I walked to the corner where the Hofstaeder Gallery sat above the street, a bright space with glass on two sides. I got partway up the wrought-iron steps and saw Molly sitting at the top. She looked down at me, completely composed. “Did you sleep all right?”
“I looked for you,” I half-lied, “but you were gone.”
“I thought it might be helpful for me to be here,” she said, smiling. “So I decided just to come. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No,” I said, flatly. “It’s fine.” We went through the door. Inside, a girl in a black dress nodded to us hopefully. There were two paintings up, on opposite walls, giant flowers glistening with dew. Clumsily erotic pictures, or blithely unaware, perhaps. In failing to follow the trends of art, I thought them blunt and stupid, but maybe they were cutting edge. We asked for the gallery owner, and the girl, who must have been mute, nodded again and went through a door in the back. A man came out. He wore a brown velvety suit jacket that looked like it had been made from a worn-out couch.
“Leon Hofstaeder,” he said.
Molly reached forward before I could say anything and took his hand. “Molly Siddons. This is Jolene Iolas.”
Hofstaeder shook my hand, looking disinterestedly at us both.
“What can you tell us about this show,” said Molly, and she pulled a program out of her purse.
“Can I see that?” I said, but Hofstaeder took it, then handed it back to her. He opened his arms and gestured in a wide circle around the room.
“As you can see now, the illustrious show of Mr. Sloane is now gone.”
“Yes,” said Molly. “Where can we find him?”
“I haven’t the foggiest. It was a rental,” said Hofstaeder. “Mrs. Bryce paid the money, I cleared the walls, they went up, they came down, and that was all. I was in Derry the entire time eating chocolates and reading Patricia Highsmith.”
“Mrs. Bryce?” I said.
“She arranged the show, brought it round, paid in valid tender, and took it all away.”
“So you never met him.”
“Never laid eyes on him. But I’m guessing he wouldn’t have wanted to show his face. Mrs. Bryce paid five hundred pounds for the two weeks, and they didn’t sell a thing.”
I tried to clear the muck out of my head. Even being in a room Martin may have stood in made my head muzzy. “Why, uh …?” Hofstaeder turned to me and raised his forehead. “Why would it have been a rental?”
“It’s always a rental here, my darling. Eleanor over there is the author of these magnificent flowers.” Eleanor nodded once again. “It’s like vanity publishing, someone with the means selling for someone with product. Very simple, and mutually beneficial.” He narrowed his piggy eyes and smiled. “Usually.”
“Why are you here for this show instead of in Derry, then?” Molly asked.
“You can pay a little extra for the presence of the owner. It can help sales.” He pointed at a red dot under one of the two giant flowers and hooked his thumbs under imaginary suspenders. He spoke in the voice of an official arbiter of taste. “No doubt earlier examples of photorealism, especially those of unusual dimensions, will appreciate more in value over time without falling prey to the whims of taste. And more to the point, flowers will always be in, and very big, very cunty, excuse my French, flowers even more so.”
“I didn’t know photorealism was in,” I said.
He pointed at the red dot and said nothing.
“Mr. Hofstaeder,” said Molly. “Do you think Mr. Sloane didn’t want to sell his work?”
He put on a look of deep concentration, then inhaled sharply. “I always look at the art before I decide what to charge. Often I just do a commission and a minimum rental. Other times I opt for a flat rate, no cut. That seemed best with your friend’s work. Whether he wanted to sell them or not is moot. They weren’t going to, and they didn’t. Sculpture yes, three-D no. That’s all.”
I looked at Eleanor. She was smiling like someone had a gun to her back. I asked him, “Did you know of Sloane before he showed here?”
“No,” said Hofstaeder. “Never heard of him. Best ask this Francine Bryce. If she hasn’t dropped him from the roster.” Then, surmising he’d told us everything we needed to know, he shook Molly’s hand again and walked straight back into his office. After a moment, she followed him in. I was alone with Eleanor, who looked like she’d been dressed by her great-grandmother. Frills stuck out at her wrists and neck from under a velvet waistcoat. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two.
“Well, at least you sold this one,” I said.
“Oh, it’s not sold actually,” she said.
“How come the dot then?”
“Mr. Hofstaeder says if you’re going to beg for money, it’s best to have a couple of coins in your hat already. It’s encouragement.”
“But what if I came in and this was the one I wanted to buy?”
“We move the sticker back and forth,” said Eleanor. “Give them both a fighting chance.”
Molly came back out, holding the catalogue out to me. “You wanted to see this, right? Don’t lose it, it has Mrs. Bryce’s address on it.” She strode out into the street. I turned back to Eleanor, and not certain of the protocol, took two big steps forward and shook her hand.
By the time I followed her out, Molly was not in view, so I resolved to sit at the bottom of the stairs until she came back. She’d left charged with purpose, like she’d just remembered seeing Mrs. Bryce sitting at a café table a few doors down. I wasn’t sure what to make of Molly’s courteous intrusiveness, but I decided the best thing to do was wait until the shape of everything became clearer. If all this was in the service of something unattainable, there was no point in putting up any opposition. But at the same time, I felt it would not take much to make me feel like I was being dragged into someone else’s mania.
It was true I’d already begun to have flashes come to mind unbidden. Being in a hotel room inevitably reminded me of the good days at the beginning of my relationship with Martin, driving from Bard to the little inns throughout the state. Long weekends drinking coffee in bed and talking. I kept receiving flares of that other life — which I almost saw as the past now — as if I were walking by a window where someone I used to know was sitting, looking almost like their old self. Martin turning a plate of food so whatever he wanted to eat was closest to him. Head up high in the mirror, shaving his throat. The way, when reading a book, he’d have the page half turned before he’d gotten to the bottom of it, his head angled, like he was trying to get to the end before his hand flipped the page.
I took out the catalogue to examine it. The front featured the box called Everybody’s, a vision of a store window full of toys and magazines. Martin had set it against a backdrop of the moon’s surface, although you couldn’t see the sides or the back of the box unless you came at it from an angle. It seemed like an innocent memory of a childhood shop. The artist’s name was given as “A. Sloane, Antrim.” Martin had no middle name, so the anagram left an orphaned “a,” which was both careless and alarming, a forewarning that not everything was going to come together. I folded the catalogue in half and put it in my pocket.
Molly reappeared with two water bottles. “I thought you’d gone to round up the usual suspects,” I said.
“My mouth was dry from talking to that jerk. Here –” she handed me one and I cracked the cap, took a long cold slug of water. Then I pulled the catalogue out and turned the cover up to her. “I’ll tell you this,” I said. “It’s not possible that this piece was on display in this gallery. It’s in a permanent collection in Houston.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. He could have made another one.”
“Why?”
“Well, we could find out. This Mrs. Bryce is in Rathmines. We can be there in five minutes.”
I looked at my watch. “I’ve had enough for the day, Molly. I’m sorry.”
She squared her shoulders tensely, and then released them. “But you’re g
oing to stay. You’ve decided to stay.”
“For now.”
We walked down to the stone and iron walls of Trinity College and around them to the main thoroughfare. There it seemed the traffic never stopped, coming from three or four directions, gyring, swarming, bursting onto the main street. Some busts lined the avenue there, dead-eyed political or literary heroes forever watching over the traffic lights. It was deep in the afternoon, and the fall sun warmed if we walked directly in it, otherwise a cleft of cold air threaded the streets.
We walked, hands in pockets, watching the thrum of activity. This was where my taxicab from the airport had turned, revealing the high brick Georgian buildings. The morning seemed like a year ago. I’d come in wondering what Molly would look like, what we’d say to each other. Now, she pointed down a sidestreet beside a large black-glass municipal building. “That’s Temple Bar down there,” she said. “It’s an area. Where all the hip young things go. There’s a bunch of nice restaurants and dance clubs and a few singles bars. I wouldn’t know what to do in one anymore, mind you.”
“You wouldn’t have to do much, I suspect.” She looked sidelong at me, pleased to be noticed in some way.
“Are you single?” she said.
“Not really.”
“I guessed you wouldn’t be. You’re a catch, as my mom used to say. I take it you’re not married, though?”
“More on the dating end of the spectrum. But you got married, didn’t you.”
“I did.”
“Siddons,” I said.
“Yes. It’s long over now.” She didn’t know how to gauge my interest, but she pressed on. “We got married in’90, we split up in’92. He cheated on me.” I tried to look empathetic.
“Why did you keep the name?”
“Being wishful. Although it’s just habit now and whether I’m Hudson or Siddons it doesn’t feel like it matters.” Christchurch appeared, with its stone ribs arcing into the ground. A dusty and forlorn place. “So what’s your guy’s name?”
“It’s Daniel,” I said quickly. I made a show of digging in my pockets for some change. “Which reminds me, I said I’d call.” I nodded toward the other side of the street, as if that explained something, and then I started crossing. I checked for traffic and dashed over the median. Then looked back, and Molly was standing at the curb, completely still, watching me.
I stood in front of a phone, a monolith of steel with thick clumsy buttons on it. I wanted to talk to him. I knew he’d say something to take the edge off what I was doing. You’re fine, he’d say, and I’d believe him. This is no big deal.
And maybe I’d get emotional, I thought. I don’t want to be emotional. I don’t want to hang up the phone and still be here. So I stood there with the receiver beside my head, listening to the mechanical buzz.
I have to go.
You don’t have to go, you just want to go.
No, I have to go. I have work to do.
I have work too. But I’ve got all the time in the world for you.
You see, I could easily stay on the phone another fifteen minutes, Jo, but then I’d just find myself back at this part of the conversation again. So what’s the point.
To show you love me.
That would prove it, would it?
You’re so thick, Martin. Even for a man you’re thick. If you’ve got to go, go.
Well, I can’t go now. It’d be like dying in sin.
I just have to say: I love being in competition with your work. I don’t have other women to worry about, no no. I’ve got nails and glass and stuff cut out of comic books.
That’s not true.
Tonight we talk to a woman who caught her boyfriend making out with a pair of wind-up lips.
You’ve got all of me, Jo. All of me. Heart and soul.
Do I.
You do. Can I go now?
Sure.
Except now I can’t say I love you, can I? It’s going to sound like I’m trying to cover my ass.
It would never have occurred to me.
Molly wasn’t where I’d left her. I walked a ways along the other side of the street until I saw her in the gardens of St. Patrick’s sitting on a bench in front of one of the long walls of the church. In front of her, the miniature French lawns, with children walking the stone rim of the fountain in the middle. From the gate, her face was expressionless. She looked up after a moment and came over. We started walking down a sidestreet, back toward the hotel. “Everything okay at home?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Good,” she said. For a few minutes, we walked in a tense silence, strenuously pretending to notice our surroundings. Finally, she said, “Is there something wrong? “
“Like what?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s just … this is awkward, like it’s hard for you to be kind,” she said.
I stopped, and she did as well, but a step ahead of me. “Kind?”
“Well, friendly, I mean. Amiable maybe.”
I shook my head, but she didn’t see me. “I didn’t think I wasn’t being kind, Molly. Uncomfortable, perhaps, but not unkind. Although maybe ‘kindness’ is sort of reaching for the stars here don’t you think?”
“I meant just more friendly.”
“Fine. I have an friendly question for you then. Why are we here? I mean, as opposed to me being armed with an address and a name and you back doing whatever work it is you’re here to do?”
“You can do this on your own if that’s what you really want.”
I shook my head, looking down. I could hear the drift and weave of pedestrians as they walked near to us, opening and closing like a river around a stone. “You don’t mean that,” I said. “So far, you’ve just given me the illusion of choice.”
“I’ll go if you tell me to.”
“Remind me how is it you’ve ended up here.”
“Business,” she said. “And I didn’t end up here. It’s a few days of work. I’m still a lawyer.”
“You have a client in Ireland.”
“It’s a laser eye clinic. An American franchise. I brought papers they have to sign.”
“I thought they had couriers for that.”
“That’s me: an overglorified messenger.” I just stared at her.
She pulled the neck of her coat closed with both hands. “Well, I’ll go then, okay?”
“I just want to understand how it is we’ve ended up both of us here.”
She stepped toward me. “I know you must hate me,” she said under her breath. “On some level — I’m not saying you think about me — just on some level. But even so, it would be good if we could talk a little.” She waited for me to step in. “I know we’re not friends,” she said, “but I did call you —”
“Was that an act of friendship?”
“Well, it was something.”
“I can’t get drawn into this, Molly. I’m here for a couple of days and then I’m going home. Naturally, if there’s something to be learned about Martin, I want to know. But apart from that, I don’t know how I feel about any of this.”
“But you are here. You decided to come and now you’ve decided to stay. So why not do some work?”
“On what?” I said, incredulous. I walked around her and continued back in the direction I believed the hotel to be in. I turned a corner, but after a few more yards it was as if my legs had filled with lead, and I found a bench beside a bus stop to sit on. It was the end of the workday now, and people were leaving the buildings on either side of the street, lining up for the bus, or else meeting with co-workers, friends, lovers, for the first evening drink. Then what? Dinner somewhere, or a movie, or back to the kids. Talking, or fighting; hoping for sex or good news. The big cycle of life in its glory and awkwardness. There were people walking slowly down the sidestreets, holding hands, or just ambling in alternating shade and light, their faces relaxed. I could still see the park, down a street to my left, its arboreal presence a form of omniscience. I imagined him skippin
g over the bridges there, a bag of nuts in his hand. Hiding from the world, running from it, going to visit the statue he loved of the man on the horse, King George. All the things that mattered were gone, the touchstones.
Molly came around the corner, walking slowly, as if she knew she’d find me tapped out on a bench. She sat down beside me and surprised me by taking one of my hands and holding it in hers. After a moment, I took my hand back. And then we just sat there like we didn’t know each other. To the people around us, waiting for their buses, it would have looked like she’d just mistaken me for someone else.
V.
CHILDHOOD GAME, 1959. 15" X 20" BOX CONSTRUCTION. WOOD AND GLASS WITH PAPER, FOUND OBJECTS, DOUBLE CHAIN MECHANISM. CALIFORNIA CENTER FOR THE ARTS. A CRANK IN THE SIDE OF A SHOOTING GALLERY ROTATES A SERIES OF ANIMAL HEADS ACROSS AN OPENING. BELOW, BEHIND GREYED GLASS, THE ANIMAL HEADS TRANSFORM INTO HUMAN FACES.
A BLITHER OF HALF DREAMS, PARTIALLY SEEN FACES, distant sounds, and in one instance I was back in my childhood house methodically eating the furniture as my father stood by urging me on. When I got to the piano, I took it in a single silent mouthful. I opened my eyes, bleared, on walls that seemed to have sprung up in the night, the bare branches of trees from stories I’d been told as a child clicking against the windowpanes. It felt like someone had drawn my spirit out like dregs from a glass.
I’d gotten my own room the night before; it was the last single they had in the place and it was more like a horse pen than a room. I looked at the little clock on the table. It was already eleven in the morning. Molly was knocking.
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