Lesson In Red

by Maria Hummel

  Hiro was in the passenger seat, flipping through her CDs and murmuring at their names. He had been doing this for nearly thirty minutes, which suggested two things to me. First, Hiro had a distinctive capacity to marvel over things before he chose them, and, second, he was dreading the actual songs. So was I. Yegina favored nineties hardcore, the more caustic the better. The harsh chords made something spring loose inside her, and her head would bob, her chin would jut, her black hair falling in her eyes. Suddenly, late-twenties, business-casual Yegina rewound to her rebellious teen years, when she would sneak out of her house in leather pants and steel-toed boots to jump into mosh pits at a bowling-alley punk club in Highland Park. Instead of progressing past this musical phase like the rest of the sane adult world, Yegina had become an obsessive collector of its history.

  “The Mormons,” Hiro said, pondering one disc. “Are they really Mormons?”

  It was a dumb question in a way, an easy setup for a snappy comeback from my quick-witted best friend, but Yegina smiled at him. Hiro had a shy, sincere manner that made him difficult to mock, and the two of them had become very close in the months that I’d been gone. Wedged in the back seat next to their heaps of possessions, I felt my imposition more than ever. I was grateful for their friendship and for the ride to Wonder Valley, but I chafed at being a third wheel.

  “You sure you want us to just drop you off?” Yegina said, as if she sensed my feelings.

  I nodded. “There’s only a couple of scheduled screenings. I don’t want to miss them.”

  “We could stay for the first one, couldn’t we?” Yegina said to Hiro. “It’s Brenae Brasil.”

  “Um,” he said. It was clear the name didn’t register. “My cousin said six o’clock.”

  There was a silence.

  “Okay, that’s a no. Let’s keep it simple,” Yegina said to me. “We’ll take your bag to your hotel for you. If we see you tonight, we see you. I hope we see you. If not, we’ll swing by at noon tomorrow for the ride back.”

  Our plans weren’t simple, but they were pure Yegina, well intentioned and multitasked. They were going to dinner at Hiro’s cousin’s house in Twentynine Palms, then visiting some of the art pieces on the festival’s extensive map before checking in at their hotel. I was meeting Janis Rocque and her girlfriend, Dee Rager, at The Oasis to watch a screening. I would get a ride with them to their hotel, where I had a room, too. Tomorrow, I would carpool home with Yegina and Hiro. I had no car, iffy reception on my cheap phone, and a giant desert to get lost in, but I had my friends.

  I hoped I had my friends.

  That moment would have been a good time to admit that my reception was weak and I hadn’t heard from Dee, but I didn’t want Yegina to worry about me. She had a wealthy cousin to impress, and I would finally learn more about Janis’s summons. I’d come back to the Rocque in time to see Still Lives close. I’d stood at the edge of the galleries as Dee and her crew maneuvered the paintings off the walls, silently, without their usual chatter and ribbing. The still life, the largest canvas, was last. It was also the only artwork without Kim Lord’s face in it, and I could regard it without losing my breath. I let my eyes ride over the painted notebook, the bloodstained screwdriver, and the split white apple, promising myself not to forget Kim’s fearlessness and generosity.

  I’d also returned to a map on my office desk. From Janis. The map advertised a Joshua Tree art festival the third weekend in October, with Brenae Brasil’s screening circled on it. Dee and I are going to this, said a note beside it. Could you meet us there? We’ll get you a room at the Major Motel. I want you to see it, and then we’ll talk in detail. Janis was away on a collecting vacation in China and Japan, but she’d be back the next month. The festival would give me a chance to see dozens of new art installations on remote desert properties, and the Major Motel was an exorbitant desert getaway, the kind that rock stars stayed in. The invitation flattered me, but my gut squeezed at what I had really committed myself to. I knew who Brenae Brasil was: an LAAC student who’d shot herself in her studio early last spring, right around the time we were planning the Still Lives gala.

  Brenae Brasil’s name, underlined by Janis in heavy black pen, clanged like a warning now. Don’t get involved in this.

  But I was already involved. Without Janis’s promise of a story for me, I wouldn’t be back in L.A. I’d be home, adding a wool hat and gloves to my warm autumn jacket. I’d be applying for a communications job at the local university. Janis had told me just enough to hook me: she had inside knowledge that Brenae’s death was more complicated than it seemed, and that the culture of the school needed investigating. I know what happened on my property, and what secret you kept, she wrote to me. This situation is very delicate, and whoever looks into it must (1) know the art world and (2) use discretion about when to go public. You’d be paid well. I can tell you more when we meet.

  So I’d hugged both my parents hard when I told them I was moving back, and I’d found a month-to-month sublet in Marina del Rey with aggressively bland decor. Though it was a safe location, it wasn’t home like my bungalow. And work wasn’t the same place, either. My boss, Jayme, had quit and moved to Hawaii, and the twin designers had new girlfriends and were disappointingly absent and self-absorbed. The Rocque social life had moved on from rooftop hotel bars to a downtown dive coated with dust so vintage that it could be River Phoenix’s sloughed-off skin from the early nineties. With my old pals, I went through the motions of drinking and dancing and grousing about work. I had a one-night stand with an art installer in town for the weekend. He was ten years older than me, wiry, British, funny, and adept at charmingly harmless seduction. I enjoyed myself, but it all seemed to take too long and be over too soon.

  Still, the temporary fling was preferable to the Yegina-Hiro dynamic—their overpacked car, the portentous meeting with the relatives, all the pressures of being in love longer than the first few dizzy months. I was happy for my friend, but I wondered if she was happy for herself.

  “I hope I see you tonight, too,” I said to Yegina. I wanted to hear how it went.

  HOURS LATER, AFTER YEGINA’S HARDCORE had given us all migraines and we’d traded for a dull hangover of Hiro’s Dvořák selections, we inched through the busy strips of Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree. Beyond them, the nowhere gained on us fast. Rocks and scrabble and mountain peaks lined the distance. A long, loping sky unfolded. The sun was setting when we reached Wonder Valley, which was first defined by nothingness on either side of the road. Then we passed car after car parked on the right, and a large sign sprang up, dark letters on white paint, framed by unfinished wood: THE OASIS BAR AND RESTAURANT. A crude mask-like face gazed out from the sign’s center. The lot was so choked with dusty, dented trucks that it resembled a junkyard. Behind it squatted a one-story cinder-block building, beer signs glowing, and behind that, some kind of stage and a giant movie screen, flickering with the black-and-white image of a gun stuck in the back of a woman’s tight jeans. Her behind was the size and shape of a shack, the gun handle its crooked chimney.

  “Is that—” said Yegina.

  “I think so,” I said. The sight of Brenae Brasil made me cold.

  Immediately we were back in the open desert, flanked by another line of parked cars. Yegina’s tires spun in the sand as we turned to loop back.

  “She looks so young,” she said.

  So young, so sexy, and so dangerous. Another dead girl reversed to life again by her beautiful image.

  According to a Valdivia newspaper article, Brenae Brasil had killed herself in her LAAC studio one night with the gun she had been using on-screen. She’d been found dead a couple of days later. That was the official take on it.

  Official takes didn’t sit well with me anymore. Maybe Brenae hadn’t ended her life. Maybe someone had ended it for her. Gun suicides are easy to fake. There was more to discover, I was sure, but I had resisted the itch to dig further. Let Janis make her case to me first.

  “Thanks for the ri
de,” I said lightly, trying to suppress my dread. Now that I’d arrived, I wanted to turn around. I wanted to crash the dinner with the rich cousin.

  Yegina caught sight of my face and slowed to a stop beside a big black truck. “You’re sure Janis and Dee are coming? We could go in with you for a few minutes.”

  Hiro blinked and took a breath. They were already almost late for dinner. “Sure,” he said.

  “Just a few,” Yegina said to him, and he nodded.

  The pity in both my friends’ faces gave me resolve.

  “No need. I just got a voicemail,” I lied, holding up my phone. “They’re already inside. Can you imagine how uncomfortable Janis is?” Janis hated to expose her personal life; it had taken her months to see how this hurt Dee, but now the two made appearances together as a couple from time to time. “I’ve got to go,” I added, leaping out. “She’s probably going to last about five more minutes.”

  The sound of Yegina’s worried laugh broke as I slammed my door and headed through the dust to the bar.

  IN THE FIRST ROOM AT The Oasis, two men leaned beside a pool table that looked like it had barely survived a sandstorm. They glanced at me, then back at their game. Customers clogged every inch of the wooden counter beyond. Skinny female hipsters in embroidered T-shirts shoved up against bleach-haired lady smokers giving them the stink-eye. The clamor was intense, but no one seemed to be talking to one another, just shouting in the general direction of the liquor bottles about whether or not our new celebrity governor was going to keep any of his campaign promises.

  I was thirsty, but the wait would be long, so I went to look for Janis and Dee. I threaded my way to the next room, scanning the crowd. There were no short, intense middle-aged women and their fey British girlfriends. Battered road signs hung from the walls, larger than life. NO RIGHT TURN. BINGO! FRI & SAT. The air thickened with every step, growing layers of smoke, beer, sweat, and the dreamy cellophane aura of ambition that follows all the young people who move to L.A. Beyond: another cavern, this one full of booths, each stuffed with customers, elbow to elbow, holding clear and golden drinks. I smiled to myself at the scene and found a small corner of space beside a giant black papier-mâché cat. It wore a red velvet robe. An empress cat. I liked it immediately. It reminded me of Janis.

  All of us at the Rocque had our stories about Janis’s regal benevolence. How she measured each of us with her alert gaze. She made sure our benefits were top-notch, despite the cost to the budget. She loved having company for Dodgers games and slipped surprise tickets into people’s mailboxes. She knew everyone’s name and their problems, and in late afternoons, usually before a new exhibition was to open, she wandered the museum corridors, finding an office and sailing in. She would begin her prying by asking about the art on view. She wanted to hear true opinions, and to argue them down victoriously. And then she wanted gossip. What did you hear about Brent, the crew leader, and his ill wife? “He carries great personal burdens, you know. Great burdens,” Janis would say, dangling the opportunity for her listener to contribute. “This can’t go beyond this room,” she would add, stern but cozy with you. She rarely maligned anyone, but she dug and ferreted and delighted over nuggets of personal information from people, the more famous and powerful the better. Confidentiality was a promise that you knew that Janis herself would betray as soon she drifted to the next office, yet to be blessed with her attention meant you belonged at the Rocque and she cherished you. I’d come 150 miles to prove myself to her, and she wasn’t even here.

  The empress cat was too short to hide behind for long, but its raised paw aimed out the door to a trellised yard. I was just about to follow its directive when I felt someone’s eyes. I looked back to the bar and froze.

  Slouched in the half-light, bearded, with a sky-blue trucker cap pulled low and his face fixed in a dopey, roamed-out expression, he almost fooled me. But there was no mistaking that gaze, the way it sharpened so slowly I used to think he was half-awake. And there was no mistaking the swift, dexterous way he moved. My chest started ramming so hard it hurt. Before I could step forward, he pushed back from the bar and vanished around the corner, out of sight.

  I hadn’t seen Ray Hendricks since the L.A. hospital room where he told me to lie to the police about an attempt on my life. In the months that had passed since, he’d made no contact with me except for one letter, and I’d assumed he had gone back to North Carolina. From time to time, I searched his name online, but if he’d returned to his special agent job busting meth labs in the Appalachian Mountains, the media was not reporting it. What was he doing in Wonder Valley? Seeing him summoned a wave of memories: Ray at my museum’s press conference, handing me my butterfly earring; Ray at the bar, grimly telling me Kim Lord was dead; Ray leaping into a pit of broken glass to rescue me; Ray’s bandaged hand on mine in the hospital room. How many times had I turned those memories over in my mind, wanting to believe they had meant something? And yet here he was now, in the flesh, walking away without the slightest acknowledgment. My recollections seemed oversize and ludicrous.

  After several people pushed past me, dazed and motionless, I slipped outside to compose myself. As soon as I passed through the door, a hand grabbed my wrist and tugged me along the rough adobe wall, into the dark. I knew it was Ray before I saw his low cap and beard. But still his appearance shocked me. Sculpted by shadows, his face looked hawk-like, predatory. He also looked—strangely—afraid.

  “Janis and Dee can’t make it tonight,” he said quietly, still holding my wrist. “But your room is booked, and I can get you a cab there—”

  “Why couldn’t they come?” I said. “Why are you here?”

  Ray jerked his head toward the giant projection, which was flickering to black. The screening was about to begin. “I’ll explain later.” He paused. “You don’t know me tonight, though, okay? I’ll find you. Don’t look for me.”

  I’d missed Ray’s voice, the mellowing timbre that inflected his words. But I didn’t want him to see that. I wasn’t there for him.

  “I won’t.” I pulled at my trapped wrist, and Ray stared at it, as if he didn’t know it was in his grip. His thumb gently stroked my inner arm, then he let go and strode away, adjusting his cap.

  On the screen, the word PACKING appeared, accompanied by a groan of music, and everyone started streaming from the bar to watch. The crowd pushed me closer to the screen, closer to where Ray was standing, behind a clump of . . . grad students? Young art collectors? Two men, two women, all in their twenties, a tight-knit collective. Ray had his head angled toward the screen, but I could tell he was watching them. Why? They didn’t appear menacing, just shoddy in an expensive way. Rich kids trying to slum with their low-slung jeans and layered shirts. Or maybe I was judging them too fast. The bald guy wore shorts and orthotic sneakers. The redhead had her own look, like a teenager who’d dressed herself from a flea market, but her hair glowed with the luster of salon-grade shampoo, and no one did makeup like that unless they’d been trained by Hollywood. She seemed familiar, too, though I didn’t know why.

  A stern female voice intoned, “Welcome to the first public screening of a landmark film by an artist who died too young.”

  My goodness, Lynne Feldman was present. And speaking to this crowd. I’d always set great store by my chief curator’s tastes, which were as sharp and surprising as a Japanese pickled plum. So I was curious to see her endorse a mere grad student, albeit a grad student of world-renowned LAAC.

  The screen popped and there they stood, Lynne the curator in her usual dark suit and scarlet mouth, silhouetted before Brenae Brasil, huge, facing forward now, every detail of her physique magnified. There was the young artist’s curly black hair, lifted by a headband, there her dark brows and full cheeks, her muscular body clad in T-shirt and jeans. Frozen, illuminated, and enlarged like this, Brenae Brasil had the air of an idol. She glowed. She symbolized. It was hard to imagine the real person behind the image, a twenty-two-year-old woman with private thoughts and fear
s, alone in her studio.

  Lynne lifted the mic. “Tonight, we get to see one of the last projects Brenae Brasil completed before she died, a film that documents the week Brasil spent carrying a loaded gun on her person, twenty-four hours a day, to campus, to the grocery store, to the bathroom, to meals, to bed. A loaded gun,” Lynne repeated. “A female body connected to violence and self-defense, twenty-four hours a day, in public as well as in its most intimate moments. Critics”—Lynne paused and raised an eyebrow—“among them, me, have already nominated Packing for several awards, including . . .” She plunged into a jungle of complicated accolades that few people care about other than the ones pining to receive them.

  Scattered claps and cheers greeted her remarks. Ray’s foursome was whispering together. The redhead looked coolly angry, then blank.

  The video opened on a woman at a breakfast table eating cereal with the barrel of her gun. The scene unfolded so slowly it was almost obscene: Brenae held the handle, dipped the gun’s tip into the flakes and milk, lifted them, slopping and dripping. She sucked the tip with her lips. Then over again. The gun in her fist, her jaw grinding. Milk dribbled down her chin, white and glistening.

  “It can’t be loaded,” someone beside me muttered, and someone else insisted it was. Brenae had had other students check her gun throughout the day.

  As Brenae Brasil drove around L.A. with the weapon on her lap, shopped for mangoes with the gun tucked in the back of her pants, and brushed her teeth with the red toothbrush stuck in the barrel, her comic charisma overtook the screen. Her slow gestures made every action seem full of wonder and newness, as if she were just noticing for the first time the gun in her fist, the curves of metal, the drips of milk. When she walked, she strolled. She cupped the mangoes in her palms and sniffed them. She dozed on her bed with a little half smile, the gun on her pillow, her fingers brushing the barrel. She had elegant, tapered hands.