by Mike Barnes
Twice in the night I woke up confused. Each time from a jumbled dream that, on waking, resolved into a simple clarifying statement. In the first dream, Angela reared up above me, her back arched so far that her unseen face and breasts pointed up at the ceiling. Except that this time, in the dream, there was no practiced easy release; instead, deep groans of mounting frustration, a crescendo of barks and grunts which woke me with a start. And the thought, blinking in the dark, Angela asleep beside me: Robert probably died a virgin. How that fact would mortify him. Mortify: to kill with shame.
In the second dream I was wandering gloomy, artificial-looking streets – like the shadowed toy-classical cityscape, streets and colonnades, of the de Chirico painting in the exhibition – thinking, I’ve made a mistake, I’ve forgotten something important. And again the simple understanding, almost instantly on waking: The tape was a copy. Robert meant for me to keep it.
9
Embarrassed.
Oddly, that was the first word that came to my mind when I woke up and remembered about Robert. Or the second word, of course. Dead being the first. But right after it, I thought of how humiliating and how pathetic, how pathetically humiliating, Robert would find the circumstances he was now in. What were they, exactly? Stretched out on a tray in some kind of refrigerator, long and thin and naked, probed by strangers’ warm fingers. Not hearing jokes, not getting them. Not understanding. Not knowing anything. This picture of Robert in death seemed to tell me something of what he’d been in life. Something I’d missed. Or known, but not entirely. I’d never really thought of him as a private person. With all the sweeping gestures and grand talk. The flaunted big briefcase. Now, strangely, I saw him as some kind of translucent sea creature that had never grown a thick enough shell, so had to scuttle quickly between a succession of caves or other creatures’ abandoned houses. Had death done that? Or was it really showing me something about Robert I’d never seen before, or had mistaken for something else?
A private person. Sad. I couldn’t stand to think of it for long. And then I thought: Christ, come off it, man. Of all the reasons to become someone’s friend, the worst one’s got to be because he’s dead.
After opening the gallery’s doors at nine, I spent the first hour on the front desk. At nine-thirty, when I radioed the floor man to take his turn, L’s voice came back over the walkie-talkie: “No, man, I’m good. Take the double.” Hearing his voice reminded me that Sean had the day off; my apology to him would have to wait until tomorrow. Something else in L’s voice, some deference tinged with anxiety, told me that I’d been deputed to be Robert’s closest living relative at the gallery. As such, the public face of gallery mourning. That, plus my outburst yesterday, entitled me to an extra measure of peace and quiet.
Except there was no peace to be had at the front desk today. The CHOP pick-up had been organized in an unnecessarily cruel, or perhaps just careless, way. Nobody had been told by phone whether they had made it onto the short-list. All the artists – minus a dejected few who went straight to the coat check piles to find their work – had to troop into the galleries, which didn’t officially open until ten, see if their work was on the wall in the Teale Gallery, and then return, either happily to fill out one of Jason’s “Label Information” cards or unhappily to rummage among the rejects. And, in either case, to make sure the sign-in sheet – for most, the sign-out sheet now too – had a rubber-stamped PAID in the Entry Fee column. It’s possible the exercise was designed to inflate our patron numbers, since every body past got clicked on a hand counter by the attendant on the desk. Though the merits of instituting an admission fee (and the obvious demerit of losing almost all patrons) were hotly debated, at this point we were still a free gallery. As such, we were dependent on government grants, which in turn depended on numbers of visitors. (The donation box, whose bottom was kept suggestively littered with a scattering of bills and coins from petty cash, was also called “the emergency Timbits fund”.) Bud had broadly hinted, that confessional flush creeping up his throat, that careless extra clicks – twice-clicked, thrice-clicked bodies – were no great sin during “particularly busy” times, while an unclicked body seemed tantamount to grounds for dismissal.
About one in five artists sailed beaming back out the front doors. Some of the rest, after inquiring at the desk about “a possible mistake” or “another gallery”, went back – click, click, click – to search again, unable to believe the freak of luck that would dump them into coat check. At least half of the two hundred rejected artists complained about the non-refundable entry fee, though this had been clear enough forty-eight hours before, printed in bold black letters at the bottom of the advertising posters and at the top of the sign-in sheet. Rather than use Bud’s suggested “administrative costs” line, or Walter’s more demeaning “seriousness of intent”, today I just sent the nastiest ones upstairs.
But even so, by 9:50 I was calling into the walkie-talkie, “Time, L. I’m ready. Time.”
I was coming down the grand staircase after a mindless tour of the second floor, when I caught a glimpse of Claudia heading into the surrealist show. Seeing her so soon again was a shock, which didn’t much lessen when I remembered the good reasons she had to be here. I saw a sliver of pale face above baggy black, striding so quickly she seemed to float above the beige carpet – wraith-like again. But a fierce wraith, I knew now. Not a timorous one. She gave no sign of seeing me, though I was certain she had. Not from anything I saw or intuited, but from something I was beginning to take for granted about her: she wouldn’t often be caught behind the play.
Embarrassed. The word was there again. That she should have to come here now, on this errand. To make sure her younger brother had completed the last errand of his life and not trailed messy complications after him, turning his death into yet another fuck-up. Yet wasn’t it?
As I loitered around the corner in the Lamont Gallery, I thought of the face I’d seen in the doorway last night and glimpsed just now. What was in it? She looked bereft. And angry. And determined. Bereft and pissed and determined – while I was weighing these words, deciding they were about right, though still missing something, she stalked back across the MacMahon Gallery and out into the lobby without a backward glance.
Of course, as soon as she left, I had to check on the painting again. Checkpoint time again, checkpoint nerves. I imagined scratches from nails, a sister’s impulsive revenge. A gob of rolling spit. But “Wayward Guest” was as I had left it. Quiet, intense, somehow playful and menacing at the same time. Like a child’s drawing, truly. A quality many catalogues claimed for artworks, but which this time seemed justified. Wayward. What did it mean exactly? You could hear a word all your life without having more than a glimmer of the uses to which it could be put. Wayward. Something lost and wandering. But something cross, too. And Guest was a lot like Ghost, I saw now. In fact, for a second, that was the word I saw: Ghost.
A lost, cross – crossed? – ghost. Klee was a genius with titles as well as paint. Neale had claimed as much in the catalogue.
I gave her a few minutes to conclude her business and then drifted back out to the lobby. There I saw that she’d been as careful with the other half of her errand. Her signature was on the sign-in sheet and L had rubber-stamped her PAID. She’d even had the presence of mind to find a blank space somewhere in the middle and slip her signature in there. Clever. Not the last person in, though she could admit to that if pressed. Her name was just where a person sneaking an entry in late, but wishing to hide in the on-time shuffle, would put it. For someone just bereaved, and with no apparent consolation other than Rick, she seemed to be doing a remarkable job of covering all the bases.
A cop questioned me about an hour later, but only about the location of the nearest washroom. When he returned he told me that he needed to speak to security and then to someone in Administration. In a movie, I might have asked to see some I.D. – but he had the uniform and peaked hat and badges and nightstick and gun. Along with the easy
way of conveying that you would naturally do what he asked you to do. Plus – always the most reliable sign of all – an outsized head, big and square, disproportionately large even on a large body (it might have been a side effect of the sleek snug uniform), with perfect sideburns. Neat tabs of whiskers, squared off with geometric precision as if with the aid of a straight razor and a tiny version of Hans’s level.
“Is this about Robert’s death?” I said.
“Why?”
“Just curious.” The classic noir reply. I was vaguely conscious of wanting to appear suspicious, or at least noticeable. Some instinct I felt that all the usual forces, within and around me, would push me out to the margins, where you didn’t know squat and it stayed that way. Centrifugal forces. Whereas I wanted to cultivate some momentum that would spin me inward, even at some risk. Inward, toward the centre. What was the word? Centripetal. With that nice trip following the centre part.
But the officer, who hadn’t given me his name, just smiled and said pleasantly, “Well, yes. Just some routine questions to get a picture of his movements on the night he died.” No And who might you be? – with the little pad coming out of the breast pocket. What exactly was your relation to the deceased? It was disappointing actually. Borderline depressing.
“Security,” I said into the walkie-talkie, “I need access downstairs. There’s a police officer here who wants to come down.”
The lobby camera swivelled over and rose to get a view, like a video salute. “Certainly, Paul,” snapped the voice over the walkie-talkie. “You have clearance.”
The cop raised his eyebrows at me and went into the elevator. He’d be well served by Stefan.
The morning Witness lay open to the page that every visitor to the desk wanted to see. But it was a tiny box on the local pages, the mandatory follow-up before there was anything to say. “ . . . and though medical reports have yet to be released, first indications support suspicions that a quantity of drugs and alcohol played the decisive role in yesterday’s tragedy.” The vague, inflated prose made me think that “first indications” might mean an indiscreet assistant, a student, a janitor. A guard. Some variety of Shallow Throat.
When the cop returned, his two visits done before my time at the desk was up, I said, “Did you get everything you needed, officer?”
But it was useless. Even the too-eager bystander couldn’t arouse suspicion. It would have taken a tearful confession, sobs and screams, all stops out. He leaned on the counter that separated the lobby from coat check, cracking a joke about the donation box with its sprinkling of coins and two dollar bills. It was a picture of an investigation ending, or over. A drunk or high kid, flighty at the best of times and craving attention – no one could contradict that – had taken a wild story he’d heard and copied it to death. It was Robert, actually. Why shouldn’t the inquiry be perfunctory if the facts, as they often were, were obvious? The one bit of mystery, the one that had probably brought the cop here, the source of the chemicals in Robert’s body. But that was no mystery to me. Claudia, though she would have preferred to leave the gallery out of it, could not admit the truth, the scene that now bloomed in my mind. Robert returning, high on danger, ready to test-drive Rick’s product as he’d offered. Even Claudia grumpily willing to get down after the close call. Snorting, drinking. Robert’s tolerance blown, shattered halfway down the first line. And when the other two passed out or retired for more exercise, he was left alone with a spinning head in a windy space. Needing another jeu d’esprit to match his Klee grab. Desperate for it.
Claudia wouldn’t have directed the cop to the gallery. Obviously. She would have said Robert hadn’t come home after work. Her mind – what I’d glimpsed of it – a system of diagrams. Vectors, nearest routes.
But then: Whoever phoned my brother last night.
“L?” I called when the cop had gone. But he was there already, sauntering past Josh MacMahon for his desk time.
“No chicks in the gallery today.” With that winsome smile, sparkly eyes. Very cute.
“Yeah, it’s a slow day all right.”
I went down to the basement to talk to Stefan. Never a thing I, or anyone, did with much relish. Stefan, a “swingman” at Burns, filled in when Robert, Owen or Ted had their days off. A stiff and scrupulous prick all round. Starting with his name. Not Stephen, or Steve, or Steffen, as the others teased him. “Stefan. Stefan.” The seconds he made me wait after I requested clearance – all he could do, since I was allowed to go to the basement whenever I wanted – the first sign maybe that he hadn’t yet absorbed his good fortune, lifted by Robert’s fall from construction site trailers and midnight mall stumps – he was inside the gallery for real now, the cushy full-time gig. Or maybe, as I suspected, no good luck could polish his apple. Just too riddled with worms.
“Yes, Paul?” he said before I was quite out of the elevator box. His standard greeting.
“What did the cop want?”
Frontal assault almost guaranteed to be useless with Stefan, but so was everything else. And niceness definitely the most hopeless tack. He smirked, a crease below a ratty moustache.
“I think if the officer had wanted you to know he would have told you.”
“True. Very true.” I started flipping through the sign-in book. A pet peeve of Stefan’s.
“Hey!” But again, one which, except in Stefan’s mind, there was no law against. To stop me he had to speak. To encourage him, I slowed my riffling, but kept a thumb in the pages.
“If you’ll remember” – eyeing the black book nervously – “I wasn’t on the panel the night of the incident. Owen was.”
“Right. Right.”
Silence. I moved my thumb. “So I guess he’ll be interviewing Owen.”
“We do have a phone here.” Indicating it. “I suggested to the officer that he could save himself time by simply calling Owen, and he agreed that was a good idea. Unfortunately, I don’t think Owen was completely awake. He lives with his mother, as you know.” I stopped moving my thumb. Sometimes, if you let Stefan transfer his disgust to another and didn’t distract him, you could get useful results. “The officer kept having to repeat his questions, which were very basic. ‘Were you on duty that night and when did you last see Robert?’ Owen actually seemed to have trouble remembering. But finally, I guess he did.”
“That was it?”
“Yes, Paul. It was.” I raised my thumb in the LogBook pages. “Except for the officer asking me if it was usual procedure for an off-duty guard to return to the gallery at midnight.”
“So you sent him upstairs to verify it with someone who could give security clearance.”
Stefan looked stunned by my telepathy. “Yes, Paul.”
I opened the LogBook and flipped back two pages. When I saw the blank page, Sunday, May 13, the sounds of Stefan’s protest dwindled into fuzz, fussing hands became blurs. Blank. No one in or out. And over a page, carrying on from midnight into Monday – no one there either. Blank. But what did that mean with Owen on, sunk in Ubik or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? For the first time ever possibly, I wished that Stefan, who read nothing and let no printed matter distract him from his duties, had been on that night. Robert would be in jail now, but alive.
I stood for longer than usual in front of the yellow elevator door. Not forgetting what I had to do, but unwilling for some moments to do it. There were days – and this was turning into one of them – when the gallery seemed like nothing more than a giant kindergarten, a four-story Jungle Gym hung with squabbling, hair-pulling kiddies.
Finally I said, “Could I have access upstairs, please?”
“Yes, Paul. You have it now.”
Hans called a little meeting by the front desk in the afternoon. He’d been upstairs collecting donations for flowers and a card to be sent to the funeral home from the gallery. “Hard to squeeze a bill out of some of those wallets,” he muttered, his jaw beginning to lock and load. But then he relaxed again. “Except for that lady of yours, Paul
. She’s a good girl, Angela.”
“How much?” L said.
Hans frowned. “It’s not a toll both, son. I’ve been suggesting five dollars from everyone.”
But when I handed over ten dollars, he handed one of the bills back. “Just the required, Paul. Same for everyone.” Extravagance as great, or a greater, sin than stinginess. And one far more often on display in the gallery.
We were looking in the Yellow Pages for a florist when Mrs. Soames came out from the gift shop. Limping, swimming in her yellow smock, hair slightly askew, she could seem quite addled at times; though not at all, just now.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said, “but I couldn’t help but overhear you planning the flowers. It’s a lovely idea. But – if you don’t mind my asking – how much money do you have to work with?”
Hans told her.
“Well. Of course any decent florist will make you up a nice arrangement for that. Perfectly acceptable. But for half the price you could walk over to the market – it’s Tuesday, isn’t it? Yes, well. You can get all kinds of fresh spring flowers and make up your own bunch. Now I’m not trying to interfere here – and if you say the word I’ll just buzz off – but I’d be happy to arrange them for you. None of you men, I don’t imagine, is much good at that. I’ll make them up in one of our long white gift boxes, with a nice tall vase tucked in on the side. And a card. We can do all that – yes we can – and for less than you’ve got in your hand. It would make a lovely gesture. And the personal touch is always best, don’t you think?”
