Lesson In Red

by Maria Hummel

  “You sound like you miss it.”

  “No,” he said with a frown. “I don’t miss it. But at least we learned not to wait around for someone else to do things for us.”

  The reference was obvious, even though Layla and Zania, who’d acted so useless when the shoes came in, were out of sight. Pearson might have a country-club name, but, like Brenae, he saw himself as an outsider to the wealthier students.

  “Why did you come to L.A.?” I said.

  “Hal invited me,” he said, pride in his voice.

  “You met him in Hudson?”

  “I did actually. Back when I was too much of an idiot to understand that you didn’t just corner Hal Giroux and ask him to look at your art. Or to write to him repeatedly afterward. But he always wrote back. Sometimes just a couple of sentences, but always. Eventually . . . I applied to LAAC and here I am.”

  The pause after the eventually—I wondered if that was when Pearson had been arrested for assault. I’d have to check with Ray. “Ever look back?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Why did you come here?” he asked instead, examining me.

  “To L.A.? Oh, partly running away, partly following somebody,” I said lightly. “You know.”

  Pearson’s intense look did not waver, but his eyes grew softer and rounder. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I do know. Thanks again.”

  Then he grabbed the box and started hauling it toward the gallery.

  I stared after him, feeling as if I’d just run some difficult fitness test, my sweat-damp clothes sticking to me. I went to the restroom to salvage my makeup. When I spotted myself in the mirror, I recoiled at the redness of my cheeks. I looked like a kid at an August soccer practice again. But Pearson had revealed himself, just a crack, today. He noticed things about people. He was touchy about his working-class roots. He revered Hal. How had he felt about Brenae? I still couldn’t quite tell, but he held some emotion for her that he didn’t want known. He wasn’t the man in the video, though. That was Erik; I’d known that from the first time I laid eyes on both men.

  I RETURNED TO MY DESK and observed the crew out of the corner of my eye until it was time to leave. I told them I’d be back at 3:30 p.m. Ray’s car was gone from the street, but I walked down the main strip, took a few turns, and heard a car pull up beside me. It was the gray sedan. We’d made plans for Ray to drive me home.

  I hopped in, trying to appear confident and ready for my interview with Hollywood stardom.

  “So?” he said.

  I related everything I could remember from the morning, from Layla’s note to the conversation with Pearson to the conversations about the interviews.

  “Quit now,” said Ray. “That’s what she wrote?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know if she was being snide or if it was a real warning.”

  “Hard to say,” Ray said in a pondering tone. “But she didn’t say anything else?”

  “No.”

  We were retracing the route I’d taken that morning, and passed the same palm frond I’d tripped on, its pink pelvis trailing a long wisp of beige. The walk seemed like a long time ago already. I felt tight and energized now, the loose dread of the early morning gone.

  “Erik seems to want to talk with you,” I said.

  Ray’s face was flushed from sitting in the warm car, but I could still see the keen look spread over his face.

  “It’s obvious why, isn’t it?” he said. “Pretty sure he’s the guy in the video.”

  I agreed. It didn’t matter if the head in the video was blurred. The upper back and shoulders, the way the man moved—it all matched Erik’s physique perfectly. On the chance it wasn’t him, we’d find out this afternoon when he watched the footage.

  “We’ll see if he confirms it, but you gave me some good leverage,” Ray added. “I called the desert festival people and found out who shot Packing. It was Erik Reidl.”

  “He also shot her undergraduate film Camping,” I told him, working to suppress any triumph in my voice.

  Very late last night, after I’d written my mother, I’d found online archives through the USC library of their student campus newspaper, and a 2002 feature on Brenae that revealed more about her campout project. For her undergraduate thesis, Brenae had camped in a foreclosed home in South Central, pitching her tent inside its living room and bedrooms, tucking herself in her sleeping bag, cooking marshmallows and hot dogs over a gas camping stove. According to the article, on the last day, Brenae had had a tattoo artist ink the words This land is your land onto her bare shoulder. A slow take of the inking, set to Freddie Tavares on steel guitar, had concluded the movie. Erik was named in the article as her cinematographer. I told Ray all this, watching his squint deepen.

  “Do you think Erik has seen the sex video before?” I said.

  Ray shrugged. “Hard to say. Seen it, heard about it.”

  I decided it was time to voice my main concern about our new findings: “But if it’s not Hal in the video, then Janis has no—”

  “If you and I recognized who it might be, why wouldn’t Hal? And if he did, he failed to handle the situation properly.” Ray turned on my street, toward my pink adobe apartment building.

  “You think Hal warned Erik that Brenae wanted to expose him as a rapist,” I said. I didn’t like the last word in my mouth, and my saying it aloud made Ray blink, but it was what we had witnessed.

  Instead of answering, Ray gazed at the pink building, slowing the car. “It’s like a giant welt,” he said. “Or a pox. What do you think, welt or pox?”

  “I think we’re talking pox,” I said. “Pox doesn’t work alone.”

  “Hal probably warned Erik. Protected his future prizewinner.” Ray said the last word sardonically. “Even worse, I think Hal made sure anything incriminating on Brenae’s laptop was erased. Someone knew how to shred data.”

  “Is that enough for Janis?” I said. “It’s all speculative.”

  “She has ways to confidentially inform the school’s board of trustees that she suspects something,” he said. “She could start there.”

  “But what if the video dates back to Brenae’s time at USC?” I added. “Then it’s not even Hal’s campus. And what if Erik claims it was consensual?”

  Ray slid to a stop by the hydrant outside my front gate.

  “Did it look consensual to you?” he said.

  “No,” I said. “But we don’t know what they said to each other. He could claim she was using him. He could claim anything. She’s dead. I could see the board turning a blind eye just to keep it all quiet. And then what would Janis do?”

  “You should be thinking harder about what you want to do,” Ray said. He leaned back against his headrest and looked over at me, at my suit and at the sweat dried in my hair, his gaze frank and assessing. “Find the real story and write it.”

  FIND THE REAL STORY AND write it.

  I’d shaken off Ray’s comment with a laugh and changed the subject. But he was right. The whole story was more complicated than a botched university response to a woman’s complaint. Why did Brenae have to die? Why did a woman so talented have to shoot herself at night in a school that had nurtured generations of young artists?

  Brenae’s videos were the greatest puzzle to me. In Packing, Brenae’s sensuality flowed through the entire work, the camera lingering on the lushness of her gestures, the way she cradled her gun. Beautiful and powerful, she ruled every frame. In Lesson in Red, Brenae’s assailant pinned and obscured her body until the red filter soaked them both. Brenae’s face was pained, her voice anxious. Her words hurt. Two women more different could not be imagined, and yet they were both Brenae: the radiant genius and the victim.

  And instead of probing deeper, I was waiting, futilely, to meet the actress who would play young Françoise Gilot—also brilliant, and also physically and emotionally abused, first by her father and then by Picasso. Picasso admired young Gilot’s intellect and poise, and his nightly talks with her were a master course on the artist’s
mind. He also shoved Gilot on a bridge over the Seine and threatened to toss her in. He held a burning cigarette against her cheek and offered to brand her. He mocked her body shape after she’d borne him a child. “Every time I change wives, I should burn the last one,” he told her. “That way I’d be rid of them.” Gilot stayed with Picasso for a decade anyway. I wanted to ask the actress what it felt like to embody such a heroine.

  Kaye called me while I was finishing my salad, staring across the butcher-papered table at the empty blue plate that I had told the waiter not to clear. Just in case.

  “She’s on the way to the airport,” she said glumly. “They want her in New York early for media now. There’s a lot of buzz for the play. Everybody loves Picasso, I guess.”

  “Gilot’s the one who’s still alive,” I grumbled. My notes on the artist, stuffed in my purse, were baking in the heat.

  “Did you take a day off? I’m really sorry.”

  “I had it off already,” I said. “I’ve been digging into some new ideas to pitch magazines.”

  Kaye sounded relieved as she hung up, and I clung to that as I paid the ridiculous bill and walked out in my ridiculously overpriced suit into a whole block spangled with posters for the next Harry Potter movie. I was lying to Kaye, or I thought so at the time—but long after that October afternoon, it struck me that if I hadn’t come back early from that lunch break, I might not have seen what I saw next. And if I hadn’t seen it, I might never have known the real story of Brenae Brasil.

  11

  THE PAIR OF THEM WERE sitting in his navy-blue coupe, in the shade of the little parking lot behind the gallery. I passed them while searching futilely for my own spot on the street. Despite Zania’s insistence that I park my car at the Westing, I wasn’t sure I wanted the crew to view my old station wagon. So I’d driven past the organic juicery and the small-batch ice cream shop, even down as far as the night club that hadn’t changed its pugilist sign since the sixties and was open already, its rummy interior visible through a propped door. No luck. I’d cruised back by the Westing to start again, and there they were.

  I pulled to the curb and peered in the rearview mirror.

  Layla sat in the passenger seat, her arms not quite crossed. It was more like she was clutching her elbows, as if holding herself in to keep from flying apart. Her profile was to me, her long red hair obscuring her face.

  Nelson’s expression was easier to read. He looked patient and paternal, as if he were coaching her to understand some difficult lesson. She shook her head sharply, but he kept talking and eventually she sniffed and nodded. I couldn’t tell if she was crying. I didn’t think so. She didn’t seem the type to cry often.

  I didn’t know what they were talking about, but everything in their manner suggested they knew each other well. Very well. When Nelson finished talking, he gently slipped a hand inside her shirt, and then Layla’s red head dipped toward his lap until it disappeared.

  12

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO the gallery, the crew was listening to the local public radio station. PSAs and twangy indie pop looped through the air. Only Pearson and Zania seemed in the room, focused on the shoes. Erik kept checking the door, but when Layla returned, he frowned at her kiss in greeting, feigning intense concentration on an arch of red pumps. Layla went to work with her mouth parted, eyes far away, as if she hadn’t left the car, was still back there, bent over Nelson’s crotch.

  Although it wasn’t my place to judge, the thought of Layla and Nelson together made my skin crawl. And even more than the sex, their intimacy troubled me. What if Layla knew about the whole investigation? And if she did, why wouldn’t she inform her friends and boyfriend that I was eavesdropping on them? Presumably because Nelson had asked her not to. If that was true, then Nelson meant more to Layla than Erik did. Or Zania. That was a funny fact. Not especially germane to Brenae, but funny nonetheless. I wondered what Ray would make of it.

  “TIME TO GO,” LAYLA SAID at 3:30, “or we’ll be late.”

  Erik was the first to leap up but the last to leave, running to the restroom, misplacing his keys.

  “I can drive,” Layla said from the door. “I’ll drive us.”

  “No, but I don’t want to lose them,” said Erik, rooting among the shoes. “They’ll get lost.”

  Pearson and Zania were long gone by the time Layla found Erik’s keys on the ladder and she and Erik departed. His usual boyish poise had crumbled, and he wore an expression of desperate benevolence, as if he were a prince about to give away his entire wealth. Layla followed him out with narrowed eyes. They promised me that someone on the crew would return by six, when I was supposed to lock up and go.

  The Westing sank into quiet, the partially constructed artwork tumbling in all directions. One tilting column looked perpetually close to falling, but it never did. I checked my e-mail. Other than some messages from Rocque coworkers, my mother had written. She appreciated my note about James Compton and said she didn’t know anything about London art, but that I was lucky I was around so much culture, and that I would take that with me wherever I went. (The lead was buried in that last phrase, of course. Wherever I went. She was still waiting, longing, for me to leave Los Angeles.)

  A jingling and a slam at the front door, and there was Hal Giroux himself, holding a manila folder. He scowled when he saw the empty gallery.

  “They getting lunch?” he said.

  It was nearly five.

  “I’m not sure,” I hedged. “They just said they had to go out for a while.”

  The vital, bearded Hal from his 1970s heyday had faded beneath close-trimmed gray hair, an age-mottled complexion, and a stringy neck. Hal was a fretful version of his old self. The full cheeks that had made him look smug and satisfied now sagged low, dragging on his cheekbones. His eyebrows pinched close together as he examined the shoe towers. Then, without speaking any further, he wandered over to the installation and started making adjustments, pushing a shoe here and there. He shoved at the leaning column unsuccessfully. Shoved again, failed again.

  He looked over at me.

  “They were working hard until three thirty,” I said. “I’m temping for the regular gallerina. I’m Mary.”

  Hal grunted a greeting and grabbed the gallery phone, opening his wallet and reading a card there, then punching in numbers. He dialed three and listened before hanging up. “What are they up to?” he muttered. “Next time they leave, get them to tell you where they’re going, okay? The media could be coming through here as early as tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Hal glanced around the Westing. “It always feels so cramped in here. I told Nelson to buy on the East Side when he could have gotten a hangar for the price of this, and he didn’t listen.” His eyes landed on me again, his gaze hang-dog and sorrowful. “You always miss the L.A. you don’t have, right?”

  “You’ve helped make L.A. what it is,” I said, prim and sincere. “For artists, anyway.”

  He dipped his chin, a little nod of acknowledgment. “Eh,” he said, but he looked pleased.

  “I just saw a lot of LAAC artists out in Wonder Valley,” I added. “Amazing work.”

  “Did you?” he said. “I couldn’t get there this year, but we always have a good showing.”

  “People could not stop talking about Packing. Such a tragedy.”

  Hal blinked. “Oh yes,” he said in a reedy voice. “Brenae was a great loss for us. Terrible shame.”

  Hal didn’t look sad. He didn’t look afraid. He didn’t look triumphant. It was as if part of him had completely drained out at the mention of Brenae’s name, and the emptiness was talking instead of Hal.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” I said. “She had so much going for her.”

  “A terrible shame,” Hal repeated. He opened his folder, glanced at something inside, and then closed it again. “I’ll give this to Nelson later. Will you tell them to ring me when they return?” He turned to leave, then took one last look at me. “Nice suit, by the way,
” he said, and pushed his way out the glass door.

  PEARSON RETURNED, ALONE, ALMOST AN hour later, with a heavy mallet in his hand. He ignored me as he strode past to the shoes. With quick jerks of his body, he plucked a handful of shoes from the piles, set them on a patch of bare floor, and raised the mallet. Slam. Slam. The floorboards rang from the blows, the noise reverberating through the gallery, amplifying on the bare walls. Pearson’s muscled arms rose high, and the mallet came down. The shoes split, seams popping, tongues sliding out. A clog snapped in two with a loud crack.

  I sat at my desk, still and silent, my hands near my cell phone and the landline.

  Pearson kept hammering until his first pile broke to pieces, and then found more, his face purpled and intent. The mallet swung. The floor thudded and echoed. The shoes shattered to chunks and shards.

  When the pile of destruction rose knee-deep, he tossed the mallet down and grabbed the wire, lashing the pieces together into a column like the others, but misshapen, torn, distended. It took me a few minutes to interpret, and then my breath snagged in my throat. It was a genius move. It was typical Hal, to have one element in his architecture violent and distorted while the rest arched in harmony. But Hal had not done this, and the man with the mallet looked like he wanted to strangle someone. With his large, fisted hands.

  Finally Pearson caught me staring and looked up. “What?” he snarled. “What? You want to take some pictures for publicity now?”

  I let his voice ricochet through the gallery for an uncomfortable moment. I let my eyes fall to both phones, one and then the other. Then I answered.

  “No,” I said in my best civilized voice. “Could I get you a glass of water?”

  With wooden movements, Pearson set down the wire and shoes he’d strung together. Then he picked up the mallet and tossed it toward the edge of the room. Sweat made his forehead shine, and when he met my eyes, he wore a ragged, disbelieving grin. It was the first time I’d seen him smile, and his stretched mouth made his head look larger, clownish. But the expression in his eyes was gouged and hurt.