down, their tips crumbled and flaky, which surprised her; she was sure she hadn’t used them either. Or had she? Damn it, she just couldn’t remember.

  On a shelf below the oils were bottles and tins of unused solvents, one with smudges of what looked like blue paint on its handle. Lifting it for a closer look, she saw they were fingerprints. Hers? When had she done that? And the cap was loose though, again, she had no memory of ever having opened it.

  The idea that she was losing her mind was exhausting. Or was it the other way around: the exhaustion affecting her memory? Either way she’d had enough.

  Back in her bedroom she sagged onto the bed and plucked her latest crime thriller off the stack on her beside table. A few pages and her eyes were already closing but she refused to give into the fatigue, sat up and pulled on clothes, a cashmere sweater, woolen slacks. She needed to get out, breathe some fresh air, that was all. Downstairs, she tugged on boots, wrapped a scarf around her neck, shrugged into her winter coat.

  Outside there was frost on her brownstone windows, patches of snow and ice on the path, icicles hanging from the gaslight they’d installed after lobbying the city for months. It had been Gregory’s idea, something old and romantic, and Paula loved the idea too.

  She swiped an icicle off the wrought iron lamp, watched it splinter to the ground and shatter like glass.

  That’s when she noticed the gas lamp was casting black shadows onto an already dark sidewalk. She looked back at the house, also dark, and at the houses abutting hers, dark too, golden light smoldering in the windows.

  But how could that be?

  She looked up at puffy clouds in a bright blue sky.

  She shuddered, closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them nothing had changed: the houses still dark, the sky bright blue, the gaslight glowing.

  She checked her watch: 10:16 A.M.

  Beneath her feet, snow melted into puddles like a stop-action film. A moment later it solidified into ice.

  Paula shivered, tugged her coat tighter, closed her eyes and counted again.

  This time when she opened them everything was normal: the houses as bright as the blue sky, the patches of snow frothy around her boots. Everywhere she looked it was daylight, a sparkling winter day.

  Paula’s head was spinning again, and that feeling in the pit of her stomach like she was going to be sick.

  She darted back to the house, slammed the door behind her, sagged against it trying to catch her breath, as if she’d run a long distance, not just a few yards.

  What is wrong with me?

  When the nausea passed and her breathing normalized she went to her laptop and googled her symptoms: dizziness, headaches, nausea, hallucinations. There were an infinite number of possibilities—anemia to high blood pressure, middle ear infections to heart disorders, diabetes to common anxiety—but surely any of those medical conditions would have shown up in her tests.

  Anxiety: that was it! She’d always been nervous, anxious, easily upset.

  She would ask the doctor for anti-anxiety meds and she’d be cured. Simple.

  Why had she never done this before? She felt so much better.

  She was about to call Gregory and tell him her latest diagnosis when she glanced back at the laptop and saw another category for dizziness and hallucinations: POISON.

  Again, there were many, which she skimmed, stopping on the one most familiar to her—TOXIC ART SUPPLIES—then scrolled through a list of paints that contained heavy metals, solvents and varnishes that emitted volatile organic compounds referred to as VOCs, the toxic fumes from heated plastics and resins, deadly spray fixatives and modeling glues.

  This was followed by a list of the most highly toxic paint pigments: Barium Yellow, Burnt or Raw Umber, Cadmium Red. She scrolled further: Chrome Green and Prussian Blue. Then: Manganese Violet, Naples Yellow, and Vermilion. She paused on Cobalt Blue then Flake White.

  Paula knew all about Flake White, AKA Lead White, from art school—everyone had given it up in favor of the nontoxic Titanium—but other than the Cadmiums, she hadn’t known the other pigments were dangerous, particularly Cobalt Blue.

  But she did know about it, about toxins, didn’t she? Something smeared across the back of brain like an underdeveloped negative that she could not decipher.

  What was it?

  Beneath the list of poisonous paints she read the warning: Inhaling or ingesting any of the above, even in small amounts, can result in dizziness, headaches, nausea, and in some cases, hallucinations. Large doses can be fatal.

  Paula fingers trembled on the keyboard. Could she have poisoned herself with art supplies? But that didn’t make sense; she hadn’t been painting in years.

  Then, like a wash of watercolor bleeding across her mind’s eye the thought came to her: Gregory, who painted every day, who used oils and solvents, who often came home reeking of turpentine, his fingers stained with color, Cadmium Red, which he refused to give up (“There’s no other red quite like it”), and Cobalt Blue, a staple of his palette. Plus, Gregory mixed his own colors, used a mortar and pestle to grind raw pigments into linseed oil. Something her father did on occasion to get “that special richness only hand-ground paints guaranteed,” no matter how many times he’d been warned that inhaling the pigme
nts or getting them on your hands where they could be absorbed through the skin, was dangerous. Her mother too, refused to wear a mask when using pastels, a particularly easy way to inhale toxic powders that escaped into the air while working. Both her parents seemed to think that stained hands and pigment-splattered clothing was the sign of a real artist, and apparently Gregory shared the myth.

  Had she inhaled solvent fumes from his clothes, toxic paint from kissing his fingers?

  She guessed it was possible, but enough to make her sick? This sick?

  Paula sat back as another set of thoughts and pictures scudded across her mind: the teas and smoothies Gregory made for her every day, their odd, bitter taste, and the headaches and dizziness that often followed.

  But it couldn’t be.

  Gregory loved her.

  Or did he?

  She saw it again, not a picture this time, just the hard, cold truth: a handsome young man who had married her for money. What else could he possibly see in her? She did nothing, wasn’t beautiful nor brilliant, just unsuccessful Paula, dull and drab. Except for one thing: she was rich.

  When they’d met, Gregory had practically nothing: the Lower East Side tenement and a part-time job painting walls in an art gallery; no family money, no prospects other than an art career that might or might not eventually take off, but when would that be, and how many art careers ever did?

  Still, she fought the idea. She had been reading too many crime novels, that was all.

  Gregory cared about her. He needed her, adored her.

  But the thought soured fast. He needed her all right. For his brand-new studio and her beautiful brownstone, for everything that came with being her husband. There’d been no prenup, at the time she wouldn’t consider humiliating him, would not taint their love.

  Taint.

  The word spiraled and took shape before her eyes, letters swirling into a liquid stream that dripped into cups of tea and dribbled into smoothies, then morphed into a kind of abstract Rorschach inkblot, then, a coiling snake, and finally, Gregory’s handsome face: leering.

  No.

  Paula shook her head against the idea, the room spiraling, mind blurring. But when her mind cleared, the thought was still there and she knew it was true: Gregory was trying to kill her.

  It was like that old black-and-white movie with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, the one where the husband tries to drive his wife crazy to get her money. What was the title? Paula thought a moment and it came to her: Gaslight. That was it.

  Paula stood, her balance slightly off but her mind sharp now, determined. She pictured the dented paint tubes in her studio, the worn pastels, the can of solvent stained with blue fingerprints. How easy it had been to add a little solvent to her tea, some pastel flakes to her smoothies.

  A perfect plan: Poisoning her with her own materials. Too smart to use his own.

  She paced across the room and back, hands at her sides balled into fists. How could she have been so stupid, so vain, so trusting? She swiped tears off her cheeks, hadn’t even noticed she’d been crying. But she would not allow herself to be sad.

  No. She would get even.

  And she knew how to do it.

  She would take a page out of Gregory’s book, but she had something even better. No crumbling bits of toxic cobalt pigment in his food, no solvent in his drinks. That would take too long. Not that she was in a hurry. She could take her time too, but she needed to use something tried-and-true; something tested.

  Paula hadn’t been down here in years, the place always gave her the creeps, the bare bulb dangling from a chain casting weird shadows, the greenish mold on the wall where water endlessly seeped and dripped, the low roar of the oil burner, the basement rarely frequented by anyone but the various tradesmen, Paula always hovering on the top of the stairs, hand ready at the door to escape, calling out, “Everything okay down there?” before she’d slip away and wait until they were finished. Her father promised to clean the place up, to have the mold taken care of, paint the walls, add decent lighting, but he never did, preoccupied with his artwork and gallery openings, parties with dealers and collectors, her mother the same.

  How many times had she been left alone?

  As a baby, then a toddler, she’d had a nanny, like most Manhattan kids of a certain class, a tall German woman, stern and unsmiling with closely set eyes and a hairbrush always at hand to be used as a threat, and more, an immigrant with family back in Munich but none here, who one day left without a word of goodbye, which surprised her parents, but not Paula, who, at seven, felt perfectly equipped to take care of herself. There’d been another nanny after the German, her parents had insisted, but she didn’t last long, just a few weeks, there one day, gone the next. After that, her parents decided Paula should come directly to one or the other’s studio, which she did a few times, but she preferred to stay alone in the big brownstone, and after a while her parents relented, the two of them so involved in their work they hardly noticed.

  Paula slipped on latex gloves then made her way down the basement steps, the dripping sound echoing as she crept across the damp concrete floor to the metal cabinet tucked into a dark corner where her father stored old-fashioned art supplies he rarely used, Venice Turpentine, tubes of unstable “lake” pigments, encaustic wax, materials that needed to be kept cool.

  There were several dead mice, mangy and shriveled, and Paula held her breath as she stepped over them and opened the cabinet door. The metal hinges squeaked and she shuddered as she pushed aside hunks of wax, bottles and tins, tubes of paint. The cardboard box was still there behind them, wrapped in heavy plastic, just as she remembered.

  In the kitchen, as Paula set the box beneath the sink, behind a box of Brillo pads and a container of Comet, that underdeveloped image, the one she’d had a few days ago, streaked across her brain but this time she knew what it was, parts of the picture filling in. For several years she had seen it daily but then it faded. Until now.

  Paula shut her eyes, but the picture loitered in her mind like a nightmare waiting to be acknowledged as real. She nodded, as if saying, Okay, I see it, I know it, I remember—so what?

  She had stopped drinking Gregory’s smoothies, had been pouring his teas down the drain for weeks, and was feeling better, stronger. Gregory seemed pleased, but she knew he was acting.

  Tonight she would cook his favorite meal, beef bourguignon, chop mushrooms and onions, blanch bacon, sear the carefully cubed pieces of tenderloin, make her own gravy out of beef broth and corn starch.

  With the box from the basement already on the counter, she slipped on gloves, found the tiny silver spoon her grandmother had bestowed upon her as a baby, and dipped it into the box of salt like crystals. She shook more than half of them back into the box; she only needed the tiniest bit, which she stirred into the stew.

  It dissolved instantly. No color. No taste. No smell. Nor did it change the texture of any food or drink, the reason for its most common nickname: “The poisoner’s poison.”

  “Wow,” Gregory said. “This is delicious, but you shouldn’t have worked so hard, darling.”

  “It was good for me to do something,” Paula said, “and I like seeing you happy.” She sat back and watched him eat two heaping portions while she picked at a salad, claiming she was still without appetite.

  She’d made enough stew for two nights, and Gregory ate it heartily again the next.

  It was a week later, when they were side by side in bed watching a Law and Order rerun that he complained of a headache and when he got up, had to stop and grab hold of the bedpost.

  “Whoa,” he said. “I’m dizzy.”

  “Maybe it’s the two glasses of wine,” she said.

  “But I always have two glasses at dinner.”

  Paula held off for three days before adding a few flakes to the expensive Château Lafite Rothschild. Too bad she would not be able to drink it, though she knew Gregory could not resist. In the kitchen, she poured herself a glass from a differen
t bottle, an everyday Merlot, then poured some of the Lafite Rothschild down the sink, as if her glass had come from it. A shame, she thought, to waste it, but one had to make sacrifices when it came to revenge.

  Gregory had his usual two glasses then half of a third. “It’s too good to waste,” he said, drinking it down.

  This was the easier way to do it, Paula realized, no laborious cooking, just a few drops of the salts in a wine bottle that Gregory was sure to drink, as he got drunker, blaming his slight vertigo on the wine, though it didn’t stop him from drinking it.

  About a week later he complained of his teeth hurting, and when he showed Paula the odd whitish spots on his nails she commented that it must be caused by one of his painting solvents or that “dangerous Cadmium Red,” or perhaps he wasn’t getting enough of some vitamin and should get something at the health food store, which he did.

  It was when his hair started falling out, that he became alarmed. “It’s in the sink and between my fingers when I smooth it back!”

  “Ridiculous!” Paula said, examining his head carefully, noting the thin spots and the strands between her fingers when she ran her hand through his hair. “All men start to lose a little hair at your age. Maybe you should get that stuff, you know, Rogaine. They say it works.”

  Gregory bought it and used it religiously, diligently rubbing the foam into his scalp morning and night, and Paula watched, almost feeling sorry for him.

  This could not go on much longer. Gregory had already gone to the doctor a few weeks ago—of course the doctor had found nothing—but now, he was planning to go again.

  Paula knew the slow-acting poison was almost impossible to detect and so uncommon that doctors rarely even thought about testing for its presence. Plus the fact that rat poisons that contained thallium sulfate had been banned in the United States since the mid-seventies. She supposed her father had bought it back then to control the mice and occasional rats in their brownstone basement and forgotten about it. But she hadn’t.